HBO's Star-Studded Return

Lacey Rose, 01.10.09, 10:40 AM EST
If star power is any predictor of success, HBO is primed for a comeback.
LOS ANGELES - At the semiannual Television Critics Association gathering in Los Angeles Friday, HBO rounded up everyone from Kevin Bacon and Will Ferrell to Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange to deliver a not-so-subtle message: We're back.

After thriving for more than a decade, the network fell into a rut as touchstones of popular culture like The Sopranos and Sex and the City gave way to newer, weaker fare like Lucky Louie and John from Cincinnati. Chief Executive Chris Albrecht's forced resignation after an ugly, drunken scene with his girlfriend in a Las Vegas parking lot compounded the pain.

It wasn't all bad. The slide sparked HBO executives to aggressively court top talent and solicit ideas hungrily, hoping to regain the unofficial title as the king of zeitgeist television. Rivals like Showtime, with edgy dramas like Californication and Weeds, as well as AMC's breakthrough with stylish masterpiece Mad Men, which HBO passed on, proved eager to share the title.

HBO's success last year with Alan Ball's southern vampire soap True Blood showed the network wasn't out of the game. Based on the quirky Sookie Stackhouse novel series, the show quietly became HBO's most watched series since The Sopranos and Sex and the City, with an average weekly audience approaching 7 million viewers.

They're looking for similar success with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, a series based on the best-selling books by Alexander McCall Smith. Grammy winner Jill Scott plays Precious Ramotswe, the proprietor of the only female-owned detective agency in Botswana.

Veteran Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is among the show's producers. "HBO is a brave network to let us go to Botswana and make a series there," he told the room of reporters.

The network also plans two offerings from Ferrell and his producing partner, Adam McKay. There's Eastbound & Down, the story of a burned-out major leaguer who takes a gig as the gym teacher at his former middle school. Ferrell, the executive producer, will act in the series as well. He'll also deliver Will Ferrell: You're Welcome America, A Final Night with George W. Bush, a live telecast of his one-man Broadway show.

Rounding out the season are two films: Taking Chance stars Bacon in the real-life journey of a Marine lieutenant who escorted home from combat the remains of a 19-year-old Marine; Grey Gardens, an adaptation of the 1970s documentary and more recent Broadway show, stars Barrymore and Lange as the eccentric first cousin and aunt of Jacqueline Kennedy who chose to live a life of isolation and squalor in Long Island's East Hampton.

http://www.forbes.com/media/2009/01/10/television-hbo-ferrell-biz-media-cx_lr_0110hbo.html