THE SKED 2013 UPFRONTS: CBS Featurette – “Hostages”

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Here’s another of CBS’s “behind-the-scenes” blurbs, this time about the thriller HOSTAGES, which will occupy the Monday 10PM slot during the fall (to be replaced by Intelligence) at midseason.

All the piece does is establish the show’s premise, which is that Toni Collette plays a Washington surgeon scheduled to operate on the President, and the night before the surgery, her family is taken hostage by a group headed by Dylan McDermott as a seemingly renegade FBI agent (one assumes his role will be the subject of multiple twists throughout) who tells her that her family will be killed if the President doesn’t die on her operating table.  The promo promises that the show will also delve into the lives of Collette’s family.  This is clearly a serialized story, which is unusual for CBS, as is the limited 15-episode order.  The central situation is a grabby one (although less grabby than that of The Blacklist, which will be airing against it on NBC), but since the show is unlikely to be 15 hours of McDermott’s minions holding guns on Collette’s family, the show’s ultimate success will depend on whether it can convincingly and excitingly move on from there.