September marks the debut of the final season of HBO’s Prohibition drama “Boardwalk Empire.”
The close of this series comes as other critically-acclaimed antihero shows such as “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” have either ended or will end in the coming year.
While networks have sought to fill the entertainment vacuum with newer period-driven shows like “Halt and Catch Fire,” “Masters of Sex” and “The Knick,” we sought to recreate that magic formula with three potential show ideas of our own.
“The Cola Wars”: Nostalgia over the 1980s is in. What better way to capture the zeitgeist than a show about the corn syrup-saturated conflict of our age.
Marketing man Britt Svenson has a lot of secrets and briefcase of ideas about how to help Coca-Cola vanquish rival Pepsi. But the quixotic ladies man with the mysterious past thinks one epiphany will corner the market: New Coke.
“Tell-All”: For former White House insiders, there’s one shot at life after career death, the tell-all book.
Book agent Ethan Hutton specializes in packaging those shattered aspirations and vitriolic backstabbing into a 250-page tome you can buy at your local bookstore. But the cost of business is endless whiskey lunches and sometime publisher liaisons. How far would you go to make sure the public hears the tale of a deputy Secretary of Agriculture done wrong?
“Outbreak”: The Spanish Flu has never been any sexier. It’s 1918 and dashing doctor Gustav Popolopocus is in a race against time to stop an outbreak from spreading across Europe. Aiding in this fight is his beautiful and brilliant assistant, Adi Turnbuckle. When these two get together, influenza isn’t the only thing causing a fever. –Carten Cordell
(September 2014)