| Alcatraz | |
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| Format | |
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| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| Production | |
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| Running time | 43 mins |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Fox |
| Original airing | January 16, 2012 |
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| Website | |
Alcatraz is an American television series starring Sarah Jones and Jorge Garcia airing on Fox. Bad Robot Productions produced the pilot episode, which is based on a screenplay by Elizabeth Sarnoff, Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt.[1] The series was officially picked up by Fox on May 10, 2011.[2] On December 2, 2011, Fox announced that the series would air as a midseason replacement starting January 16, 2012. The series will air on Monday evenings, premiering with a 2-hour episode at 8:00 ET, before assuming its regular timeslot at 9:00 ET starting January 23, 2012.[3] The series is filmed principally in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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When San Francisco Police Department Det. Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) is assigned to a grisly homicide case, a fingerprint leads her to Jack Sylvane (Jeffrey Pierce), a former Alcatraz Island prisoner who died decades ago. Given her family history— both her grandfather and surrogate uncle, Ray Archer (Robert Forster), were guards at the prison —Madsen's interest is immediately piqued, and once the enigmatic, knows-everything-but-tells-nothing government agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) tries to impede her investigation, she is doggedly committed.
Madsen turns to Alcatraz expert and comic book enthusiast Dr. Diego "Doc" Soto (Jorge Garcia) to piece together the inexplicable sequence of events. The twosome discovers that Sylvane is not only alive, but he is loose on the streets of San Francisco, leaving bodies in his wake. And strangely, he has not aged a day since he was in Alcatraz, when the prison was ruled by the iron-fisted Warden Edwin James (Jonny Coyne) and the merciless Associate Warden E.B. Tiller (Jason Butler Harner).
Madsen and Doc reluctantly team with Agent Hauser and his technician, Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra), to stop Sylvane's vengeful killing spree. By delving into Alcatraz history, government cover-ups and Rebecca's own heritage, the team will ultimately discover that Sylvane is only a small part of a much larger, more sinister present-day threat. For while he may be the first, it quickly becomes clear that Sylvane will not be the last prisoner to reappear from Alcatraz.
Through the course of the investigation, Madsen and Soto will learn that the government has been upgrading the prison since its closing for a reopening to house America's darkest criminals once more. In the process, Madsen will be forced to see everything she thought she knew about her family's past shattered, all while fighting to keep the country safe from the country's most dangerous criminals, locking them behind "The Rock's" bars once more.
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | Production code |
U.S. viewers (million) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Pilot"[4] | January 16, 2012 | ||||
| 2 | "Ernest Cobb"[4] | January 16, 2012 | ||||
Alcatraz is produced by Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Bad Robot Productions and Warner Bros. Television. The series is executive-produced by J. J. Abrams, Bryan Burk and Elizabeth Sarnoff. Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt, both of Kyle XY fame, created the concept and serve as co-executive producers. Sarnoff, Lilien and Wynbrandt penned the pilot. Danny Cannon directed and executive-produced the pilot. In September 2011, Jennifer Johnson became an executive producer and co-showrunner alongside Sarnoff.[5] After Sarnoff stepped down in November 2011, Daniel Pyne joined Johnson as showrunner.[5]
In June 2011, Alcatraz was one of eight honorees in the Most Exciting New Series category at the 1st Critics' Choice Television Awards, voted by journalists who had seen the pilots.[6]
| Country | Channel | Premiere date |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | Nine Network | January 2012 |
| Italy | Premium Crime | January 30, 2012 |
| Latin America | Warner Channel | January 22, 2012 |
| United Kingdom | Watch | March 2012[7] |
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