FBI Orders '24' Lite From Hollywood Menu

By Lisa de Moraes
Thursday, August 9, 2007

Imagine Entertainment -- the production house that has done so much to improve the image of torture with its CIA-but-not-really drama series "24" -- has gotten into bed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to develop a drama series based on bureau cases and incidents, tentatively called "The FBI."

Imagine has just landed the project at Fox, also home of "24."

It all started about a year and a half ago when the assistant director of the FBI's Office of Public Affairs, John Miller, made a trip to Los Angeles to meet with various producers to see if he could get a series developed about the bureau.

You may remember Miller from his days as a journalist at ABC News, where he interviewed Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998, was Peter Jennings's go-to guy on Sept. 11, 2001, and in 2002 became Barbara Walters's co-anchor on "20/20," a post he held until he left the news biz to join the Los Angeles Police Department in 2003.

Anyway, Miller went to Hollywood to try to drum up interest in a show that would have lots of access to FBI cases, agents and gadgetry -- so long as the end result was up to standard. "We're not looking for approval rights or to edit scripts, but before we lend our name or seal we're going to want to take a look at it," Miller told The TV Column yesterday. Which sounds perfectly reasonable.

Not that there is any shortage of FBI series already on the air -- CBS's pervtastic "Criminal Minds" and "Without a Trace," as well as Fox's own "Bones" come to mind. All are shows for which the bureau provides advice, and will continue to do so, Miller said.

"We're not arguing with those shows and what they do," he said.

But what the FBI does these days is much more interesting -- and there's a lot more to it, he explained.

"What we were seeking to do was reverse-engineer the process," he said, ". . . looking to find someone who would do an FBI show based on real events, cases and characters that looked a little bit more like the real FBI than the shows that are on now.

"We were looking for what, in effect, is a custom job."

You know, like the LAPD had in the '50s with "Dragnet," starring Jack Webb. Like the FBI itself had in the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s with "The F.B.I.," starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr. And like the Naval Criminal Investigative Service has with, well, "NCIS." "The FBI" would be the first TV series done with the agency's cooperation since ABC's "The F.B.I."

So, Miller went to Hollywood to get this show made.

Why? you ask.

Because, coming as he does from TV, Miller understands better than most that perception is reality.

"The lines between news and entertainment are far more blurred," he told The TV Column, preaching to the choir.

"The lines between what's real and what's perception are far more blurred. What we intend to do is sharpen them and come up with something that will drive perception from a more real starting point.

"Shows like 'CSI' drove tens of thousands of high school kids to say, 'I want to be a crime scene investigator,' " he continued.

"It was cool. . . . As a result of that show it became a field much more sought after by very smart people coming out of very good schools. It became a recruiting tool."

And, Miller added, after "CSI" became a hit, some police departments that thought of their CSI units as "backwater" started to buy those departments more equipment and give them bright new uniforms that said "CSI" on the back with the name of the city, because it was something the public was paying attention to and seeing "in a very positive light."

Sadly, "positive light" and "FBI" haven't been put together in a sentence much in recent history. Mostly it's "When are they going to solve the anthrax mailer case?" and "How about that $100 million-and-change computer glitch?" Remember Robert Hanssen?

Getting back to Miller goes to Hollywood:

He met with a bunch of producers and, he said, "basically the meetings were very much the same."

He would talk about how the FBI has a wider cast of characters and is much more complex and interesting than it's being portrayed on TV these days. They'd respond that they had this idea for a show about an FBI agent who can fly and "Can you help us with that?"

"They all had their idea," Miller said. Nobody seemed interested in starting with what he calls "a blank canvas."

Except, that is, Imagine Entertainment topper Brian Grazer -- the guy who did "Backdraft" and "Apollo 13," the guy who told trade paper Variety, "I like making movies about heroes. . . . Selfless people willing to protect the city, the state or the world is interesting to me."

You can see why.

The new series will focus on an Iraq war veteran who becomes head of the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group. Who, you can bet, you're never going to see shoot heroin and torture folks, as Jack Bauer does on "24." On the other hand, he will be based on the somewhat controversial former FBI agent John O'Neill, the guy who became an expert on terrorism but quit the bureau in frustration to take a job in security at the World Trade Center and died there on Sept. 11, 2001 -- his first or second day on the job, depending on your source.

O'Neill was played by Harvey Keitel in the controversial ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11," a project based in part on the book "The Cell," which was co-written by -- John Miller.