Brendan Penny (right) stands by while Lauren Holly examines a corpse. (ABC)
The darkly handsome political candidate greets his new staff with a rousing hello. He’s more than charismatic — he oozes sexuality.
He is the killer.
The blond teenager is in the midst of a dating drama. She’s coming of age with her boyfriend while at the same time she’s the candidate’s innocent high school age baby sitter.
She is the victim.
So opens the second episode of ABC’s new summer series “Motive.” What makes this serialized drama so clever is that the big reveal comes in the opening moments of each episode.
“Motive” is a departure from that tried-and-true procedural TV structure. Instead of a “Whodunnit,” Motive is a “Whydunnit.”
It took creator Daniel Cerone (“The Mentalist”) six tries over two decades to get “Motive” on the air.
“It has always been an uphill battle,” says Cerone, calling from his car phone. “ I have pitched it over the years a half-dozen times. But the networks always said, ‘If we know the identity of the killer, why do we want to watch?’ We found a way for people to have their cake and eat it too. We retrace the steps that brought them together, and then explore the dramatic aftermath of a murder. What does the killer do after he kills someone — go out for dinner, go to a party?”
The ABC series, which stars Kristen Lehman, Louis Ferreira and Lauren Holly, debuts Monday night after “Dancing With the Stars.” It has had a circuitous route to American prime-time, first airing as a network series on Canada’s top TV network, CTV. NBC International, headquartered in London, bought it for worldwide distribution. Then ABC’s Quinn Taylor, senior VP of movies, miniseries and acquisitions, flew to London to negotiate rights to 13 episodes for ABC.
“I knew NBC would have first dibs,” he says, “ but I chased it down like an elephant. It was fresh.”
And it was risky.
“Is it risky?” says Taylor. “ Maybe it just doesn’t pitch well, but as soon as you see it, you get it. I was relieved there was no faux sexual tension thing between partners, which I find so tedious and exhausting”
In each episode, “Motive” tracks the killer from the crime to the capture, but there are twists and turns to the formula as it progresses through season. In one episode, the killer has murdered the wrong person. In another episode someone kills the killer.
The person leading the hunt is homicide detective Angie Flynn, played by Lehman, a Canadian actress you might recognize from her standout performance as Gwen Eaton, the Machiavellian campaign manager on AMC’s “The Killing.” Despite being cheated on by her politician boyfriend, played by Billy Campbell, and suspected of murder, she had a steely resolve — in short, a woman with ice water running through her veins.
“Gwen was uptight,” says Lehman, calling from Vancouver on her son Sam’s fifth birthday. With Sam by her side, and amid birthday party preparations, she is candid. “ I found it really difficult to play her. She did not live inside of me.”
That fact was brought home to her one night at a dinner party in Vancouver after the show first aired. Some of the guests, who didn’t know her, were raving about “The Killing.”
“It took a long time for someone to say, ”Oh, wow, aren’t you on that show?” she laughs.
“I don’t look the way I look on- screen,” she says.” I have been doing it for 20 years; in my real life I am different from the characters I have played.”
Lehman is married to Adam Greydon Reid, a filmmaker and actor she met 17 years ago while shooting a beer commercial. “It was my one and only commercial,” she says. “He was my best friend for a long, long time until we decided to get married six years ago.”
On “Motive” we see another side of Lehman, an inspired cop and a single mom of a teenage son.
“Gwen was so repressed and sad,” she says, “but I can relate to Angie loving her son, facing human frailties, taking a tough job. “
Originally written as more of a white-trash character who had lawn furniture in her living room, Angie’s tougher edges were softened by network executives, which rankled Lehman.
“She was a brash wonderful woman who turned an archetype on its ear,” she says. “She was bold. Her makeup was her war paint. What she has become is an amalgam of source material and a way forward with lots of cooks in the kitchen. [The network execs] felt that would appease the advertisers.”
So while the format of “Motive” was allowed to break new ground — a major victory for Cerone — the character of Angie was revised, based on an iconic TV show, “Columbo,” the granddaddy of procedural dramas.
“Columbo is this disheveled kind of guy, who they underestimate,” says Rob LaBelle, a “Motive” executive producer. “There are elements of that with Angie. They underestimate her, see her as a dumb blond, not as capable as she is, so in many ways it is an homage to “Columbo” in the styling of Angie and in her line of questioning.”
Not only was Lehman the right actress for the part, she was in the right place at the right time, having returned to Canada from the US to live with her husband and raise her son. Both “The Killing” and “Motive” are shot in Vancouver.
Says Cerone, “It was perfect. She was an actress just waiting for a series to happen, and then we came along.”
MOTIVE
Monday, 10 p.m., ABC