BBC America Commissions Two Sci-Fi Series

BBC America has been more and more of a destination for sci-fi and fantasy over the past few years, with high-quality UK offerings like Doctor Who, Being Human, Torchwood, Bedlam, and The Fades being supplemented by reruns of North American classics like Battlestar Galactica and The X-Files. And while it may have started out as a mere outlet for British shows Americans might enjoy, concurrent with its line in sci-fi/supernatural series has been BBC America's development of its own personality and long-term goals, pursued through investment partnerships (in Jekyll, for example) and aggressive programming.

The latest step in BBCA's highly desirable and much-needed plan to challenge Syfy as a home to genre series is the commissioning of pilots for two new dramas--one set in a world of synthetic human replicas, and the other a crime show featuring reluctant partners, one dead, the other not.

Both of these premises may trigger thoughts of other shows and films with similar high concepts, but we're still in early days here, and the projects have some interesting people behind them. Wired, set in an alternate universe of Earth that is inhabited not by people, but by Syns ("synthetic organisms") that are exact replicas of human beings, is from BAFTA-winning veteran writer Stephen Volk, whose most recent projects include last year's horror/thriller fearture The Awakening and the paranormal series Afterlife.

Volk said on his website that the pilot for Wired "is, I think, the best work I've written for TV to date. It's darkly satirical, with an ensembly of characters in a 'precinct.' Very different from Afterlife, but I hope in its own way just as compelling. And certainly with a few more laughs!"

The other pilot, somewhat coyly called The Dead Beat, is from John Jackson, who's written for Being Human ("The Pack") and the BBC series Robin Hood.

Tags: BBC America, Wired, The Dead Beat, Stephen Volk, John Jackson Follow me on Twitter  |  Follow me on Facebook