One of the bigger names in television programming these days has to be Howard Gordon. After impressing quite a few people with his work on the Fox action-thriller 24, the producer experienced unexpected success with his CIA drama Homeland. While Awake fell flat at NBC last spring, just a few days ago we were talking about his partnership with Terminator television writer Josh Friedman for a series about the origins of a robot rebellion.
Interestingly enough, that series would be giving NBC yet another shot at a Howard Gordon production, but today we are seeing that if the show does not work out, the broadcaster has another option from the man on tap.
Today, they picked up a legal drama by the name Ritter based on an Icelandic series called Rettur. It is being called ‘Jerry McGuire in a law firm’ as it centers on a lawyer who abuses the law in accordance with his own personal contempt for it. For this one, Gordon is partnering with Alex Cary who actually executive produces alongside Gordon on Homeland which is why this project has a ‘significant penalty’ attached.
Another project adopted from Howard Gordon is one called Legends that just received a pilot order from TNT. Originally designed to be an NBC series (perhaps two Howard Gordon shows for them is enough,) the program is said to follow Martin Odum–a deep-cover operative who embraces a new identity for each job. The kicker? His own identity eventually comes into question. TNT is more along the lines of CBS is tone, so we are not exactly expecting tier-one television out of this one. Jeffrey Nachmanoff and Mark Bomback developed Legends from Robert Littell’s 2005 novel of the same name.
The TNT order came bundled in news today that the second most-watched cable network ordered three pilots. With Legends being one of them, the other two consist of the failed CBS drama Trooper from Jerry Bruckheimer and King and Maxwell which comes via NCIS: Los Angeles head Shane Brennan. The former is about a mother that becomes a New York state trooper while the latter centers on two former secret service agents.