TV Talk: Fox tries to woo true crime fans with ‘Accused,’ including Billy Porter-directed episode

Ever since Fox announced the anthology series “Accused,” a one-hour drama that each week introduces a new story and new characters caught up in a criminal legal case, I’ve pondered why Fox wanted this series.

While season-long anthology series have thrived in recent years – think: “American Horror Story,” “American Crime Story,” etc. – episodic anthologies have a much spottier track record of success (see: either iteration of “Amazing Stories,” “Little America”).

For “Accused,” Fox seems to bank on two things: American viewers love true crime and they want to see a different story weekly with bold-face names in front of and especially behind the camera directing (first-season “Accused” directors include Marlee Matlin and Pittsburgh native Billy Porter). While the former is 100% true based on viewer interest in limited crime series and Investigation Discovery, HLN and Oxygen programming, the jury is still out on the latter.

In the “Accused” premiere (9 p.m. Sunday, WPGH-TV), a doctor (Michael Chiklis) is on trial, but the exact details about what he’s on trial for get dribbled out slowly, making for an hour of twisty intrigue that ultimately involves the story of a father and his mentally ill son.

Written by series adapter Howard Gordon (“24”) – “Accused” is based on a British series – it’s the most narratively sophisticated of the three episodes I’ve seen, trafficking in uncomfortable ideas around filicide, parental responsibility and an all-too-common societal scourge.

This hour of TV made me want to see Chiklis in a series again, maybe playing against his tough-guy type.

Future episodes deliver diminishing returns.

Marlee Matlin directs an hour about a deaf surrogate (9 p.m. Jan. 24) with a courtroom scene that doesn’t pass the veracity test: An attorney is shocked when the deaf woman’s cold mother proves to be a disastrous character witness on the stand, something that would have been obvious at deposition and would never had made it into a courtroom.

Pittsburgh native Billy Porter directs an unscheduled episode about a drag performer’s affair with a closeted, married man that, like the Matlin-helmed episode, proves significantly less surprising and complex than the series premiere.

Porter, who directed his first feature film, “Anything’s Possible,” in Pittsburgh in 2021 and has been directing theater productions for two decades, called it a gift when Gordon approached him “out of the blue” about directing an “Accused” episode.

“It’s time for the people whose stories are being told to tell their own stories,” Porter said in a December Fox virtual press conference. “So it was an immediate yes for me, because what I love in this space for my life is I get to shape these narratives and control these narratives in the most authentic way possible, and that is a gift.”

Porter said he appreciated that the anthology nature of “Accused” allowed him to employ his own vision, unlike in most series where a director has to fit into a show’s house style.

Porter said he realized early in his career that he’d want to direct eventually.

“I thought, I will direct when the acting becomes boring, maybe in the twilight of my career, like a Clint Eastwood kind of thing,” he said. “It never occurred to me as a minority African-American performer, when I came out in the business, there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do so, I got bored really quick. And all a sudden, I found myself in this space of directing that activated my creative mind that never stops.

“What I love about directing — and which is also the most challenging part — is all cylinders are firing at the same time,” Porter continued. “I have never in my life done anything harder than directing film and television. It is so hard. I am so exhausted at the end of every day. It never stops.”

Channel surfing

Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso” will return this spring but no specific premiere date was announced. … NBC’s “Night Court” sequel series drew surprisingly strong ratings Tuesday: 7.4 million episodes for the first episode and 6.8 million for the second episode. That’s the best series premiere ratings for a comedy since “The Conners” began in 2018. Considering how unfunny the new “Night Court” was, it will be interesting to see if viewership can hold up in the weeks ahead. … Starz renewed “BMF” for a third season after the season two premiere drew more than 4 million viewers earlier this month. … More evidence that we’re on the downside of the Peak TV mountain: Production in Los Angeles declined sharply in the last quarter of 2022.