NEW YORK – Word on the street about “Street Time” last season was – well, there wasn’t any. Mum was the word.
Why no buzz? Here was a smart, knotty drama about dual captives of the prison system: drug-smuggling parolee Kevin Hunter (played by Rob Morrow) and his gambling-addicted parole officer, James Liberti (Scott Cohen). For five long years, each is fated to be the other’s shadow.
In addition to Morrow (“Northern Exposure”) and Cohen (“Kissing Jessica Stein”), the Showtime series has a superior supporting cast, notably Michelle Nolden as Hunter’s wife and Erika Alexander as Liberti’s tough-as-nails fellow P.O.
One more thing: “Street Time” has authenticity, thanks to creator Richard Stratton, who, like his alter ego Hunter, was once a middle-class, college-educated marijuana kingpin.
“I first conceived the show while waiting to see my parole officer,” says Stratton, who had refined his writing skills during eight years in the clink. “I was contemplating the irony of men who (as convicted felons) aren’t supposed to associate, all being together there in the waiting room.”
Showtime bought the series. But after its well-reviewed premiere in June 2002, the rest of the summer found “Street Time” just marking time. With Showtime’s failure to beat the drums, “Street Time” went unnoticed.
“It’s a show that even I wasn’t that aware of,” admits Robert Greenblatt from his brand-new office at Showtime’s L.A. headquarters.
Hired last month as the network’s head of entertainment, Greenblatt says he has “really gotten hooked into” the show. But last year, like most viewers with a bent for high-end drama, he was focused on series like FX’s “The Shield” and HBO’s “The Wire” and “Six Feet Under,” the latter produced by his own Greenblatt Janollari Studio.
As the second season of “Street Time” begins Wednesday at 10 p.m. EDT, Greenblatt vows to “do the best we can to get the word out. People don’t really know how good it is.”
“I really believe that Greenblatt realizes the marketing mistakes Showtime has made in the past,” says Stratton.
Speaking from Toronto, where the New York-set series is shot, Stratton points to what gives “Street Time” its spark: the cat-and-mouse game between Liberti and Hunter, whose continuing misdeeds, if discovered by his unforgiving monitor, could land him back in jail for life.
“Nowhere else in law enforcement do you get that sort of intimate relationship,” says Stratton with firsthand certainty. “And you meet a criminal class you’ve never seen on TV before: the so-called “hippie mafia,’ which accounts for such a large part of the soft drug trade.”
This season “Street Time” promises to be better than ever, thanks to creative control placed squarely in the hands of Stratton and Marc Levin, an independent filmmaker whose work includes “American Undercover” documentaries for HBO and, in collaboration with Stratton, the features “SLAM” and “Whiteboyz.”
“The first episodes were formulaic,” says Stratton, who clashed with his initial, soon-departed co-producer.
But by the middle of last season’s 13-episode run, “Street Time” had found its creative footing with Levin as frequent director. An additional seven episodes were shot last fall and aired earlier this summer.
A second-season renewal was in doubt until March, when “Street Time” finally won its reprieve – with Stratton and Levin granted official status as co-executive producers.
It was Levin who directed the “Street Time” pilot in fall 2001, and has since championed what he calls “a guerrilla, indie way of filmmaking episodic TV, full of improvisation and experimentation.”
Speaking from the show’s new Manhattan production office (where the formerly L.A.-based writers moved to immerse themselves in the New York street scene), Levin says the “Street Time” style aims to strike a balance “between capturing the moment and choreographing the moment.”
The rawness, he adds, “Doesn’t just come by shaking the camera around.”
Will viewers finally catch on?
One creative twist this season will give Showtime publicists something else to lure them with: promotable guest stars in unusual roles, including tennis sensation Serena Williams as a reformed gang member on parole.
“We went into this year with big promises for a major relaunch,” says Levin, still hopeful that Showtime does right by the series. “It kills me that “The Wire’ and “The Shield’ are the only shows on TV that have street credibility. We have to reclaim the street!”
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On the Net:
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EDITOR’S NOTE – Frazier Moore can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org
AP-ES-08-04-03 1557EDT
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