City's TV showcase, 'Guardian,' is canceled by CBS

Actor Simon Baker, right, films a scene from the pilot of the CBS TV series "The Guardian" on Grant Street in April of 2001.


From:Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Date:Thursday, May 20, 2004
By Rob Owen


CBS canceled the Pittsburgh-set legal drama "The Guardian" yesterday after a three-year run.

The program was done in by multiple factors, including low ratings among young viewers. CBS, moreover, has so many other higher-rated shows it can afford to drop a moderately successful series to try something new. The network felt it could do better by placing "Clubhouse," a new drama about a 16-year-old batboy for a professional baseball team, in "The Guardian" time slot.

Until "The Guardian," Pittsburgh either looked good in bad movies ("Striking Distance") or dreary in good movies ("Wonder Boys"). On television, it was often a setting in name only ("Hope & Gloria," "My So-Called Life") with no sense of the local culture.

But with "The Guardian," Pittsburgh looked beautiful in a quality program. Each week, the show's opening credits offered a postcard-perfect view of the city's skyscrapers and bridges, exporting a positive impression of the city to roughly 10 million viewers each week. It burnished Pittsburgh's image in ways any number of civic groups could only dream about.

Perhaps more importantly, Pittsburgh was not just a setting for the series, but series creator David Hollander made Pittsburgh a secondary character. Many producers profess the idea of sense of place as a character, but Hollander, a Mt. Lebanon native, made it a reality. And not just with references to Western Pennsylvania towns and neighborhoods.

Hollander took a page from reality even in the show's shaky, slightly unformed pilot episode when corporate lawyer Nick Fallin (Simon Baker) persuaded a gaggle of computer nerds to accept a business deal contingent on an apartment in Budapest for one of the young man's relatives. Many of the court cases in the series were reconstructions of actual cases that played out in Western Pennsylvania courtrooms.

"I'm just a Pittsburgher writing a show," Hollander said when he was presented with the key to the city at a ceremony at the City-County Building in October 2002. "This city gets in you and inspires you every day."

Both the good and the bad of it.

"The Guardian" also dealt, sometimes in a painfully realistic way, with racism. An episode filmed partially in Donora last August included use of the N-word in the script, although it was ultimately replaced by a less harsh epithet when shown on TV.

The series depicted the decline of once-prosperous steel towns in the Mon Valley and what economic decline has done to those places. Aching in Appalachia? Not a subject any other prime-time series would address.

Pittsburghese was in short supply on "The Guardian" -- just a few instances of it throughout the show's 67-episode run. But whenever it did occur, Western Pennsylvanians appreciated the attempt at verisimilitude.

"The Guardian" also provided infrequent employment for local film workers. The series filmed with cast members in Pittsburgh four times -- two multiday shoots, two single-day shoots -- in addition to newly filmed stock footage that showed off some of Pittsburgh's most architecturally distinctive buildings.

Getting Pittsburgh on the prime-time TV map had an effect, even if just a small one. A group of female fans who call themselves "The Guardian Angels" traveled to Pittsburgh several times during the series run, both to watch filming and to just soak up the city. Earlier this month, one of the women said they intend to continue their yearly visits to Pittsburgh even when "The Guardian" is off the air.

"Looking at the whole picture, I have yet to get perspective on it to quite understand why it got canceled," Hollander said yesterday. "I think the ratings are a piece of it. I think the opportunity costs and certain obligations and promises made to other shows run into it, too. We found ourselves in an equation that had so many factors."

The politics of television also may have played a role in the show's demise. CBS Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves began referring to "The Guardian" as a "bubble show" -- meaning it was on the fence for renewal -- in January, around the same time Hollander signed a new deal with Sony Pictures Television. Hollander previously had a deal with CBS Productions and the two entities produced "The Guardian" together.

"In my wildest imagining, I don't believe Les would come gunning for me over my new deal at Sony," Hollander said.

Although "The Guardian" was frequently No. 1 in its time period in total viewers and fared much better than the canceled "Century City," which briefly replaced it earlier this year, ratings for it among young viewers were low. Among 18- to 49-year-old viewers, it typically ranked No. 4 out of series airing on the six major broadcast networks at that hour.

In the past, CBS gave less consideration to demographic ratings, but as its overall fortunes have improved, ratings among the 18-to-49 demo have come to play a larger role in the network's decision-making.

CBS spokesman Chris Ender denied internal politics had anything to do with the show's cancellation.

"It simply had to do with ratings," Ender said yesterday. "We just didn't see the audience growth from year to year that we were hoping for with the series. It's a solid show, it's well-produced, we think David Hollander is a talented and rising star producer, but we were just hoping for more audience growth."

The series focused on an emotionally-closed lawyer, Fallin, who was convicted of drug possession and sentenced to work at Legal Services of Pittsburgh, helping poor clients with their legal troubles.

In the last episode of the series, which aired earlier this month, Fallin celebrated the birth of his daughter with on-again, off-again love interest Lulu Archer (Wendy Moniz). Fallin left his corporate job and took over as boss at Legal Services.

"Creatively, I'm happy with where it was when it went," Hollander said. "There's a lot more to tell, but it's not a bad stopping point. We weren't stopped in mid-sentence; I feel like we finished a phrase."

Hollander is writing a film set in Pittsburgh and he has a deal to develop a pilot for another TV series that he'll work on over the next year. He said his goal will be to set that show in Pittsburgh, too.

"I'll always have a fight on my hands because no one wants to set anything in Pittsburgh," Hollander said. "It's a combination of city image and cost. To shoot in Los Angeles [doubling] for Pittsburgh is an expensive, tricky thing to make work with lighting and location and costumes.

"But I think having established the city so nicely in 'The Guardian' and to have it function well on a national level, I think the fight will be a lot easier this time."

From Pittsburgh Post gazette