Profit--Articles

Thought I'd put this one in, even though it didn't come true. This came from Knight-Ridder Newspapers and is available at http://www.newstimes.com/archive/jul1196/tve.htm

Profit, lead character in Fox's fleeting cult fave last spring, was a psycho businessman who curled up naked each night in a cardboard box with the TV blaring. (Uh, not that there's anything wrong with it.)

Despite being nuked after just four episodes, "Profit" - starring Adrian Pasdar - could find new life on cable's Showtime network, if executive producer Stephen J. Cannell has his way.

In an interview Tuesday during the TV critics' tour in Pasadena, Calif., Cannell said he's shopping "Profit" around, and that Showtime has shown some interest. Pasdar's primed to do new episodes, Cannell adds.

Worst-case scenario, Cannell says, is that he'll transfer the four remaining original segments to video and sell them.

Cannell, the brains behind "The Rockford Files" and "Wiseguy," as well as a best-selling novelist ("The Plan"), says he's as proud of "Profit" as anything in his career. "Profit" ranked 138th among 160 series in the final Nielsens, but its audience "was no smaller than 'L.A. Firefighters'," he says. (Fox's flaming hunkfest is being reworked for the fall.)

Besides Fox, the only critics of "Profit" were some business types, Cannell says, who thought it portrayed them poorly. (Duh.) They said no real exec would ever murder his father, blackmail his boss out of his job and crash naked in a cardboard box. Maybe one, but not all three.

astralj@hotmail.com
Back to the Articles Archive
Back to the Main Profit Page