Writer/director and Rockford native Shawn Ryan has had some lame luck with TV shows since his groundbreaking FX series “The Shield” ended a six-year run in 2008. His Fox cop drama “The Chicago Code” was canceled after only one season. “Terriers” and “Last Resort” were cut short as well.
Maybe he’ll have better luck in cyberspace — specifically at Amazon (the home of Chicago-born-and-trained Jill Soloway’s award-winning “Transparent”), for which Ryan is working on an adaptation of the U.K. series “Mad Dogs.” It stars Michael Imperioli (best known for “The Sopranos”) and Chicago-born actor Billy Zane.
“I was very pleasantly surprised by how financially and creatively supportive Amazon was,” Ryan tells HitFix.com’s Alan Sepinwall in an email discussion about the ‘Mad Dogs pilot. “They want their product to be the best on TV and they gave us a budget to really shoot it right. Certainly a 10-episode order made getting our cast easier than if it was a 22 episode order. The creative community is really intrigued with Amazon and Netflix and want to be in business with them.”
Read the whole interview at HitFix.com.
A trailer for the U.K. version of “Mad Dogs”
