Smith -- an early look

Source：TV Squad
Date：Aug 31st 2006
by Bob Sassone

Regardless of how good Smith is - and I'll say right from the get go that it is good - the big question is, are viewers going to give yet another show about a bunch of clever crooks a chance, after shows like Heist, Thief and Hustle? I'm not convinced they will, but if they base it on quality and entertainment value, Smith should be given a chance.

The plot: Ray Liotta is a loving husband and father...when he's home, anyway. But he's often on the road, selling plastic cups for the company he works for leading a gang of professional thieves as they pull off various robberies around the world. He wants to do just a few more jobs and then retire to a normal life. The first episode opens with an elaborate museum robbery and a shooting, and flashbacks reveal exactly how we got to this point.

The cast: Liotta comes off as a good lead, but he does something interesting with the character. He's not just the typical crook-with-a-heart-of-gold you'd see in a show like this, he's actually kind of prick, especially in the way he treats his coworkers at the cup factory and the way he carries himself; Virginia Madsen is his wife, and she has a secret or two of his own, as we see later in the pilot; Simon Baker, who viewers might remember from The Guardian and L.A. Confidential, is the surfer assassin you really shouldn't cross; Amy Smart is the woman of the group, using her looks as well as her brain. The rest of the gang (Franky G and Jonny Lee Miller) bring their own personalities and quirks to the mix too.

One of the gang is shot in the pilot, but I won't tell you which one or what happens to him/her.

Thoughts: This is a slick show, with just enough cool camera angles and neat cinematography to add a lot of style to what's going on. Of course, we also get several pop songs on the soundtrack, like most shows today, but they aren't the annoying, well-known ones. They actually add something to the atmosphere the show is trying to set. And the use of flashbacks means we get to see what different things mean at different times, how something came to be, why someone was delayed, why someone was acting a certain way. That's clever stuff.

I was wondering where this show would go at the end of the pilot. Would we have stand alone episodes (like Hustle), or is there some bigger plot going on (like Heist)? It's more of the latter, as we see why Ray Liotta is doing what he's doing, how all of the gang are related to each other, who likes who, who dislikes who, who are "good" bad guys and who are the "bad" bad guys. But I can also see where each show would be enjoyable by someone who doesn't know the overall plot, because each episode and each heist can stand on their own and be enjoyable. I really hope that viewers (and CBS) give the show a chance.

Now, a question for those who have seen the pilot: the scene where they are all on the airplane and there is a slow, electronica-ish song playing (but with vocals). Who is singing that?

(Smith premieres Tuesday, September 19, at 10pm.)

From TV Squad.

Seeing stars

Source：Newark Star Ledger
Date：August 30, 2006
BY ALAN SEPINWALL


BACK DURING Virginia Madsen's first stint on the A-list, when she was an in-demand young starlet, a script crossed her desk called "Long Gone," a movie about minor league baseball in the Jim Crow South. She loved the story, loved her potential role as a groupie with brains and sex appeal -- basically, the Susan Sarandon character from "Bull Durham," but a year earlier. It was a great part, one of the best she would ever play -- and everyone she knew was telling her not to do it.

Why? Because "Long Gone" was being produced for HBO, which in 1987 was the acting equivalent of being sent to the low minors.

"(It) was thought to have been a huge mistake, a huge step down to go for that cable channel," Madsen says now. "I loved the story, but it did some damage to my career."

Jump ahead a couple of decades, and her Oscar nomination for "Sideways" has Madsen back on the A-list again, getting significant movie offers again. And yet here she is doing TV again, playing Ray Liotta's wife on CBS' upcoming heist drama "Smith."

Producer John Wells, the man responsible for "ER" and the later seasons of "The West Wing," "called my representation and he said he had a show idea with Ray Liotta, and I said, 'I'm doing movies right now. I wish this happened last year.' But you know what? When John Wells calls you, you're never going to say no to that meeting. And I wanted to meet him because I'm a fan of his shows, and he convinced me in one meeting."

Madsen and Liotta aren't the only movie actors descending on the small screen. James Woods is playing a colorful criminal lawyer on CBS' "Shark." Alec Baldwin is playing Tina Fey's boss on NBC's "30 Rock." Matthew Perry and Amanda Peet, who co-starred in "The Whole Nine Yards," are re-teaming for NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." The cast of ABC's "Six Degrees" includes Erika Christensen, Bridget Moynahan, Jay Hernandez, Hope Davis and Campbell Scott; and Madsen and Liotta's "Smith" co-stars include Simon Baker, Amy Smart and Jonny Lee Miller.

Now, none of these are names that would guarantee a huge opening weekend if they were placed on the top of a movie poster, but they're all respected actors who aren't exactly lacking for movie parts. And all of them (plus other recognizable movie faces like Ron Livingston from Fox's "Standoff" and America Ferrera of ABC's "Ugly Betty") somehow wound up in new series in the same season.

Add them to the likes of James Spader ("Boston Legal"), Gary Sinise ("CSI: NY"), Anthony LaPaglia ("Without a Trace") and Jason Lee ("My Name Is Earl"), and it feels like there's been a mass exodus of character actors from multiplexes to your living room over the last few years.

In some cases, it's a matter of relationships. Liotta guest starred on "ER" a couple of years ago, winning an Emmy and a fondness for Wells and "Smith" director Christopher Chulack in the process.

"I really liked working with them," he says. "It came out nice. I wasn't looking to do a series, but when you have John Wells and Chris asking you to do something, I just felt honored to be a part of it."

Baldwin has worked with "30 Rock" creator/star Fey and her boss Lorne Michaels so many times on "Saturday Night Live" that he's practically a regular cast member.

"I think his respect for Lorne and his trust of Lorne and of Marci Klein, one of our other producers, absolutely" convinced Baldwin to do it, says Fey.

But more often than not, it's about the material, and the fact that if you want to do intelligent, character-based drama these days, the opportunities are a lot better on TV than in the movies.

"I don't know if you've seen a bunch of movies lately," says Liotta, "but some of the movies out there -- I don't really think it's a step down. If anything, TV has obviously gotten better and better, and movies have gotten more generalized."

"There seems not to be as much breadth to the imagination in the movies these days," says Woods of the corporate mentality at the movie studios. "They are very careful. Movies seem to be scared, whereas television seems to be like a teenager feeling his or her oats. You know, let's take this on and that."

After "Friends," Perry wasn't interested in another series. Then he got Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60" script.

"I'm here mostly because of how good the script is and how bad 'The Whole 10 Yards' was," he says, only half-kidding.

For actresses in particular, TV offers more challenging opportunities than just playing the hero's girlfriend.

"You know, I wasn't getting these kinds of roles," Peet says of her "Studio 60" part as a complicated TV executive, "and I don't think 99 percent of the actresses out there get these kind of roles."

"The writing on the show has been a lot better than most of the scripts I've been seeing in films, especially for women," says Moynahan, "so I felt like it was something that if we could do it week after week and develop something, it would be much more interesting."

A TV show, in success, also offers a more stable lifestyle. New Yorkers Moynahan and Baldwin both agreed to do their respective shows because they shoot in New York instead of in LA, while Madsen is looking forward to being around more for her son.

"I've been traveling so much," she says. "He's about to start middle school, and I want to stay home more."

For those actors who want to keep their film careers alive, there's flexibility, either during production hiatuses or by working in an ensemble cast that doesn't require a five-day work week. And if they don't like the arrangement, there's often a way out.

"All of my deals with actors, it's always, 'If you don't think it's interesting, let's talk about it. If I can't convince you, you don't have to stay,'" says John Wells, who has said goodbye to plenty of rising stars (notably that Clooney fellow) on "ER." With "Smith" in particular, the show was designed with cast changes in mind. The title refers not to Liotta's name, but an FBI designation for an unidentified thief, and one that could easily be applied to one of the other characters, or a new leading man, if Liotta and Madsen were to leave after a year or two.

Madsen says the actors are all continually talking with Wells about how long they want to stay, "and I think everybody wants to see where it goes. As long as I get a hiatus and can take that time off -- right now, I have a couple of movies scheduled -- I may be okay."

Whatever stigma she felt when she did "Long Gone" all those years ago is, um, long gone.

"It's been changing slowly over the years," she says. "It's becoming about product and visibility. Frankly, what happened was, a lot of the TV people began to gain more power, and TV people began moving into films, which they'd never been allowed to do before. And the film people said, 'Oh, I can go do TV and it's not going to hurt me.'"

From Newark Star Ledger.

Simon Baker is working less and liking it more.

Source：Los Angeles Daily News
Date:08/28/2006
By Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith


The handsome Aussie was in practically every scene during his tenure as a trouble-plagued attorney in CBS' "The Guardian" series a few years back and was left exhausted. Now he's preparing for the debut of "Smith," CBS' weekly show in which he, Ray Liotta and Shohreh Aghdashloo play members of a band of thieves. And, with the action divided, he says, "I don't work every day. I'm quite happy about that ...

"It's a more suitable schedule for me — not completely overwhelming. It doesn't sit on my shoulders as the last series did, and it shouldn't. It's got great actors, and I like it when they work."

Baker, who was featured in Meryl Streep's recent "The Devil Wears Prada," completed the big-screen "Sex and Death 101" with Winona Ryder shortly before "Smith" cranked up. He describes the latter as "an examination into the male psyche. Lots of fun."

From Los Angeles Daily News.

WB Digs Smith

Source：cinematical
Date：Aug 29th 2006
by Martha Fischer

In a vaguely innovative promotional push for Martin Scorsese's The Departed, Warner Bros. will be providing all the advertising -- amounting to only four minutes, total -- for the premiere of CBS's new crime show, Smith. (Which, by the way, is produced by WBTV. Image that.) Rather than running the show with a normal advertising load -- which would stretch it into a 90-minute special -- or accepting sponsorship to run it ad-free, CBS instead took some cash from WB (amounting, on assumes, to what they would have taken for a full advertising load, plus a premium for the prestige), and will run four minutes of promotional footage for The Departed during breaks from the show. What sort of footage WB is providing is unclear, but it's currently thought there will be two two-minute add segments, "offering an extended look at the pic."

That sounds cool and all, but if you needed more reason to watch Smith, where have you been? Goodfella Ray Liotta? Jonny Lee Miller? Simon Baker?! What's not to love?

From cinematical.

'Smith' Gets Hand from Scorsese

Source：.zap2it.com
Date：August 29 2006


Premiere will run with limited ads for 'The Departed'


CBS has struck a deal to show the premiere of its new crime drama "Smith" with only a couple of commercial breaks, and the agreement is positively bursting with synergy.

The series stars Ray Liotta as a professional thief who keeps his life secret from his wife (Virginia Madsen) and is produced by Warner Bros. TV. The premiere will be sponsored by the forthcoming movie "The Departed," which is being released by Warner Bros. Pictures.

"The Departed" is directed by Martin Scorsese, who, you might recall, directed Liotta in his breakout "Goodfellas" role.

The Warner Bros. sponsorship of the "Smith" premiere solves a scheduling issue for CBS. The show's pilot runs nearly an hour without commercials -- as opposed to the 42 to 44 minutes for your average TV drama -- so the network would have either had to make substantial cuts to the episode, limit the ad breaks or run a 90-minute premiere.

Series creator John Wells wasn't about to do the first one, and since it's a 10 p.m. show, a 90-minute premiere might have been problematic. Thus, "The Departed."

"Smith" also stars Simon Baker ("The Guardian"), Amy Smart ("Crank"), Jonny Lee Miller ("Aeon Flux"), Franky G ("Jonny Zero"), Shohreh Aghdashloo ("24") and Chris Bauer ("The Wire"). It premieres Tuesday, Sept. 19.

"The Departed," starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon, hits theaters on Oct. 6.

From zap2it.com.

Harder to tell good from bad

Source：USA Today
Date：8/16/2006
By Bill Keveney

Smith sports a growing TV fashion: a coat of moral gray.

The new CBS drama follows a band of master thieves and is the latest series to feature a lead character of questionable virtue, joining The Sopranos, The Shield and Rescue Me. With Smith, the trend gets a stronger foothold in broadcast TV. It also is an intriguing choice for CBS because the network's lineup of crime procedurals has helped make it the most-watched network.

Executive producer John Wells (ER, The West Wing) wants to look at people on the wrong side of the law for a simple reason: "There are plenty of people on TV trying to catch criminals. I thought it was time to explore the people they're trying to catch."

Actors, too, are fascinated by the darker side, which helped attract Emmy winner Ray Liotta, who plays ringleader Bobby, and Oscar nominees Virginia Madsen and Shohreh Aghdashloo.

"Bad guys have the best lines. Bad guys get to do all the good stuff," says Madsen, who plays Bobby's wife, Hope.

Shark, another new CBS series, also features a morally complex character, a defense-lawyer-turned-prosecutor (James Woods) who doesn't hesitate to use underhanded tactics to gain a conviction.

On ABC's The Nine and Six Degrees, one of the main characters has a gambling problem.

Smith, a law-enforcement term for an unknown suspect, raises the moral stakes in its opening episode with an art heist that results in the death of a museum guard. Characters will face consequences both direct and indirect, Wells says.

But Bobby and Hope aren't caricatures. They're a loving couple raising two kids. Bobby, who coaches Little League and has a day job as a salesman, even has thoughts of giving up the criminal life.

Those aspects may help viewers relate to the characters, CBS entertainment chief Nina Tassler says. "The thing that's so unique about what John Wells is doing is that he's placing these characters in real life. To that end, you get a chance to see them going to PTA meetings, raising their kids, going to 9-to-5 jobs."

Liotta is drawn to his character's contrasts. "Hope is the girl of my dreams. I'm not a philanderer. I love my wife and kids. I just also love to steal."

From USA Today.

Can we care about another criminal?

Source：USA TODAY
Date：8/16/2006
By Bill Keveney

The show：Smith
The premiere:：Sept. 19 (10 p.m. ET/PT), CBS

The concept：The leader of a theft ring tries to stay ahead of the law while keeping loved ones from discovering his secret life.

The challenge：Making viewers care enough about criminals to watch regularly.

Less-than-sympathetic lead characters have been a staple of film, theater and literature, where audience engagement is required only for a fixed, limited time.

But they have been a rarer occurrence on television, which asks viewers to bond for scores of episodes over a number of years. That challenge faces Smith, a new drama that centers on a skilled thief, his crew and their elaborate heists.

Executive producer John Wells hopes other parts of the criminals' personalities will strike a chord with viewers. The thief, Bobby Stevens (Ray Liotta), and wife Hope (Virginia Madsen), who isn't part of the crew but has her own shady past, have some decent traits. They love their kids and have a normal-looking family life that Bobby keeps apart from his criminal activities.

"I hope (viewers) identify with them, develop some sympathy for them and, by the end of the year, hope they get caught," Wells says.

Bobby wants to avoid violence, and is troubled when a Pittsburgh art museum heist results in death. That separates him from Jeff (Simon Baker), a colleague who kills without conscience, Liotta says.

Bobby, who gets his assignments from the mysterious Charlie (Shohreh Aghdashloo), is "hopefully the guy you follow (because) he has enough likability," says Liotta, who played a charismatic crook in Goodfellas. "It's kind of like on Goodfellas or any movie about people who do things against the law. You don't necessarily root for them (but) people are intrigued by it."

The criminal crew, which features characters played by Jonny Lee Miller, Amy Smart and Franky G, will commit a few crimes during the season. Wells says he hopes to shoot jobs in Montreal, Salt Lake City and Miami.The thieves will pay a price. "Not everybody will survive the first season," he says.

Although viewers presumably aren't stealing Picassos, Madsen says they may see something familiar: a sharp divergence between their occupations and home lives.

"I kind of live that way. I live in suburbia. I take kids to school. I make kids dinnerat night. But I'm a movie star, so there's

From USA Today.

HER PIECE OF THE ACTION

Source：National Ledger
Date：Aug 10, 2006
By Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith


Virginia Madsen says she almost passed on her role as Ray Liotta's wife in CBS's new fall series "Smith," from prolific creator/writer John Wells. "He writes so beautifully, and the women are three-dimensional," notes Madsen of the man behind "ER" and "The West Wing." "But when I met with John I said, 'You know I love this script. But I can't play the long-suffering wife, and if my biggest conflict is that my husband's away and I have problems with the dentist, I can't play that part.' He was like, 'Virginia, rest assured that if that was the part I was writing, you would not be sitting here. I know that you want a piece of the action, and you're going to get a piece of the action.' I was like 'OK, I'm just checkin.'"

Madsen and Liotta are joined by Simon Baker, Jonny Lee Miller, Amy Smart and Shohreh Aghdashloo in the drama about an elite group of master thieves. Madsen adds with a laugh, "I want to get in between Ray and Simon Baker … want to be in that triangle. Are there some good-looking men on this show or what? And they're like manly men."

From National Ledger.

John Wells on Travis Smiley late night on PBS!

Source：Travis Smiley late night on PBS!
Date：1/8/06

John Wells

Learn more about this guest.

Tavis: John Wells is a multi-Emmy-winning producer, writer and director whose rum includes seminal shows like "E.R." and “The West Wing.” This fall, his latest series debut is called “Smith.” The CBS drama stars Ray Liotta and Virginia Madsen. It airs Tuesday nights at 10:00. Here now, a scene from “Smith.”

[Clip]

Tavis: John Wells, nice to meet you.

John Wells: (Laughs) Nice to meet you, sir.

Tavis: Glad to have you on the program. When I first saw this series coming to television, and I saw Ray Liotta and Virginia Madsen attached to it, not a bad way to start out.

Wells: Uh huh.

Tavis: We tend to think of these folk these days as movie stars, as opposed to small screen stars.

Wells: Yeah, we were, I was very lucky. I was looking for something to do with some of the people that I have wanted to work with in the past, and contacted people before I wrote it. So actually, the show was cast before the series was written. And?/p>

Tavis: Is that atypical?

Wells: That’s very atypical. I was able to pitch them an idea that I was interested in, and get them to say they would be interested in doing it if they liked the script. They had the right not to do it if they didn’t like the script when it was finished. And almost all the cast was put together before I wrote it. So I was able to write specifically for actors, which is the great way to do it.

Tavis: I was about to ask, not being a writer, of course, it sounds to me that that’s the easier way to do it.

Wells: Oh, much, much more so, because you have a real sense of who the characters are gonna be. You know their work. In the case of both Virginia and Ray, I was able to sit down with them in advance and talk about things that they wanted to play, and what they’d be interested in. And we really talked about the characters in advance. And that’s a tremendous advantage when you go into doing it.

Tavis: So tell me about “Smith.”

Wells: Well, I had been writing for a number of years on “E.R.,” and then more recently on “West Wing” about world events, and hunger in Africa. And I was looking to do something that was fun. And it’s a big, fun series about a group of career criminals, and how they live in our own communities. Criminals don’t tend to really live in places that are convenient for us to find them.

They're not really in the Criminal Arms apartment building. They're next door. And it’s about how they're actually integrated into our neighborhoods, and what they do, and how they do what they do. And eventually, the consequences of living the way that they live.

Tavis: Is there a commentary about society in this series?

Wells: I think there’s a commentary about how difficult it is for people to make a living in this changing world, and how people are becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of support they feel from the companies that they work with, with the people that they work with. And these are people who act out in a way that hopefully, most of society won’t.

Tavis: Yeah. When you say frustrated, you're suggesting, then, it’s the frustration that turns people into criminals in neighborhoods?

Wells: I think oftentimes, it’s the frustration that can turn people into criminals, or at least the sense, and don’t get me wrong, there are a couple of people in this piece who are clearly sociopaths. (Laughs) But it’s the frustration with the sense that I’m not quite sure how I’m gonna get there from where I am. And we’re living in a world in which the standard of living, I think, for most people is going to actually decrease rather than increase, as globalization, as more and more of that happens. And these are some of the things that can happen to people when that’s occurring.

Tavis: Yeah. You, to your earlier point, are very much interested in writing about current events and real time issues. Where did that kind of passion in your writing come from? There are all kind of ways to write in this business, but that’s your bailiwick. Why?

Wells: I was always interested in societal trends, and I’m mostly interested in writing about characters. And I think people are affected tremendously by what’s happening in the world around them. We’re not nearly as isolated as we tend to wanna believe we are as a nation. And so I got very interested in how did the things that are happening to us in the world around us actually affect people day to day?

We're very tied into each other as a community. The society is very complicated. And whether you're a criminal or a doctor or a politician, you actually have to deal with all of the societal things that are going on, that are constantly going on around you. And I got interested in writing about that. I think that’s what, what people as an audience are mostly interested in.

We're interested in the things that are affecting us, moving us, frightening us, and watching people on television or in feature films deal with those issues in a way that we may or may not, but that we can learn something from in watching how they deal with it.

Tavis: Speaking of frightening, “The West Wing” is no longer a part of our ?well, in rerun, of course. No longer a part of our lives in first-run. But I’d be remiss to not ask you, speaking of frightening events, how the White House in “The West Wing” would be dealing with the crisis in the Middle East right about now.

Wells: We tried to deal at least with some of the issues and the ways that that could be addressed a couple of years ago in the show. We never wanted to try and overstate our importance in it, but to just say, most importantly, you have to talk. There’s a lot less faith in this notion of negotiation, and increasingly in this country, we seem to believe that only by exerting power and might do you get to a point where you can negotiate.

Not only my religious beliefs, but my personal beliefs would say that that’s really this wrong way to look at any crisis or situation. Try to find common ground first, and I think if we were doing another year, we would be dealing exactly with this notion of how are we supposed to go into situations where the United States has lost a tremendous amount of credibility as a negotiator or as someone who is perceived to be a fair middleman, and how do we regain that? It’s a huge problem for the country now.

Tavis: Since you went there, let me follow up. To your own personal and political beliefs, what’s your sense ?I agree with you, personally. What’s your sense of how we got away from the value of what diplomacy offers and provides?

Wells: Oh, I think like so many things now in this new century, 9/11 frightened us as a country. And when we become frightened, particularly if you're powerful, you feel like you need to respond in some fashion to a threat. And I think we have over-emphasized the response in military might, and under-utilized and lost a lot of our moral authority to go into situations and discuss how do we find a different way of doing this?

Clearly, and these are my personal beliefs, but clearly, I understood the rationale behind going into Afghanistan, where there was a government that was fostering the people who were trying to harm us. And I find it very difficult to understand what we’re doing in Iraq. And I think we will see that ultimately as a real disaster for America’s stature. I don’t think I’m alone in this (laughs) belief. And it’s a tragedy. I think it’ll be perceived, ultimately and by history, as a tragedy.

Tavis: Let me go back to “Smith” for a second, 'cause there’s a connection here. You and I were talking before we came on the air here about some stuff you were listening to on the radio about world affairs. And you walked in a little depressed, and I was, like, hey, I could turn it off. I do it for a living, and I gotta turn it off, because it can be depressing when it seeps into your psyche and into your system, all the negativity and the fear around the world. That said, does “Smith,” then, allow you to, as a writer, engage in, how do I wanna put this? Some form of escapism? At least you're over here now; you're not dealing with?/p>

Wells: Yeah. It’s actually a relief. (Laughs)

Tavis: Yeah. That’s what I was getting at. (Laughs) I was trying to get to that. Is it a relief at all? Yeah.

Wells: Yeah, over the last few years, I've written extensively on “E.R.” about the Congo, and the situation in the Congo. We’ve done quite a bit about the Sudan last year, and about American healthcare, which is in something of a shambles. And then all of the things we were writing about on “West Wing.”

Tavis: I had Mekhi Phifer on.

Wells: Yeah.

Tavis: To promote that.

Wells: Yeah, when he was doing the Sudan stuff last year.

Tavis: The Sudan stuff, yeah.

Wells: And it’s interesting, the kind of statistics that float around. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the three hours that we devoted on “E.R.” last year to what was happening in Darfur was actually, I’ve forgotten what the statistic was, more than 10 times what the combined amount on the network newscasts had done that year on the situation in the Sudan.

So I have to say that I was anxious to write something for a little while which just allowed me to just explore character, and not have to deal with world events. And that may be a little bit of me sticking my head back in the sand, but I could use the break. (Laughs)

Tavis: To go back to one of your earlier points, I think, though, you said earlier you didn’t wanna overstate the importance of what you guys did on “The West Wing.” When you talk about Darfur, to your point, you did more time on Darfur than the evening newscast did in a whole year. It got, like, six minutes on CBS for, like, a whole year on Darfur.

You guys did three hours on this thing. So, it’s really not overstating the importance and the power of television, the small screen, when you take those kinds of vehicles and raise legitimate issues for the American public to consider. It’s not overstating it at all.

Wells: No, and I think we can do it, and the trick is always to try to do it in an entertaining fashion, so people don’t feel like they're just being preached to. Because whenever we’re preaching to the choir, I don’t think we’re really making an impact. What we’re trying to do on “Smith” is show some of the problems that people are dealing with, and this’ll come up slowly as the series evolves.

'Cause at the beginning, it’s just a big entertainment, and you're enjoying yourself. But to show the tensions that families are having in just surviving, and these are extreme examples of what people are trying to do to (laughs) survive.

Tavis: (unintelligible) entertaining, though, to your point.

Wells: But it’s gotta be entertaining, but at the same point, we’re trying to illuminate the real tensions that are happening in families.

Tavis: Well, if John Wells is associated with it, you can believe it’s gonna be a hit. The new show, “Smith,” on CBS. John, nice to meet you.

Wells: Pleasure to meet you. Thank you for having me.

Tavis: Glad to have you on. It’s my pleasure. That’s our show for tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.

From Travis Smiley late night on PBS!.