NBC's new fall show "Timeless", which has a modest premiere last week in a lucrative post "The Voice" timeslot, is planning to revive the dead. But this is not broadcast's answer to cable's smashing hit "The Walking Dead". The show will simply revive the dead and famous through time travel.
"Timeless", a high-concept procedural about stopping a criminal from destroying the world as we know it, will travel every episode back to time. This means, the writers will have a rich source of historical events to revisit.
In fact, according to a TVline report, the NBC show will time-travel to the day of Abraham Lincoln's assassination during its second episode, before visiting the time of crooner Frank Sinatra and the assassination of JFK. But producers have no plans of having a Marilyn Monroe episode.
In an interview with the show's producer Eric Kripke, he said that the show doesn't want to distract viewers with a look-alike actor in depicting well-known historical figures. In fact, if the figure is very well-known and familiar to the modern audience, they may opt not to show them onscreen altogether.
However, they made an exception to Abraham Lincoln as the actor who will play him is an actual Lincoln impersonator flown by the crew from Illinois. But for other icons, the show may have other plans.
"We have a scene that takes place in the Copa nightclub, where Frank Sinatra is singing and John F. Kennedy is in the audience," Kripke said. "We found actors that were really close. They were great, but when we were watching the footage, we were like, 'The audience is way too familiar with what these guys actually look like.' We ended up using a lot of the angles that are over their shoulders and behind their heads."
It is for these reasons that the producers vetoed the pitch of having a Marilyn Monroe episode. "Someone pitched me Marilyn Monroe, and I said, 'No way,'" Kripke recalled.
Several less recognizable and much less famous names will have appearances in the coming episodes of "Timeless". They include Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln (Neal Bledsoe, "The Mysteries of Laura") and his killer John Wilkes Booth (Kelly Blatz, "Fear the Walking Dead"); James Bond author and spy Ian Fleming (Sean Maguire, "Once Upon a Time"); and frontiersmen James "Jim" Bowie (Chris Browning, "Sons of Anarchy") and Davy Crockett (Jeff Kober, "Sons of Anarchy").
Per TV By The Numbers, "Timeless" premiered to 7.66 million viewers and a demo score of 1.9, finishing Monday 10PM on top.
