When ABC’s “Commander in Chief” made its debut in the fall, the drama about the first female president of the United States looked like a rising star: strong ratings, decent reviews, lots of buzz.
Less than five months later, that rise has turned into a slide, and President Mackenzie Allen’s administration is in danger of becoming a one-term presidency. ABC said over the weekend that it is pulling “Chief” off the air until spring to make way for a new comedy, “Sons & Daughters.”
The show’s bright beginnings quickly clouded. Series creator Rod Lurie has left the show. There have been production problems. The series is struggling to find a balance between being a family drama set in the White House and being a crisis- of-the-week Beltway procedural.
Viewership, particularly younger viewership, started to decline in November and plunged when the show returned this month opposite Fox’s “American Idol.” On Jan. 24, the show hit a new low with just 10.3 million viewers, despite a publicity boost when Geena Davis won a Golden Globe for her performance as Allen.
At Hollywood’s Raleigh Studios, where “Commander” is shot on elaborate sets re-creating both the White House and the interior of Air Force One, those involved in the show admit there have been problems but are trying to put the best possible spin on the downturn.
“Tuesday night is arguably the most competitive night on television and on the schedule,” says veteran producer Steven Bochco (“NYPD Blue,” “Over There”), who was brought in to run the show after Lurie’s departure.
Davis chalks up some of the drop to the show’s having taken a number of weeks off in the fall to reload after Lurie’s departure.
“A lot of shows take a chunk of time off here and there,” she says. “And I think it’s pretty typical that there’s a building-back-
up period that goes along with that. So I don’t think any of us have had a nervous breakdown over it yet.”
Still, Bochco – who has never worked on a series he hasn’t at least co-created – admits that “Commander” went through a regime change almost unprecedented in recent TV history.
“We came in right in the beginning of October” after the completion of just six episodes “and had to hit the ground running,” he says. “And obviously you wouldn’t be there if there weren’t some issues that had to be addressed.” Lurie tried to direct, write and produce most of the early episodes, an almost impossible task on a TV series. As a result, episodes were being delivered to the network very late – in at least one case, just hours before airtime.
While he is circumspect in discussing Lurie’s problems, Bochco says that “if scripts are late, they’re just uncooked; nobody has time to really do the homework properly. It’s a compounding series of events that can lead to real production difficulties.”
While Bochco first worked on completing episodes started by Lurie, he eventually brought in a new writing staff, dropped some characters and added several notable newcomers, including veteran actress Polly Bergen as Allen’s mother and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (“NYPD Blue”) as a political consultant.
“It was as good of a transition as you could have hoped for, given the fact that you’re coming in and you’re taking over a show that’s already in progress,” Bochco insists.
