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Columbia TriStar Television<\/p>\n
A few years before her breakout role in David Lynch’s critically acclaimed neo-noir psychological thriller “Mulholland Drive,” Naomi Watts starred in an NBC sci-fi show that was canned after a couple of episodes. The series in question was Stephen Kronish and David S. Goyer’s “Sleepwalkers,” which premiered on\u00a0November 1, 1997 as part of\u00a0NBC’s Saturday night programming block Thrillogy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watts plays Kate Russell, a dream interpreter and psychologist who uses state-of-the-art technology to enter people’s dreamscapes and help them confront the darkest parts of their subconscious. While NBC was open to Kronish and Goyer’s concept, the network felt that the sci-fi elements needed more dimension and that there was little cohesion between the artistic styles of the two creators. This caused repeated clashes between the show’s creative team and NBC executives, as the network was unsure whether audiences would take well to the surrealism in “Sleepwalkers.”<\/p>\n
Although nine episodes were produced, only two went on-air, with both\u00a0receiving poor Nielsen ratings. Five further episodes were aired only on the West Coast the following year, but the final two installments were never broadcast in the United States. “Sleepwalkers” may not be\u00a0the shortest-lived TV series of all time<\/a>, but it’s not far off.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The cancellation of Sleepwalkers was the beginning of the end for NBC’s Thrillogy<\/p>\n
Columbia TriStar Television<\/p>\n NBC’s\u00a0Saturday Night programming block\u00a0Thrillogy\u00a0was introduced in 1996 with three shows: “The Pretender,” “Profiler,” and “Dark Skies,” with the latter being the network’s answer to “The X-Files.”<\/a> “Dark Skies” was canceled before the end of its first season and NBC tried to replace it with “Sleepwalkers,” which ultimately met the same fate.<\/p>\n Thrillogy marketing never really took off despite the fact that both “The Pretender” and “Profiler” earned\u00a0decent ratings.\u00a0After “Sleepwalkers” was axed, a\u00a0third attempt to reinstate Thrillogy with a new show called “The Others” was made in 2000, but NBC ended up binning the entire block by the end of that year,\u00a0cancelling all three shows.<\/p>\n It’s difficult to evaluate the merits of “Sleepwalkers” due to its fragmented broadcasting and inconsistent availability, but the sci-fi series has an intriguing premise. Watts co-stars with Bruce Greenwood as Dr. Nathan Bradford, her boss and the founder of the\u00a0Morpheus Institute, where his team treats patients who are psychologically haunted in their dreams.<\/p>\n
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