Feature: Primetime

Boomtown

The story of one incident, seen from many different perspectives, including the police, doctors and DA’s office.

This inventive ensemble drama contains the clever concept of viewing one incident from the diverse perspectives of cops, paramedics, beat reporters and members of the DA’s office. In a style that could be described as Rashomon meets Pulp Fiction, scenes are revisited several times from various points of view, allowing the story to be told through the individual perspectives of the characters – all of whom have different sensibilities and agendas.

The Executive Producer of the series, Graham Yost, swears that he’s never seen Rashomon, and that the genesis of the show came to him when he was working on Band of Brothers. “I was researching a battle that took place in Holland,” says Yost. “And each veteran I spoke to had a different account of the battle, and it was my job to try and put that all together. And I thought wouldn’t it be interesting, instead of putting it all together in chronological, linear fashion, if I just told one vet’s story and then another vet’s story and let the audience put it together? That was not appropriate for Band of Brothers, but the idea stuck with me.”

Donnie Wahlberg, who starred in Band of Brothers and who portrays Detective Joel Stevens in Boomtown, is quick to add, “Graham’s idea for the show came from a very pure place. It came from a real experience, as he said, working with the veterans from ‘Easy Company’ on Band of Brothers, and it became a fascination and he pursued it. A lot of times with television, movie people seem to move in and say, ‘Hey, let’s do something different just for the sake of being different’. And that’s not the case with this show. It’s honest story telling, just in a different format than all the shows that we’ve seen throughout the years.”

by Judy Sloane

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TV Zone #157

Feature © Visual Imagination 2002. Not for reproduction

Taken from

TV Zone #157
December 2002
ships from Nov 14 2002
News-stand Price
UK £3.50 / US $6.99

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