Things unraveled quickly for A&E in 2014, which is looking to The Returned, about dead people who suddenly reappear in a small town, to resurrect its ratings this year. The show is based on the French series, and the pilot is almost a shot-for-shot reaction of it. But executive producer Carlton Cuse swears that will change, as I wrote at Adweek:
“While we start in a similar place, the show is fairly distinctively different by the end of the season,” said Cuse. “We felt like there was a way to take the show and over time, make it something that was very distinctly our own.” Cuse added that while “there’s a small, fervent audience that watched the French show,” an even larger American audience did not.
Of course, that’s the same thing producers said last summer about Gracepoint, Fox’s adaptation of the British drama Broadchurch, which flopped last fall.
