Jimmy McGovern (Cracker, The Street) first created Accused for British television in 2010. It was a groundbreaking crime series anthology told from the defendant’s perspective and what twists of fate and life choices eventually led them to the courtroom. The show ran until 2012. Howard Gordon, best known for his work on Homeland, 24, and X Files, decided the captivating nature of this format was ripe for American audiences. Howard spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine on how he put his stamp on Accused.
Gordon is a big fan of the British version. He hasn’t contacted with McGovern to discuss his take on the TV series.
“I thought it was terrific and it sparked a bunch of ideas,” Gordon said. The world has changed dramatically since the original and Gordon opted for television writing therapy to wrestle with his personal life issues. “Life had changed in terms of race, power, abuse, and truth itself.”
The anthology format not only represented a chance for Howard Gordon to examine the world in modern times, but also to tell stories that really meant something to him. “It was a chance to explore a world adjacent to reality.” Gordon had two initial stories he wanted to tell in Accused and he was ready to go. “David Shore developed the Accused previously, but it never went anywhere.” When Sony Television showed renewed interest in it, the project was dusted off and put into active development and production.
Capturing The Core Energy Of Accused
“I wanted the show to be fearless and unflinching,” Howard stated. “I wanted the audience to think and feel differently after watching each episode and be silent for a moment to process it.” Howard Gordon described Accused as a Trojan Horse with all the trappings of a legal drama. There were courtroom scenes and scenes shuttling back and forth in time as the events leading up to the crime were revealed. “The show is more than the declaration of innocence or guilt. It is animated by compassion for each character and how vulnerable we all are.” The deeply emotional moments can transport the characters to a place where their lives irrevocably change forever based on their choices. Gordon wanted the audience to feel empathy for every character regardless of which side of the stand they were on.
In choosing story material for Accused, Howard Gordon recalled a time in his life when his friend was dying. “He was surrounded by loved ones, but he was still going to die. It was a lonely place to be. You may be accused of something on the stand… Maybe they did or did not commit a crime? Maybe there’s an explanation for their behavior? There’s no lonelier moment, because your freedom and reputation may be taken away at any moment.”
Legal Drama is a great form to talk about some very human things
The anthology format is a distinct departure from legal shows that are typically serialized. Gordon saw he freeing nature of it. “You’re not beholden to a format where you need to consider what came before and what’s coming after in the series. I got to tell much more discrete and focussed stories in this format.”
Gordon compared the anthology writing process to writing haiku or a sonnet. “I developed an instinct and a grammar to tell a story that felt like a full experience, but it required a level of discipline and restraint to tell it minimally. I knew I only had ten minutes to grab the audience by the throat.” He had to light a fire and grab the audience with a new set of characters in each episode. This was much to Gordon’s delight. Gordon also used his haiku as a tonic for bloated storytelling often seen on television. The writer’s first foray into unconventional storytelling was in 24 where continuing stories were broken up, sped up, and delivered in 24-hourly bite-sized chunks.
Howard Gordon . Photo courtesy of FOXFLASH
Pilot Episode – Scott’s Story
The pilot episode of most legal dramas sets up the world, recurring characters, the team, the relationship dynamics and the audience gets to enjoy a new case each week.
In Accused, the key recurrent component is the format with a new story each episode. “The ending’s are more complex and hopefully surprising in an organic, inevitable and surprising way. I hope the audience gets the dose of empathy that they expected. I don’t want it to be a passive viewing experience, but one that compelled audiences to engage.”
Gordon relishes the moment when we transition from the stand in the present and first meet the Accused character in their past. There’s a look of fear and dread in their eyes, just before they do something that will change their lives forever. He used this literary device in every episode. “I loved mining that innocence when we think that everything is normal and the next moment everything is different.”
Like many writers, each episode begins with a central question. “As a father of two adult children, I often recognized how often I felt helpless with them,” confessed Gordon. Then he recalled an incident of an elderly Japanese diplomat who stabbed his adult son because he believed he planned to commit a knife attack. “That lodged in my mind. It was dramatic catnip,” he added with delight. Gordon then had to dramatize it and find the story to illustrate this father’s fear. He likened to this to situations of school shootings by students. Parents are often accused of not noticing the red flags, but they aren’t always easy to identify and appropriate intervention is even more difficult.
The spurious morality of the characters in Accused is also a hallmark of the TV series. Characters are wedged between a rock and a harder place with unattractive options for a solution. Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) in 24 and Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) in Homeland faced the same predicament. “They didn’t make the wrong choice. It was just the least bad one.” This messiness makes the stories more interesting. Morality can be fluid and is often dictated by the circumstances of the moment. “The world has become reductive and we insist that things are either right or wrong all the time. We lose sight of the truth as we club each other the heads with our own certainty of our version of the truth.”
Howard Gordon probed his writers in the writers’ room with big life questions like, “What does it mean to be alive? or What does it mean to be an old person?,” to inspire their creativity. He looked at visceral human stories that could be mined from their lives. He also mentioned the increasing role of social media in the world. “These stories are very universal but very specific to the times in which we’re living.”
Gritty, unrelenting storytelling is often reserved for streamers, but Howard Gordon struck gold with FOX. He was actually surprised at how much the terrestrial broadcaster allowed him to get away with. “We were encouraged by FOX to exercise our creative freedom, but they were also petrified by the potential audience response.”
FOX told us to go for it and don’t be afraid to go anywhere.
