The under appreciation of Starz

I recently finished the second season of Magic City, a show about Miami Beach in the late 1950s. While many might think of it as just another mob show, it’s about much more and delves into the building of South Beach, Castro’s takeover in Cuba and its impact on Miami, an untraditional family marriage between a Jewish hotel owner and Cuban dancer, etc... The show has a compelling and conflicted anti-hero as well as a great villain (a mobster named “The Butcher”).

I say all this because you probably haven’t seen Magic City. I don’t blame you, because I don’t know if anyone but me watches it. I had to buy my father the DVDs for the first season just to get him to watch it. This is because Magic City seems to exist in a programming black hole called the Starz network.

While not on par with Showtime in the “quest to be HBO,” Starz was responsible for Party Down, a comedy that in my opinion is as funny as any show in recent years. It was home to Boss, a powerful drama about a corrupt mayor of Chicago who learns that he is going to go insane then painfully die but holds onto power in an attempt to finalize and preserve his legacy. Starz also made Torchwood: Miracle Day, an original mini-series spun off from a hugely successful BBC show.

Both Party Down and Boss were critically acclaimed and loved by me. Party Down had host of wonderful, emerging comedians in it and Boss’ Chelsea Grammar won an Emmy for his portrayal of Tom Kane. Yet neither lasted past two seasons. Yet Party Down’s season two finale drew a 0.0 rating and total audience of 74,000 (called “miniscule even for pay cable standards” by Deadline). Boss ended with promises of a movie, but I remember from Deadwood how well those work out. Torchwood too, never even seemed to register here in the US or UK despite its following and the madness associated with Doctor Who lately (the show is a spinoff of Dr. Who, and in fact Torchwood is an anagram for Doctor Who…).

Other attempts by the network that I’ve committed to, i.e. DVRed, only to see fizzle include Camelot, an Arthurian series starring Joseph Fiennes as Merlin. The show had its moments, but in general was good. Yet it was seemingly a victim of bad timing, as I have to imagine if it premiered today maybe some Game of Thrones fans would accidentally watch it long enough to earn it a second season.

I also have the network’s ambitious White Queen on my DVR right now, and am looking forward to checking it out as I tried to do so with Pillars of Earth, another bold endeavor that featured Ian McShane but got little fanfare, and DaVinci’s Demons, which I did not understand or make it more than a few minutes into.

Yes there’s been some misses, but they’re clearly trying and putting out quality programming. All of this leads me to wonder how can such great programming go unnoticed? These shows literally have no buzz! How, after an Emmy for best actor, does a truly great drama like Boss get cancelled with no fuss? How can it be that Starz programming is probably best known for its surprisingly successful Spartacus series?

I can’t answer these questions, but I can leave you with one more. What does this mean for two more shows I am very excited about (and you should be too)? The first is from Ron Moore, creator of SyFy’s successful Battlestar Galactica reboot, who is currently adapting the Outlander book series for the network with Sony Pictures Television. Starz has ordered an initial season of 16-episodes. The show begins filming this fall in Scotland and is slated to premiere in 2014.

The other show is Dancing on the Edge, another BBC partnership production (along with Torchwood and White Queen) that just began airing. It will follow the Louis Lester Band, an all-black jazz ensemble playing the club circuit in 1930s London, during their rise to fame amidst racism and a murder mystery.

Will anyone even notice these shows though? Will Outlander make it to season two? Perhaps most importantly, will I have anyone to talk to about either program?