CENTURY CITY
2004
9 Episodes
Created by: Ed Zuckerman
If there’s one word you could use to sum up Century City, that word would be “clever”. It really was a clever little series and it wasn’t afraid to flaunt that cleverness by not talking down to its audience, trusting them to keep up with its intelligent, complex scripts… and perhaps, sadly, that’s where it failed to connect with a large number of viewers.
Essentially LA Law set in an undisclosed but still familiar future, it had a magnificent cast (future Mr Fantastic Ioan Gruffudd, Lost enigma Nestor Carbonell, the wonderful Viola Davis and Hector Elizondo) and focused on a team of lawyers in a gleaming future metropolis who dealt with cases involving technology. Cyber-rape and DNA-fiddling certainly beat out the kind of things you’d see on Law & Order (showrunner Zuckerman is now a producer on said series) and the writers had a lot of fun figuring out new twists on old crimes, like diabolical Moriartys being handed the keys to the internet and told to go off and play.
There was even a foxy android (Kristin Lehman) to bring in the male viewers, although clearly they were all waiting for Number Six to come along and ignored her in droves. Oops.
Go to the next one-season wonder: WONDERFALLS
