We have to wait until 2012 to get new Mad Men but AMC has some new drama to tide us over. This weekend, The Killing aired. The whole show will be about one investigation of a murdered teenage girl. Veena Sud has adapted a Danish show and made it her baby. I got to ask her a few questions about it when she presented it to the Television Critics Association.
CraveOnline: As a viewer we know AMC means a high quality show. What does it mean for a producer and a show creator working there?
Veena Sud: First of all, it’s been such a dream as a writer and a producer to be given this opportunity on this network, a network that’s absolutely dedicated to quality storytelling, to slow burn storytelling, to character. AMC, for every writer in this town, is pretty much where we want to be. So for the development process of this show and of the story has just been absolutely wonderful. I’ve been given the ability and the opportunity to really, really tell this story in a way that’s authentic and that’s true.
CraveOnline: Slow burn? It looks pretty fast paced.
Veena Sud: I mean slow burn storytelling in the sense that every moment that we don’t have to prettify or gloss over or make something necessarily easy to digest, that we’re able to go to all sorts of places that are honest and dark and beautiful and tragic, in a way that is how a story should be told.
CraveOnline: Is 13 episodes the sweet spot for a slow burn?
Veena Sud: Yeah, I mean I worked before on a network show that went for 24 episodes for a season and it feels like 13 in general is an honorable number of hours to tell a story in a way that you can really get into character, you can get into nuance, both in the production side of it and the process side with the writers. You’re not just spewing things out like a factory. You get to really, as writers, spend time with developing the story, more time.
CraveOnline: That network show was a procedural with a different case each week.
Veena Sud: Correct.
CraveOnline: So it wasn’t continuing something for 24.
Veena Sud: Correct.
You can check out our review of the first two episodes of The Killing here: THE KILLING 1.01 & 1.02 ‘Pilot’ & ‘The Cage’
Photo Credit: FayesVision/WENN.com
