Neve Campbell and David E. Kelley’s new crime drama Avalon won’t be showing up on ABC, as it turns out—even though the show had already been given a direct-to-series order by the Disney-owned network.
Instead, ABC has opted to use its option to pass on the show, based on a Michael Connelly short story, which will now be shopped out to other networks in its search for a potential home. Which is not exactly anything new for Kelley—his massive successes in TV, including hits like The Practice and Boston Legal for ABC itself, exist in tandem with a huge number of failed shots—but the whole “they ordered it, then said ‘Nah’” part feels like an especially bitter pill to swallow.
(It also brings to mind the last time ABC un-ordered a show to series after watching the pilot, i.e., that “What if Alec Baldwin and Kelsey Grammer played old-guy roommates?” sitcom from last year that we still find ourselves thinking about in idle moments of grim fascination.)
Avalon would have—and, admittedly, still might, if said shopping-around works out—starred Campbell as Detective Nicole Searcy, a sheriff’s department officer living and working on sunny tourist destination Catalina Island, off the coast of California. But, wouldn’t you know it: Murder in paradise, leading “Nic” to re-evaluate whether the nice place she lives is actually nice, on account of all that murder.
Campbell last appeared on TV screens in Kelley’s adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer, which was, itself, a CBS crime series that got booted out at the pilot phase, only to get picked up by Netflix. She also recently appeared in this year’s Scream sequel, and then in a bunch of news stories about the people making Scream movies not being willing to pay her enough to come back for another one.
