Stream On: Gone too soon, part two—David Milch’s ‘Big Apple’
CBS’ Les Moonves decided to put ‘Big Apple’ up against ‘ER,’ which could be interpreted as a compliment but was a death sentence.
In TV writer David Milch’s memoir, Life’s Work, he calls writing “a blessing.” He created two of TV’s greatest series, NYPD Blue and Deadwood—and several that just didn’t catch on. None was actually subpar; the failed shows were cancelled for a variety of other reasons. This week we’ll take a look at Big Apple. (Part one, about his “failed” series Brooklyn South, is here.)
/Amazon /Not Streaming /Free on Archive.org /⭐7.1/10 /Promo /2001 /TV16+
“I called the show Big Apple, and it was about New York, but really it was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden. Everyone in this show has taken a bite, and they’re trying to figure out what to do with the information they now have, same as Adam and Eve.” (David Milch, Life’s Work)
Milch got to know future Big Apple star Ed O’Neill (John from Cincinnati) by seeing him in the Drago restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. In his memoir he writes, “He’d come in a lot of times by himself and have a glass of wine and dinner, and what you noticed was a person at peace with himself, able to enjoy himself and take his time. Since those things eluded me, I was fascinated by that.
“He’s a big guy, a former football player, but he moved through the room with a kind of warmth and softness and grace. I’d think to myself, ‘This guy is a great … actor, because he’s nothing like [Al Bundy, whom O’Neill became famous for playing on Married with Children].’”
So before Milch and O’Neill worked together on John from Cincinnati, they collaborated on Big Apple. (O’Neill later worked with Law and Order’s Dick Wolf on another prematurely cancelled show, L.A. Dragnet. David Milch also wanted O’Neill to play Al Swearengen on Deadwood, but HBO said no.) On Big Apple O’Neill plays Michael Mooney, a working-class NYPD detective whose sister Lois (Brooke Smith, Ray Donovan) is dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
A stripper connected to the Russian mob is killed, so the FBI (including Titus Welliver, Brooklyn South, and David Straitharn) shows up, and to try to rein in Det. Mooney, whose case it is, they deputize him and his young partner, Det. Trout (Jeffrey Pierce, Justified) to “help” with it. Mooney agrees to it, mainly because he sees the job as a good career move for Trout.
With Michael Madsen (True Detective) as a proto-Al Swearengen-from-Deadwood bar owner, Kim Dickens (Deadwood) as an FBI tech expert, and Donnie Wahlberg (Blue Bloods). Pavel Lychnikoff, who plays a Russian telegraph operator on Deadwood, is a Russian mob flunky here.
Alas, Milch’s nemesis Les Moonves struck again. Milch writes, “My concerns with the boss redoubled once the show was getting scheduled. Les decided to put the show up against ER, after Survivor, which could be interpreted as a compliment but in its own way was a death sentence. The audience that might like our show the most already has appointment viewing on our competitor, and the audience who is tuned in to our channel just wants to be told who’s getting voted off the island. The things you can’t control you have to let go of. We just tried to hit the ball straight, we tried to do the best we could every day. We got great reviews. People loved Eddie [O’Neill]. But not enough people watched. We were canceled after five weeks. We shot eight episodes and they didn’t even air the last three.”
That’s a shame! Here’s a glowing contemporary review from Variety.
Sources include The Real Gentlemen of Leisure, and Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED).
Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon's prices. This column originally appeared on The Outer Banks Voice.