Truthfully, I didn't watch the whole pilot, but I caught a decent chunk of it, and I couldn't get into it. The whole thing felt overly confident, like they "knew" this was going to be a hit on the level of Breaking Bad, but it lacked any ingenuity or hook to keep me, at least, invested.
Even the acting is blah.
I don't know, all around the show feels like a boring cop drama that's trying to be a gritty Breaking Bad-level hit, but fails to do anything special. I hate the acting, especially. Ugh. I don't know how to explain it, it just bothers the hell out of me
I was excited to see it, too. Whatevs. I'll give it another chance down the road, but so far I'm not liking this show at all.
I agree. It seems to be screaming constantly, "HEY GRITTY COP CRIME DRAMA RIGHT HERE, GITYER BB FIX RIGHT HERE!". Hell, I live near Detroit and just looooove to see familiar areas as backdrops. But the cast keep making verbal references to the area in oddly inserted\flippant ways.....ways that normal D-folk do not speak, really.
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Originally Posted by Monolithium
Two episodes in and already better than The Killing.
Came in here to see people's thoughts about the show. Truth be told I only watched the first 10 mins of the pilot and wasn't crazy about the acting. It felt forced and trying too hard and just couldn't get into it.
I was just comparing it to the other cop drama on AMC. Nothing is easier than being better than The Killing (aka: Sarah Linden believes whoever is directly in front of her is the killer until actual evidence proves they're not).
Well, we gave up about 15 minutes into tonight's episode and erased it, then canceled the series DVR setting. It just didn't grab either of us, ya know?
I think part of the problem is that they've tried to extend this remake to the point of absurdity when compared to the original's time length. Kinda like that other over-extended show, Under The Dumb.
I'm still enjoying LOW WINTER SUN & hoping it gets a 2nd season!
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Detroit: On Location (Low Winter Sun Episode 1)
Low Winter Sun Production Designer Ruth Ammon is responsible for scouting the city of Detroit for the series. This week, she discusses the overall look of the show and the locations used for the exterior and interior of Detroit Police Headquarters.
The Look of Low Winter Sun
We started shooting the pilot in late July of 2012, though at first it seemed wrong to be shooting in late summer because of the show’s title. After arriving in Detroit , I realized why [Executive Producer] Chris Mundy picked Detroit as the perfect landscape to achieve the look of the series. A winter sun is a sun that sits low on the horizon — it creates a feeling of quiet, haunting loneliness. As we drove around Detroit, we saw these landscapes of abandoned and fire-raised buildings and wide vacant lots that created strong, graphic cinematic frames. We looked for shots with “toothlessness,” like a mouth with many missing teeth. With the sun as our backlight, this became our look.
Detroit’s history is amazing. Most of America can’t fathom the degree of art and architecture that’s there. There are ghostly reminders of European craftsmanship and American manufacturing, and we enlisted local location managers to help us find and create our vision. Tom Moisides, the location manager for the series, has a background in urban planning, but more importantly, has a huge heart and commitment to Detroit. It was always exciting to scout for each episode with Tom and [Producer] Charles Carroll. We drove night and day looking for usual suspects as well as rogue finds.
LWS_1300 Beaubien_325Detroit Police Department – Exterior
Location: 1300 Beaubien St.
The original Detroit P.D. headquarters was located at 1300 Beaubien, but we actually chose the building for other reasons. The building was designed by architect Albert Kahn in 1923 and captures the historic grandeur of Detroit. It’s located near Greektown, which is part of the soul of our story, and it embodies the Low Winter Sun aesthetic: It has a beautiful, but blackened, limestone exterior. There are large radius windows that have been rusted and cracked by weather and neglect, and grass grows through large cracks in the granite steps of the elegant front entrance. Another consideration was the position of the building: It was located in a wide-open space amid parking lots for municipal workers and sports fans. Backed by the downtown architecture, it made for a very cinematic moment in the Pilot when Joe Geddes takes a smoke break outside the station. Director Ernest Dickerson and Patrick Murguia, our director of photography, panned 180 degrees from the lit-up city background to the shadow of the Detroit P.D. The people-mover timed perfectly when it happened to enter the shot. It was the last scene shot on the Pilot, and we were ecstatic.
LWS_Stott Bldg_325Detroit Police Department – Interior
Location: The David Stott Building, on Griswold and State Streets
Chris Mundy and Charles Carroll had seen this building on an early pre-scout run several months before we started working on the show. Six months later, Charles remembered the building after we’d exhausted several other options. When we landed on the third floor, the sun was setting through the large radius windows, and the walls were stripped bare with peeling paint and broken plaster. I took a picture of Chris standing at the window (at right) with the rest of the team staggered around the room. He was backlit by the sun. It’s a quintessential Low Winter Sun shot.
The David Stott Building is an elegant, 1928 early Art Deco tower with beautiful brass and marble details. I’m told the elevator doors are the most elegant in the city. It was this sort of elevated architecture and craftsmanship we wanted for the bones of our set. We partly modeled the interior of the station based on reference photos that I took from a visit to the abandoned fifth floor of 1300 Beaubien. Our construction department demolished all the sheet rock walls, and we then built glass and wood partition walls based on design details from other floors of the building. Cinematically, we wanted to create some separation between the characters, but we also wanted everyone to be able to see each other in kind of a fish bowl environment.
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[Show spoiler]
Detroit: On Location (Low Winter Sun Episode 2)
Low Winter Sun Production Designer Ruth Ammon is responsible for scouting the city of Detroit for the series. This week, she discusses the location and neighborhood used for the trap house.
The Trap House
Location: Beaconsfield Street in MorningSide
LWS_Trap House Ext_325This is one of my favorite finds. It’s up the east side, in the neighborhood of MorningSide. I came across the neighborhood during scouting for the first episode, while looking for a location for Frank’s house. I would drive all night and drive all day. I just drove everywhere. I had no idea where I was going, and I found this neighborhood with these houses — I call them little Tudor follies. It goes back to that kind of aspirational American dream of the early ’30s. You can see it in the architecture: solid brick foundations, multiple high-reaching gables, lawns, backyards, organized neighborhoods. Perhaps these were the homes of middle management for the massive car industry. It was a weary neighborhood with street names like Buckingham, Chatsworth, Devonshire and Yorkshire.
A trap house is a place where dealers store and sell the drugs, and showrunner Chris Mundy had written the trap house scene for an east side house. When it came time to shoot the episode, location manager Tom Moisides helped me find the neighborhood again. Experiencing that drive along Southhampton Street, then turning onto Beaconsfield was haunting. It was so desolate and brown. There were are all these lovely homes abandoned. It’s heartbreaking. We had to be somewhat careful because of the wild dogs. I never felt like I was in danger, I just felt like I had to be aware.
LWS_Trap House Interior_325We chose this house because of the facade and where it was positioned on the street. It was slightly away from the large old trees, with an empty lot on one side and large, multi-gabled brick homes on the other. Inside there was a sweetheart archway between the living room and dining room, where Billy the drug dealer is killed in the Pilot. The plaster was ripped out where there had been copper plumbing and wiring. Scrapping is a big phenomenon in Detroit — we didn’t have to recreate that, though we replaced all the dangerous debris on the floor with soft and safe debris for the stunt work. We added a door and some vintage furniture to suggest the family that may have lived there. The idea for the lineup of small liquor bottles along the fireplace mantle came from another house on the block, perhaps a real trap house.
Over the course of the series, going back to the trap house presented some issues. With spring came a beautiful canopy of green that was not there in April, which is when our first day of shooting took place. The few homeowners on the block tended to their lawns carefully. Mostly, though, the street grew wild and lush green and our trap house became consumed with ivy.
The neighbors we met were kind and helpful. Once we inadvertently boarded up a neighbor’s house who had been away on vacation (lock-up, to be exact). After being gone for nine months, his home was looted by scrappers. Our location team gave him a ride to his girlfriend’s home. It’s heartbreaking, but pride still exists.
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[Show spoiler]Detroit: On Location (Low Winter Sun Episode 3)
International
Location: The Baltimore Bar on Randolph Street, downtown Detroit
Finding the location for The International was far more challenging than any of us expected. In the script it’s described as: “A good dive bar. Oak bar. Pool table.” We wanted a local neighborhood bar with history, authenticity and no pretense. Windows were important not only for the natural back light, but also because they would allow us to see Greektown in the background — since Skelos collects from all the Greektown shop-owners, we wanted that visual tie-in to be strong.
The International 1_325It was literally at the eleventh hour that we found the Baltimore Bar. It was early autumn, and the Tigers were on a winning streak and heading for the playoffs. Every bar was loud and packed with #24 Cabrera jerseys. Producer Charles Carroll and I were visiting one last location in downtown Detroit. So much was right with the bar, but the windows didn’t work. Charles left — in defeat, I thought, but minutes later he texted me to walk next door. I entered a dimly lit bar with a large front window: He had found our International Bar. We’d driven past that place so many times without even seeing International Bar. We’d driven past that place so many times without even seeing it.
According to our location manager Tom Moisides, the Baltimore Bar was originally called the Baltimore Lunch, a long-standing sandwich and soda counter. We loved the shotgun effect of the long rectangular space. There is exposed brick on one wall and what looks like vintage fake brick, probably from the 1960s, on the other wall. It has the original high, pressed-tin ceiling of the late 19th century. The bar was not oak, but we fell in love with the reflections that the milk plexiglass top provided.
The International 2_325For the exterior scenes, the low-profile front blends into an older commercial district with the Detroit People Mover on one end and downtown Detroit on the other. We include shots of the neighboring decades-old men’s suits and clothing shops — The Broadway, J.L. Stone Co. and Seamen’s — to provide a real sense of history.
A lot of bars in downtown Detroit are empty all the time, but they fill up when there’s a Tigers or a Lions game. What sometimes is an incredibly empty downtown will flood with traffic in a matter of minutes. So we had to organize our shooting schedule around Tigers games. We all had it on our calendars: It’s a home game today, it’s an away game today. The owners of the bar, Spiros Vamvakas and Hilda Neda, allowed us to leave our set design over the four-month shooting schedule as long as we put the large-screen TVs back between shoots.
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[Show spoiler]Detroit: On Location (Low Winter Sun Episode 4)
Low Winter Sun Production Designer Ruth Ammon is responsible for scouting the city of Detroit for the series. This week, she discusses the locations used for the blind pig.
Blind Pig int_325The Blind Pig
Location: Ransom Gillis House at 205 Alfred St. (interior) and Watson and Brush Streets (exterior) in the Brush Park/Woodward East Historic District
“Blind pig” is a familiar term to the people of Detroit — it’s slang for an illegal after-hours nightclub and brothel. Assembled fast and cheap, these places sell booze, drugs, and sex with a low overhead and big profit. [Executive Producer] Chris Mundy pictured the blind pig with Brush Park in mind. I first remember coming across Brush Park while looking through a photography book by Camilo Jose Vergara, American Ruins. I was taken by these once-thriving neighborhoods that had been abandoned and neglected. There are not many homes left in this area, so the skyline really adheres to that “toothless” principal I mentioned previously. There are more empty lots than there are homes, and it’s close to downtown Detroit, so Comerica Park and Ford Field can be seen clearly through the landscape. The homes that are left are mansions that were originally designed and crafted for the upper class of Detroit’s Gilded Age. A few have been carefully restored, but there are still huge gaps of empty lots.
We loved the complex detail of the Ransom Gillis House, a Venetian Gothic mansion on Alfred Street. Much of the interior had been scrapped and gutted, though in an effort to preserve and perhaps sell the historic house, the city had invested in some repair work. There were new access stairs, and new brick was patched in among the original brick on the exterior and interior walls. A steel pipe props up the turret on the outside. The only original details remaining inside were some Victorian window casings with peeling paint, a broken lathe, and plaster walls in the parlor. We incorporated this texture into our design. There were new open stud walls as if someone had started a renovation, so we used those studs to staple on some flashy, sexy fabric.
We came up with the interior design based on actual blind pigs we visited in Detroit. For the interior, we created a long, narrow lounge area for the clients to meet the girls. Along the walls, we positioned mismatched mirrors and Naugahyde sofas from thrift stores. All the seating faced the middle of the room, where we installed two very basic stripper poles. The bar was a 2×4 structure with turquoise faux-reptile vinyl. Drinks were served from discount-sized bottles in red Solo cups, and we added many other party-themed elements.
Blind Pig ext_325Unfortunately, the exterior of Alfred Street didn’t work cinematically — it was facing the wrong way for our lighting. However, one day while driving into Brush Park from another direction, we happened upon another house that sat perfectly alone on a lot. The city was in the background with nothing but overgrown weeds in between. The reflective glass of the Renaissance Center and the lights from the Tigers’ stadium made us stop the car and start envisioning the scene. This house was too derelict to use for the interior scenes, but through careful cuts and staging, we were able to use it for the exterior shots.
Low Ratings for ‘Low Winter Sun’
By ADAM KEPLER
AMC’s “Breaking Bad” has been one of the summer’s great ratings success stories, a testament to the power of binge watching and word of mouth.
But the numbers for that channel’s other Sunday drama, “Low Winter Sun,” have been a disappointment so far, and the show is looking like a missed opportunity to take advantage of the surge in viewership for “Breaking Bad.”
After “Low Winter Sun” scored decent ratings for its premiere on Aug. 11, with 2.5 million total viewers, the next episode drew only 1.5 million. The most recent episode, on Aug. 25, dropped even further, according to Nielsen, to 1.2 million. The show also finished outside that night’s Top 100 cable programs in the 18-to-49-year-old demographic and has now fallen below AMC’s other low-rated dramas.
“Hell on Wheels” — the western that AMC banished to Saturday this season, which has no lead-in to speak of — had more total viewers than “Low Winter Sun” for its Aug. 24 episode, with two million.
Even “The Killing,” another AMC dark cop drama that was broadcast on Sundays earlier this summer, had a larger audience for its Season 3 finale on Aug. 4: 1.5 million viewers. “The Killing” has not yet been renewed for a fourth season, which does not bode well for the prospects of future seasons of “Low Winter Sun.”
PILOT | August 11 | 2.51 million
THE GOAT RODEO | August 18 | 1.47 million
NO ROUNDS | August 25 | 1.23 million
CATACOMBS | September 1 | TBA - Numbers coming Wednesday
I'm guessing the episode from last night could be under 1 million, which I believe would be a first(?) for a scripted series on AMC.
edit: An episode of the canceled AMC series Rubicon got 970,000 viewers. This show could make a new low for AMC.
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