With Breaking Bad now off the air, all eyes are on creator Vince Gilligan to see what he’ll do next. One project that we’re all looking forward to is Better Call Saul, a prequel to his hit show which sounds quite promising. In addition to that, he’s also working on Battle Creek, a detective drama for CBS which has just cast its first actor today in the form of Kal Penn.
The show, which Gilligan will write and produce, follows “a detective and an FBI agent with two extremely different approaches to criminal justice who are paired together to clean up the streets of Battle Creek, Michigan.” Penn is not set to play one of the two leads but instead, he’ll step into the role of a local detective who isn’t too keen on letting the FBI agent “into their fold.”
Sony TV has already ordered 13 episodes of Battle Creek for the 2014-2015 season, so it sounds like they’re pretty confident in the show. Personally, I can’t say that I share that sentiment. To me, it sounds completely generic. Just read the synopsis above and tell me that it’s not nearly identical to almost every other detective/cop drama that we’ve seen for the last 10 or so years.
Sure, sometimes that premise can work. But on CBS, I just don’t see it happening. If this was HBO or AMC or somewhere that Gilligan could really push boundaries and give us something meaty, I’d have more hope. But as it stands, I can’t say that I’m too excited for Battle Creek. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong though as Gilligan truly is a brilliant writer and I’m definitely eager to see what he has up his sleeve with both of his upcoming shows.