Global Frequency Comes To TV... Again
Years ago my second-favorite Warren Ellis comic, Global Frequency, was developed as a pilot for the old WB network. As that was the original home of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a number of other good dramas that successfully mixed both younger audiences and mature themes I figured that was pretty much the natural home of something like a television adaptation of a serialized, violent but ultimately optimistic and good-natured property like Global Frequency. The pilot had some great talent in it and floated around online like crazy after the WB decided not to pick it up.
Now the web is abuzz that the CW - offspring of a merger of the WB with UPN - is developing a completely new adaptation of Global Frequency with Scott Nimerfro writing the script. Nimerfro has a number of writing credits on other shows that occupy roughly the same aesthetic neighborhood: Pushing Daisies, Stargate, The Outer Limits and Tales From the Crypt, titles that might not seem like they'd ever have much in common but Global Frequency is the kind of book in which one issue might be about wacky alien hijinks in NYC and the next might be about an incredibly bloody showdown between two professional killers in some lonely locale far from anyone else's notice.
The book is highly episodic and in two trade paperbacks, so the whole thing can be gotten and read as a self-contained story. The comic is largely Ellis at his best, focused on the interconnectedness of all people and the way societies really are just networks of personal relationships that must be maintained and their constituents respected for those social bonds to remain strong. The set-up is that Miranda Zero and her network of 1,000 sleeper agents around the world - each an expert in something extremely specific - wait for problems to appear and then solve them in a hurry. Much of the fascination for me is that almost every issue is about different agents, so we get to see how they react to their lives being abruptly interrupted by the call to service as hero for a day. The whole concept is given over to creativity and diversity of themes and tones so that there really is a little something for everyone and the book emphasizes the value of a highly diverse resource pool. Highly recommended.
However, I am a little worried that the developer here is the CW. They were also home to one of my favorite shows in years, Reaper, and I'm not quite sure they gave it the right chance or the right support. Its same sort of Bug of the Week approach to serial narrative with a similarly slow exploration of the larger, quirky world it inhabited never got entirely on its feet and the network seemed to try to strangle it to death after a very few episodes.
At any rate, I hope the TV adaptation of Global Frequency comes to pass and that it's good. Ellis won't say anything other than that something is in the works, which is for the best. If they said Ellis was writing the script, honestly, I'd lose hope fast. How many shows could make it when the writer can only manage two scripts in a year?
Warren Ellis' Global Frequency Coming to The CW [SuperHeroHype]
Klarion
Posted to Television on 19 November 2009
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