CHANGE IN THE AIR
Why NBC overhauled ‘Taken’
SHOWRUNNER Greg Plageman is a man with a particular set of skills: revamping NBC’s “Taken,” a prequel to the Liam Neeson big-screen action trilogy.
The show’s first season, which aired in 2017 with showrunner Alexander Cary, generated lukewarm ratings — averaging 5.1 million viewers Monday nights at 10 following “The Voice.”
For Season 2, which premiered Jan. 12, NBC moved the show to Friday at 9 p.m., overhauled the cast — keeping only series stars Clive Standen and Jennifer Beals from last season — and hired Plageman, a procedural series veteran with a resume including “Person of Interest,” “Cold Case” and “NYPDBlue.” That first retooled episode averaged 2.8 million viewers on a traditionally tough night for prime-time shows, with less overall viewership across-the-board.
“One of the first things I did was call Alex [Cary] and say, ‘What’s going on?’ ” says Plageman. “I wanted to hear him out. Alex has his own vision for the show and he’s a great writer. He had his version, and I had my own ideas about what might work better for network television.”
On the big screen, “Taken” revolves around Bryan Mills (Neeson), a retired ex-CIA operative with a “particular set of skills” (as he famously says in a threatening speech to his daughter’s kidnappers). Among other things, these skills include kicking ass and taking names. Season 1 of NBC’s version featured a young Mills (Standen, pulling double-duty on both “Taken” and History’s “Vikings”) working for an off-the-books special ops agency led by Christina Hart (Beals). Plageman describes the agency as taking “cases that fall between the cracks” of the FBI and CIA.
“I think it’s a natural progression,” Standen says of the overhaul. “When you’re dealing with [Bryan Mills] in the films, he’s a finished product. With a TV show, you have to start somewhere and build this character. Season 1 was setting him up in a team environment. But if you surround him with six or seven guys with the same skillset, it doesn’t make him very special.
“In Season 2 [trimming his team] allows it to be more personal. It’s going more towards that Bryan Mills you see in the films — the lone wolf who’s using that skillset.” NBC also imported new cast members Adam Goldberg (“Saving Private Ryan”) and Jessica Camacho (“The Flash,” “Sleepy Hollow”).
Plageman says that viewers can tune into Season 2 without having seen Season 1, but familiarity with the movies helps. “I consider it a revamping of the show,” he says. “The character was always here. I just wanted to get in deeper and find out more about him and show what makes him exceptional.” Aside from hewing closer to the movies, Plageman’s vision includes expanding “Taken’s” world; Season 2 opens with Mills in a Mexican prison. “I wanted to feel the international flavor of the show — we could be anywhere in the globe every week,” he says. “And there was an element of levity I wanted to bring. “Anyone who is familiar with the film franchise wants to see the exceptionalism of that character,” he says. “People love the resourcefulness of Bryan Mills. I think there’s something oddly comforting about that character to people — when the going gets rough, Bryan Mills knows what to do.”