Pound Pup Legacy

from: tv.msn.com

A 'Jail' Worth Visiting

By Dave Lake
Senior Producer, MSN TV

Even though both John and Morgan Langley, the father-son producing team behind "Jail," a new reality series that premieres Sept. 4 on MyNetworkTV, have been arrested (John for parking tickets, Morgan for driving on a suspended license), the experience didn't stop them from setting their new show behind bars. And if the number of currently airing police procedurals is any indication of public interest around crime and punishment on television, the duo just may have a hit on their hands. "It's high drama, life and death, good and evil," John Langley said with regard to the show's subject matter. "Those kind of issues are always a fecund area for television and film."

See clip: 'Jail': A Man or a Woman?

It's surprising then that there hasn't been a reality series focused specifically on jail, which, as the producers pointed out, is different than prison. "You get bailed out of jail," Morgan Langley told us, "but you don't get bailed out of prison." Jail is where you go after being arrested but before sentencing. It's where O.J. Simpson spent the entirety of his time behind bars, but not where Charles Manson lives out his years -- that's prison. The producers said they knew they wanted to do a video verite-style show in a correctional setting, but their original attempt at shooting the show in prison didn't pan out because not enough happened day to day. "A lot of people think of [prison] as being very violent and scary," Morgan Langley said. "But the reality of most prisons is that they are a long-term housing environment.

If you go to a big city jail on a Friday or Saturday night, however, you've got all kinds of people coming through the door. You've got everyone from murderers to people there on traffic tickets."
 
Though no one accused of murder shows up in the premiere, we are privy to both a cross-dressing drunk driver -- who officers initially think is a woman, but after a genitalia check is revealed to be a man -- and a blissfully drunk Russian who is tickled by the pleasant nature of the fingerprinting process. "American jail is paradise! You should see Russian jail," he proclaims, before leading the way to the drunk tank, a route he has memorized.

As expected, the show is also violent. In the premiere, a fight breaks out and goes on for quite some time before officers realize there's a scuffle. "There's nothing we can't show," said John Langley, "other than intimate information." He also said all of the people filmed in the jail end up signing a release to be on TV, which is strange considering most of the people being filmed are presumably at a low point. "If you look at our society," John Langley said, "being on TV is not a big deal anymore. In fact, our celebrity culture encourages the average man to be the new celebrity, which is why you have 'American Idol' and 'Survivor.' It's kind of an aspirational goal for most common citizens."
 
John, the elder Langley, knows a thing or two about reality TV. It's a genre he helped pioneer. It's hard to believe, but he's been producing the landmark FOX show "Cops" for the past 19 years (it begins its 20th season this fall) and it was through his strong ties to police agencies that he was able to put this new show together. As for the similarities between launching "Cops" on the then-new FOX network in 1989 and "Jail" on the now-new MyNetworkTV, he says it is merely coincidence. He also says the TV landscape has changed a lot since then. "I don't think I could get 'Cops' on today on network television. Programming has become more diffuse. There are so many different choices. It's more and more of a particularized audience."
 
But the formula for "Jail" is simple: It's "Cops" set behind bars. And that's why it works. There's no narrator, no overarching story lines, and no boyishly handsome host. It's just good ole human nature at play, and it is a reality show in the truest sense of the term. A show that bears little resemblance to "The Hills" or other evolutions of the genre. Which is also why the formula has worked so well for so long and appealed to so many.

"Jail" premieres Sept. 4 at 9 p.m. on MyNetworkTV.