The History Channel had a little success with a TV mini series in 2012 based on the Hatfield & McCoy feud of the mid to late 1800’s. Because of this NBC decided they wanted to a slice of the Western pie and as a part of that, they commissioned a pilot for a new story based in the modern day. They would call that TV Show Hatfields and McCoys.
Never heard of it? No, probably not – And, that’s probably more down to the fact it never got past the pilot stage and was never shown on TV.
The idea of the show was that the feud continued on to the present day and the families are still very much at war with one another. Which, isn’t actually the case at all – The families fighting history is pretty much a tourist attraction now.
The premise being that in the modern day a sudden death in the McCoy family is blamed on the Hatfields and, well, you can probably take an educated guess on the rest.
Hatfields and McCoys had the right pedigree to be a success, Charlize Theron threw her stetson into the ring as one of the producers. The casting wasn’t too shabby, Virginia Madsen was to take the lead as Eloise McCoy, the matriarch of the family (I’ll refrain from commenting about Virginia in this kind of role). Other members of the McCoy family would be played by Sophia Bush as Emma, Jesse Lee Soffer as Patrick, Luciana Carro as Treena and Patrick Flueger as Jack.
There was no slouching on the Hatfields side either, Rebecca De Mornay was set to play Mary Hatfield, James Remar as Joe and Annie Ilonzeh as Shannon.
But, it wasn’t enough for NBC and they ultimately decided to take a pass on the show and didn’t order any more episodes.
All is not completely lost though as the unaired version of the pilot did eventually make it to the internet so at least we can see what we missed out on, unlike Babylon Fields which has yet to see the light of day.
It isn’t too bad – A bit generic, perhaps. Virginia Madsen pretty much took on the same kind of role that she had in Scoundrels, and I was really reminded of that more than once with Patrick Flueger on screen with Virginia once again. Nice to see, I’ve a lot of time for Patrick but perhaps this one was a little close to home.
Availability:
Pretty good, for now at least…
| < Previous | Home | Next > |
