Ben has a new column in TV Guide where he’ll be writing about the new episodes of Southland. This is his first column.
Southland’s Ben McKenzie Thanks Fans, Previews “Phase Three”
I will be blogging the new episodes of Southland, which begin airing March 2 on TNT. In future posts, I’ll try to provide funny and/or insightful commentary (emphasis on the word try), but I’d like to devote this first post surrounding the Season 2 premiere to a different purpose: to say thank you.
The title of this episode is a reference to the third and final phase of a rookie officer’s probationary period in the LAPD. But I believe it also serves as a decent metaphor for the experience all of us have had working on Southland. A probationary officer only enters into Phase Three after enduring an enormous amount of grief. He must prove himself over and over again, both to his training officer and to others on the force. He must show that he is worthy of wearing the uniform. Nothing about his experience is easy. And nothing about making Southland has been easy either.
We shoot in the streets of LA — all over the city, in the heat, in the rain, changing locations as many as 5 times a day. We have had to be incredibly patient, waiting for NBC to pick us up, waiting to shoot new episodes, getting canceled, and now waiting to discover whether we have a future on TNT. The rest of the cast and I (and most of the crew) have been involved with this show for 19 months, and we have made 13 episodes. That is a long time to make the equivalent of one full cable season.
Now, make no mistake about it — our efforts pale in comparison to what real police officers go through on a daily basis. We are doing the TV version of a reality that is so much more intense and disturbing than what we do, there is little point comparing the two. However, they do share one thing in common: Both the actual police and the folks on Southland do what they do for one principal reason: We love it. We have a passion on this show that I have never experienced working any other job. And that passion shows on-screen.
That same passion has been adopted by our fans. And to those fans, we are eternally grateful. Thank you. Thank you, for writing letters, making phone calls, commenting on message boards, tweeting, etc. It is because of your efforts that we have found a new home on TNT, and that we can (finally) share our work with you. We are very proud of it and we hope you enjoy it.
If you want to do more to increase our chances of success on TNT, please watch, tell your friends to watch, and join us on Facebook. Trust me when I say that these efforts do matter. You guys have saved us before, and you can keep us on the air.
Next week I’ll talk about episode 2, “Butch and Sundance”. But for now, thanks and enjoy.
TVguide
The Washington Post:
Every few years, television takes a giant step forward, perhaps partly to compensate for all those other steps backward. One dependable area of improvement is the cop show.
“Southland,” set in Los Angeles, is the next great cop show and the next big step — a major improvement over the status quo in content and style.
The key character through which we experience much of the mayhem is novice officer Ben Sherman, played by Ben McKenzie, a young actor probably most familiar from his lead role on that murky-quirky Fox series “The O.C.,” a glossy soap also set in California’s “southland.” McKenzie has fortunately matured as an actor, and although the character he plays is implosive rather than demonstrative, he shows considerably greater range than he did before. You can sense that this kid could go either way — become a great cop or throw up his hands and quit.
read more here
Newsday:
MY SAY: No point in pouring acid into NBC’s gaping and self-inflicted “It’s 10 p.m.: Do you know where your dramas are?” wound, but it did have a fine new show with “Southland” which it did cancel after a criminally short run. So let’s concentrate on the positive. TNT had the brains to pick up this excellent cop drama, and now you and some devoted fans are the beneficiaries.
BOTTOM LINE: Here’s to a long and fruitful run in the new home. Tuesday night proves exactly why “Southland” deserves one.
read more here
Boston Herald
This is the series NBC passed on for useless months of Jay Leno. Of all the boneheaded decisions committed by the peacock network over the last year, taking the ax to the John Wells (“ER”) cop drama “Southland” might surpass them all.
The second season beginning tonight on TNT – which consists, alas, of only the six episodes filmed before NBC pulled the plug – finds a gritty series deepening its storytelling.
Patrolmen John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) and Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie, a universe away from his days on “The O.C.”) simmer in each other’s presence.
Not perhaps since “Hill Street Blues” (coincidentally, another NBC show, one that was given time to find its audience) has there been a cop drama that felt so authentic.
read more here
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Southland has had a tough time of things, getting booted off NBC, then starting over on TNT. But the gritty cop drama is finally back with its first brand new episode since moving to cable, and star Ben McKenzie, who plays rich-kid-turned-inner-city-cop Ben Sherman, couldn’t be happier (despite how broody he may look on television). He talked to EW.com about the upside of moving to the less-restrictive cable portion of the TV tuner, why he doesn’t feel sorry for NBC, and why you should watch tonight’s season premiere. (Namely, because it’s awesome.)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So the move to cable means what, exactly? Will we see more risque content?
BEN MCKENZIE: Yeah. If I have anything to do with it, there will be as much nudity as possible.
Any thoughts on NBC’s programming implosion since they canceled your show this season before it could even air to make way for the now-failed Jay Leno Show to air at 10 p.m.?
Just that now that NBC is in need of quality dramatic programming at 10 o’clock, I wonder where they’d get something like that…. I’m talking s–t, but why not? They said we could make the same show we made at 10 at 9. Then we started making the show and they saw the footage, and they were like, Oh my God, it’s so dark. So then they freaked out. But it’s a situation where you’re like, Why didn’t you freak out earlier? If you didn’t want to pick us up, don’t pick us up. It was one of the only hourlong shows they launched to decent ratings and decent critical response. But we caught the last lifeboat off the Titanic.
How are you feeling about your new home at TNT?
I absolutely think both sides want it to work. My dream is to actually make 13 episodes of this show in a row. I think TNT will actually let us make the show we want to make. TNT wants to get into grittier, edgier stuff.
What can we expect from tonight’s new episode?
The first one back is probably my favorite episode we’ve done. It opens on a riot in [a Los Angeles neighborhood called] The Jungle. The residents call it that, so that gives you a pretty good idea of the quality of life there. You don’t call where you live The Jungle unless you have a pretty dim view of things. [We had] 200 extras who were real residents who we paid to pretend they were upset with the cops, which was not too far off for them. It was pretty fun. They actually pulled a loaded gun off a woman 100 feet from where we were shooting. Luckily our extras are real cops.
So it’s a lot like shooting The O.C.
I knew we’d get around to The O.C. Yes, we hang out all the time. We have potluck on Tuesdays.
Okay, instead of talking about The O.C. we’ll ask, what’s coming up for your character on Southland the rest of this season?
There’s some drama involving my character’s childhood. That will come up and make me contemplate going to the dark side. I think the way I’ve always seen the character is his journey is learning to be a man in the world as it is instead of the world as he wants it to be.
EW.com
Ben McKenzie from TNT’s “Southland” was in-studio with Ryan Seacrest on his eadio show. to listen to the interview click here.
Southland (2009-2010)
Sin Bin (2010)
The Eight Percent (2009)
Johnny Got His Gun (2008)
