Graphic Content: How Comic Books Took Over TV

No on seems more surprised by the success of The Walking Dead than Robert Kirkman. The creator of the top-rated show, which returned from hiatus on February 8, as well as the writer of the Image Comics series on which it’s based, had watched as his zombie-apocalypse saga was optioned, and ultimately passed over, by a slew of broadcast and cable networks, beginning with NBC in 2005. Kirkman thought he understood the networks’ reticence. “Zombies are essentially people who eat people, so it’s a cannibal show,” he says. “I was like, ‘I can’t foresee a cannibal show on television.’”

That wasn’t the only problem. Comics were doing big business on movie screens in 2005 (Marvel’s X-Men and Spider-Man franchises were well-established box-office juggernauts, and DC would reboot Batman with director Christopher Nolan to great critical and commercial success), but TV execs still viewed them with skepticism. Superman, Batman, and the Hulk had had successful live-action TV iterations between the 1950s and the 1980s, but by the mid-2000s, the only long-running series with comic book roots was Smallville, a hit for The WB (and later The CW) that chronicled Superman’s early years as Clark Kent. For networks, comics were seen as niche. “Historically,” says Kirkman, “everyone who adapted comics had the notion, ‘We have to make this more appealing to a wide audience’ or ‘We have to get rid of some of the silly elements.’”

So when The Walking Dead finally landed at AMC, where it debuted—in all its gory, twisted glory—in 2010, its success would ultimately play an integral part in opening TV to the vast comic book universe. Today, there are six other live-action shows based on comics: The CW’s Arrow and The Flash, ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel’s Agent Carter, NBC’s Constantine, and Fox’s Gotham, centering on Batman ally Jim Gordon. And at least five others are slated to premiere in 2015, including The CW’s iZombie, PlayStation’s Powers, and Netflix’s Marvel’s Daredevil, with a dozen or so in development.

Kirkman—who is adapting Outcast, one of his comics from his Skybound imprint at Image, for Cinemax, as well as executive producing Syfy’s Clone, based on David Schulner’s Skybound/Image comic, and developing a Walking Dead offshoot tentatively titled Cobalt—says attitudes have undergone a sea change in the last few years. TV executives no longer think they “know better when adapting a comic book,” he says. “There’s a reverence and respect for the medium showing through in these adaptations. That’s one of the things leading to their success.”

For a long time, even film studios regularly fumbled comic book adaptations. Although several small-press titles like The Crow, Spawn, and The Mask became successful movies, during the ’80s and ’90s, DC Comics had a hit-and-miss record with marquee superheroes Superman and Batman, and Marvel showed little interest in bringing its characters to the big screen, as evidenced by its licensing of Captain America for a 1990 straight-to-video clunker and Fantastic Four to B-movie kingpin Roger Corman for a 1994 film that was never even released. Steven DeKnight, who was a writer and producer for Smallville and is the showrunner for Daredevil, traces the roots of TV’s current comics craze to a moment in 1996. “The huge cosmic shift came when Marvel started their own studios,” he says. “Now they weren’t going to a third party that was translating the material. You had people who actually knew the canon and respected the work.”

According to David S. Goyer, a writer and exec producer on Constantine (based on Vertigo/DC’s Hellblazer) who has worked on several movie adaptations, including The Dark Knight and Blade trilogies, Man of Steel, and the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the move from film to TV was inevitable once it proved profitable. “The TV industry saw what was happening in features and thought, ‘Why not try to replicate that success?’” says Goyer, who’s also developing the Syfy series Krypton, focusing on Superman’s grandfather.

Arrow, based on DC’s Green Arrow, was the first comics adaptation to break through on TV post–Walking Dead. When the show premiered in 2012, The CW was still smarting from the loss of Smallville, which finished a 10-season run the year before. “When Smallville ended, The CW lost a lot of men 18 to 34, and men in general,” says network president Mark Pedowitz. “We realized we needed to do something to bring them back. Arrow was the first real attempt.” The story of billionaire rake Oliver Queen’s transformation into a vigilante quickly found an audience, and two years later came The Flash, a spinoff that’s now The CW’s most watched series. The shows “brought men back,” says Pedowitz. “It broadened our audience, which made us more interesting to our affiliates and to many advertisers.”

There’s an element of corporate synergy to the current wave: DC, which publishes Green Arrow and The Flash, shares a parent company, Time Warner, with The CW; Marvel, which puts out the comics in which Agent Carter and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. feature, is owned by Disney, as is ABC, which broadcasts both shows. Still, that wouldn’t make much difference if not for significant technological advances. “We’ve gotten to a very sophisticated place in terms of visual effects,” says Jeph Loeb, Marvel’s head of TV. “You’re able to produce the kind of quality people expect not just for the budget you have but also the amount of time you have.” This is reflected not only in making more stuff explode, explains Agent Carter coshowrunner Tara Butters, but in subtle ways too: “In the pilot, when Howard Stark gets in the boat and starts motoring off, [1940s] Manhattan in the background is a visual effect. We couldn’t have done that even five years ago. The cost would’ve been astronomical.”

These developments are all the more powerful because viewers today are spoiled for choice. “At any given moment, when you’re flicking around channels at home, Thor is on, Man of Steel is on, so you’re competing against those movies too,” says Andrew Kreisberg, a TV and comics writer who was cocreator and co–executive producer of Arrow before undertaking the same work on The Flash. “If you’re not delivering the spectacle you see in a feature, it’s always going to feel less than.”

While the movies began exploiting comics’ potential nearly a decade before TV did, the latter is perhaps a more natural fit for the medium. Pedowitz calls comics “gigantic serialized soaps. You have a treasure trove of material and the ability to look at the characters and what makes them tick.” Comics also offer ready-made storyboards. “Comics are a very low-cost way to explore new concepts, just like novels,” says The Walking Dead’s Kirkman. “But they have a leg up on novels because you can see more clearly how they’d translate.”

Balancing a fidelity to the source material with the creative license to veer from it is a delicate dance. Walking Dead star Andrew Lincoln sees this struggle as one of the defining dynamics of his show. “It’s an eternal wrestling match between the extremities of the comic and making this other thing,” he says. “I think tonally, and possibly emotionally, they try to walk the same path. But direct replicas, facsimiles, trying to be too faithful, that doesn’t work.” For any show, getting the mix wrong can have immediate, and often withering, consequences. Comic book fans tend to be, as Goyer puts it, “disproportionately vocal on the Internet. Bad buzz can really impact what the larger audience thinks, so it’s important to not stray too far from the core concepts.”

On The Walking Dead, some of the comic’s panels find their way into the show itself. Michael Cudlitz, who plays ex–military man Abraham Ford in the series, says showrunner Scott Gimple frequently references images from the comic. “Me and Rosita having sex in the store, and Eugene’s looking through the bookcase—that visual is lifted directly from a [panel],” he explains, referring to a scene from the first half of the current season. Matt Ryan, who plays the title role in Constantine, says reading Hellblazer was a revelation: “With comic books, you have the character’s inner voice written in the panels, so it’s very helpful in terms of getting inside his head.”

Taking in the broad swath of comic book shows either on air or in the pipeline reveals a notable focus on second-tier characters and comics. A recent deal will bring to Netflix four Marvel shows featuring what Loeb calls “street-level heroes”—Daredevil, A.K.A. Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist—as well as a miniseries based on The Defenders. “What makes those characters unique is if the Avengers are here to save the universe, [these four] are here to save the neighborhood,” he says. In part, this “street-level” focus is just business. “If a character is being exploited in a big way in features, they’re not going to exploit the same character simultaneously on TV,” says Kreisberg. In other words, Marvel is not about to let audiences get their fill of a live-action Spider-Man on a weekly basis, thus endangering his ability to pull $800 million the next time he hits theaters. That said, a Flash feature scheduled for 2018 and Fox’s potential X-Men TV series suggest comics have become such a gold mine that caution may be thrown to the wind.

Nonetheless, on TV, second-tier characters also free up producers from the expectations that come with iconic superheroes and allow them to tell stories that feel more relatable. “In order to do a Batman TV show that will appeal to a mainstream audience, you have to focus on real characters like Jim Gordon,” says Kirkman. “Comics that focus more on who the people are and why they’re doing what they’re doing—as opposed to what they’re actually doing—are more tailor-made for TV.”

Not surprisingly, a hit TV show does wonders for comic book sales. Kirkman estimates that he moves 10 times as many copies as he did before The Walking Dead aired, but he tries not to let this success affect his creative choices. Although Daryl Dixon, who has never appeared in the comic, has, in the hands of actor Norman Reedus, become arguably the most popular character on the show, Kirkman has resisted the temptation to put him in the book. “I try to block all that stuff out and stay the course, because the existence of the comic is what led to all of these things,” he says. “If I allow these things to change what the comic was originally supposed to be, then I’ll feel like I failed.”

With so many comic books on TV or headed that way, how much is too much? Viewership remains strong for Gotham, Arrow, and The Flash, but second-season ratings for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were down slightly from the first, the early returns for Agent Carter have been so-so, and, after a strong start, Constantine has struggled. Are audiences burning out? “That’s like saying there’s a danger of burnout from people adapting novels,” Kirkman says. “Certainly there’s a danger of burnout on superheroes specifically, but there’s a wealth of non-superhero material that’s able to be adapted into television very easily, and people are starting to wake up to that.” In addition to Kirkman’s Outcast, which chronicles a man possessed by a demon, and iZombie, about a medical student with a taste for brains (premiering March 17 on The CW), others in the pipeline include the political parable DMZ, the Western/crime drama Scalped, and Preacher, the story of a reverend with supernatural powers on a literal hunt for God, which Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are developing for AMC. Add to that DC’s Supergirl, Static Shock, and Titans projects, and it seems like TV is doubling down on comics.

“Honestly, I think this trend could be here to stay,” Kirkman says. “Comics are idea-generating machines, and once that starts going, it doesn’t stop.”

Blue Bloods Star Tom Selleck is the Shy, Not Retiring Type

Unlike Frank Reagan, the stern NYPD police commissioner he plays on his CBS hit Blue Bloods, the off-duty Tom Selleck likes to smile, flashing the deep-dish dimples that have won over audiences for more than four decades.

Dressed like the California rancher he is in a tan corduroy vest and casual blue-striped shirt and jeans, the grandfather of six (from stepson Kevin) talks easily and openly over scrambled eggs and bacon in the restaurant of an elegant Upper East Side apartment hotel where he lives while shooting the series. The voluble Selleck is happy to discuss his long career, talk a little politics, and to reveal that—though he may not seem it—he’s been shy his entire life.

First, happy birthday! Do you mind if we reveal that you are turning 70 on January 29?
No. Everybody’s talking about it. It’s no big to me. I probably won’t even do a celebration. My wife, Jillie, won’t throw a surprise party, but I’ll be working and I’m sure my TV family will have a cake for me.

Mark Harmon recently said that he doesn’t spend one second thinking about his appearance. Do you?
I do. I like to think it’s in the context of the work. Clark Gable used to say [acting] isn’t a normal occupation for a man. I tend to think that. I don’t primp. I haven’t had anything fixed. Except my hip. I played a lot of sports, and I got a new hip during the last hiatus.

Congratulations are also due for Blue Bloods’ ratings. You’re averaging 13.6 million viewers. Not bad for a show in its fifth season.
Last week, we were the No. 1 scripted show at 10pm on any night. I get a little frustrated that it doesn’t seem to register with people what we accomplish on Friday nights.

You’ve complained that CBS doesn’t promote the show enough.
They don’t. I think CBS is very happy with our performance, but sometimes they forget about us. Nonetheless, people find us.

After five years are you still enjoying playing Frank?
I’m not bored at all. He’s a fascinating character and a very difficult acting challenge. A good commander can’t show anxiety, worry, or weakness when he’s in front of his people. The challenge as an actor is how do I let the audience know how concerned Frank is about the people he leads, while playing a character who has to put on a command face.

Off the set, you are warm and informal, but on screen you seem to really inhabit the commanding presence of New York’s top cop.
Thank you. There were a couple of early scripts when I would be barking out orders: “Send eight cars there! Do this! Do that!” I said to the producers, “I don’t have to prove I’m the boss. I am the boss, or you wouldn’t have hired me.” I can play that serious gravitas, but I’m happy that when [executive producer] Kevin Wade came in, he gave Frank some humor.

You know Bill Bratton, New York City’s current police commissioner. Do you learn anything from him?
I do. Bratton had a lot of influence on me. I read his book Turnaround, about his first time on the job, under Rudy Giuliani. Though they were on the same page philosophically, there was a lot of conflict between the mayor and his police commissioner.

How close to reality do you want the show to be, considering the strife that is going on now with the New York cops, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Bratton.
It’s lazy and inappropriate to rip things from the headlines. There’s stuff on the show that seems very timely, but really was developed months before. We’ve shown conflict between Frank and Mayor Poole [David Ramsey] for three years. When we do handle difficult storylines, we feel a responsibility to show both sides in a dramatic way. Not balance for balance’s sake, but because it makes Frank stronger if you don’t dumb down his opponents.

What do cops say to you when they see you on the street?
The actors, writers, and producers don’t want to make NYPD officers perfect, but I know that a lot of cops think we are presenting a three-dimensional picture of who they are in life. All cops have to salute the police commissioner, and sometimes I get a salute! That’s a big deal.

You were 35 when you won fame playing the irrepressible private eye Thomas Magnum. What were you doing before that?
Six unsold pilots.

Weren’t you a model for a while, and even a Marlboro Man?
I did a Salem billboard for about 500 bucks and forever since I’ve been called the Marlboro Man. I did commercials and maybe four still-photography jobs to pay the rent. But in those days, being known as a male model didn’t help your career.

So you weren’t discovered for your looks at a soda fountain like Lana Turner?
[Laughs] Actually a casting director saw me on The Dating Game, where I was hopelessly inept.

What were you doing on The Dating Game?
All my fraternity brothers at the University of Southern California were going on with their girlfriends. Shame on them, they would rig it and pretend they didn’t know each other. I was hopeless. I was very shy.

You were good-looking and an athlete—on the baseball and basketball teams!
All through high school and college, if I fancied someone I had to be fixed up and double-date.

Those women must have kicked themselves later that they didn’t choose you.
Well, I got a good agent from doing the show who helped me get an audition for a 20th Century Fox new-talent program. I was in business school planning a career with United Airlines, and I’d never done any acting! I did a horrible scene from Barefoot in the Park, but I was lucky because [20th president] Dick Zanuck was a huge UCLA basketball fan and he asked me if I knew Kareem Abdul-Jabbar [then known as Lew Alcindor]. When I told him that I played against Kareem [in USC–UCLA games], that’s probably why I got the job. It was a blessing, because I never got a grade higher than a C in my major. When I asked my dad whether I should take the chance to quit United Airlines and take the Fox training and earn $35 a week, he told me, “I don’t think you want to be 35 years old and look back and say, ‘What if?’ ” He really embraced risk. [Selleck’s eyes tear up.] Sorry, I get emotional. There’s a bit of my father in Frank Reagan.

What other risks have you taken professionally?
A lot of people told me not to do [the 1997 film] In & Out because I was playing a closeted gay television reporter, and a tabloid had said I was gay just a few years earlier. I said, “I’ve been trying to do an ensemble comedy forever, and this is one of the best ensembles I’ve ever seen.” Because I had sued several tabloids for falsely saying I was gay, people were saying I was anti-gay. Playing the role ended both those rumors.

How did you wind up playing Courteney Cox’s boyfriend Richard on Friends?
I had just come off three big-grossing movies, and I got professional advice saying, “If you do this, they’ll say you’re crawling back to TV.” I had an edge on the role because I had screen-tested with Courteney and I knew we’d have chemistry.

Is there any project you really regret doing?
There’s only one movie I say ill things about. I was offered [1992’s] Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, with Marlon Brando, who in my generation was the Man. I said I’d only do it if Brando was in it. But when I got on set, instead of seven scenes with Brando, there was only one and he didn’t speak. I tried to quit, but I was warned I’d be sued. It was a horrible movie! Gene Siskel reviewed my hair. I realized that wanting to act with someone, even Brando, was a bad reason to take a role.

On the other hand, you nearly did Raiders of the Lost Ark, right?
There’s a myth that I turned it down. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas wanted me to do it and held out the offer for a month, but I had the Magnum, P.I. pilot and CBS wouldn’t let me do both.

You and your second wife, Jillie Mack, have been married for 27 years. How did you meet?
I was filming Lassiter in London. I went to see Cats because my friend Brian Blessed was in it, and I was fascinated by this person who looked pretty good in her leotard and whiskers. People in the show told her the guy from Magnum was staring at her and she said, “What’s that?” When I called her, I hemmed and hawed so long, she finally asked, “Would you like to take me out for a cocktail?”

Does your daughter with Jillie, Hannah, want to be an actress?
No, thank God. I’m very proud of her. She’s an equestrian, and wants to ride in the Olympics.

You’ve said that you were sometimes put in a box politically, especially after you appeared at the Republican convention in 1984 and worked with the NRA.
And my commercial for [right-leaning magazine] National Review, which didn’t help. I don’t mind saying I certainly lean toward being a conservative civil libertarian, but I have given money to Democrats and I served on the board of the [bipartisan] Josephson Institute of Ethics for 20 years.

How do you feel about actors speaking out about their political beliefs?
I believe strongly that you don’t use your access to the media to blow your political horn when you’re on someone else’s nickel. I would defy anybody who watched Rosie O’Donnell ambush me on her talk show [attacking my support for the NRA] to tell me what movie I was promoting.

Jesse Stone, your last TV movie franchise, did pretty well. Could it be revived?
Pretty well? The last movie had almost 15 million viewers! There’s a lot of interest out there in the business about doing more, probably not on CBS.

CBS owns the rights doesn’t it?
Yes, but I have permission to take it elsewhere. Cable’s the place for it. Cable is a little more grown up. Jesse’s very adult.

It doesn’t sound like you’re ready to retire to the ranch any time soon.
Not any time soon.

Blue Bloods airs Fridays, 10/9c, CBS.

How to Get Away With Murder Plots a Killer Return

It’s an unseasonably warm December afternoon in Los Angeles, but as cameras roll filming the February 12 episode of How to Get Away With Murder, a bitter chill fills the air. Huddled together on a suburban street, four law-school students nervously look on while cops search the two-story Victorian belonging to their professor, Annalise Keating (Viola Davis)—the very home where one of the group killed Annalise’s husband, Sam (Tom Verica), as the others watched. But the bevy of boys in blue may be less of a threat to their freedom than the woman Annalise confronts outside her place.

“Get off my property!” barks the high-powered defense attorney. Hannah (Marcia Gay Harden)—a pivotal new character armed with a Chanel bag and plenty of righteous indignation aimed at Annalise—seems unfazed. “It’s my legal right to stand on this sidewalk,” she says, a self-satisfied smile tugging at her lips. “And I want to be here when they drag you out of the house in handcuffs.”

Covering up a homicide won’t be easy, even for the brilliantly resourceful Annalise Keating, when the show returns January 29. Then again, what else would you expect from the ABC thriller about a less-than-law-abiding attorney and the hyper-ambitious students—Wes (Alfred Enoch), Michaela (Aja Naomi King), Connor (Jack Falahee), Laurel (Karla Souza), and Asher (Matt McGorry)—who court trouble interning at her Philadelphia firm? With an average of nearly 16 million weekly viewers, Murder has become the season’s buzziest new show, thanks to its killer mix of pretzel-plotted mystery, scandalous storylines, and some of the most provocative sex ever to hit broadcast TV. Exhibit A: Annalise’s very pleasurable extramarital treat from cop boyfriend Nate (Billy Brown). Exhibit B: Conniving first-year law student Connor’s same-sex seduction of an office underling to secure valuable information for a case.

Created by Pete Nowalk and executive produced by his mentor, Shonda Rhimes, the drama is a breakneck-paced roller coaster that the woman behind Thursday’s other ABC hits, Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy, is thrilled to have in her ShondaLand theme park. “I’ll sit down to read a script and have moments where I have to call Pete and say, ‘What you did on Page 8 is crazy! I wouldn’t have thought to do that there,’” Rhimes says. “I love that he tells stories in a way that makes me lean forward and go, ‘What’s gonna happen next?’”

Fans have been asking that very question since Murder’s midseason finale in November, when the show’s central mystery—who killed Sam, Annalise’s philandering psychology professor husband—was solved. Wes did it. In the foyer. With a Lady Justice statuette. The decision to have the upstanding student whack Sam to stop him from choking Wes’s wrong-side-of-the-tracks girlfriend, Rebecca (Katie Findlay), was one Nowalk waffled on until the eleventh hour. “I was open to finding someone else,” he says. (Quiet legal eagle Laurel and Annalise’s icy associate Bonnie, played by Liza Weil, were other potential perpetrators.) “But Wes just felt very appropriate. He loves Rebecca and protected her, and I think that’s brave. Dark, but brave.”

The even bleaker twist? After learning her hubby of 20 years was dead, a chillingly calm Annalise told Wes not to be sorry for his actions. Still, Davis insists her character, who reported Sam missing to police, isn’t heartless. “When the show returns, you’ll definitely see an Annalise who’s devastated by the loss,” the actress says. “But while she’s mourning, she’s also at the cusp of having a come-to-Jesus moment about the path she’s taking in life.”

In fact, every major character will be irrevocably changed by Wes’s deadly deed and the ensuing investigation that begins in the January 29 episode, titled “Hello, Raskolnikov”—a nod to the law-student protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, whose guilt over committing murder drives him to madness. As Annalise and her students give individual statements to police, “the tension we’re dealing with is whether they crack and confess or turn on each other,” Nowalk says. “To get away with this, they have to keep secrets. And they have to continue to do really bad things.”

A former writer on Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy, and Rhimes’s now-shuttered Private Practice, Nowalk had long toyed with the idea of a series about corrupt law associates. But it wasn’t until he decided to age down the characters, making them cutthroat classmates with a ruthless defense-attorney professor, that he finally zeroed in on the Murder plot. “It felt much more exciting,” Nowalk says, “if they were young and impressionable and the professor could manipulate them.” Exciting being the operative word. A fan of old-school legal thrillers like Presumed Innocent and Jagged Edge, Nowalk wanted his show “to feel salacious and juicy, like those murder trials we all get obsessed with in real life.”

To ground the show, Nowalk knew he needed the right leading lady. Enter two-time Oscar nominee Davis, who was looking for the kind of flashy role that had eluded her in film. “I wanted something to bite into,” says the 49-year-old actress, “something complicated that showed what I could do, other than the best friend and the maid.”

While in Atlanta filming a movie, the Help star and the Los Angeles–based producers had their first conversation via speakerphone. “It was like the best blind date ever,” says executive producer Betsy Beers. “Viola already had so much insight into the things that are most interesting about Annalise—her vulnerability and messiness.”

Since signing on, Davis has grown increasingly involved in shaping her character, a collaboration Nowalk values. “I sometimes feel like she’s Picasso, and I’m just handing her the paint,” says the showrunner. He reports that the February 19 episode, which sheds light on Annalise’s backstory, was born from the actress’s ideas. And it was Davis who pitched arguably the drama’s most powerful moment. In the fourth episode, entitled “Let’s Get to Scooping,” Annalise sits before her bedroom mirror wordlessly removing her makeup and sleek wig to reveal her natural, close-cropped curls. Davis, whose performance has been nominated for a Golden Globe and SAG Award, says that any sense of vanity was trumped by her desire to strip an often inscrutable character bare: “When I took this job, I felt like I could either do what’s expected in TV when a character is ‘sexy’ and ‘mysterious,’ which is lose weight and make sure the makeup is always tight, or I could play a woman anchored in truth. And for me, a person that strong and emotionally detached wears a mask in public. I was interested in who she was when she took that mask off at night.”

Nowalk has taken a decidedly bold approach to all of his characters’ private lives. For one, whip-smart Connor has just as active and hot a love life as any straight character. “It’s a sexy show,” says Nowalk, who is openly gay, “and I wanted equal-opportunity sex for everyone.”

While it’s not uncommon to see love scenes involving same-sex couples on Rhimes’s shows, it’s still a rarity on broadcast TV overall—a fact Rhimes has little patience for. “It’s insulting that people think we’re being wild or pushing the envelope because of the people who happen to be doing the making out,” she says. “The characters aren’t doing anything you haven’t seen. It’s just that it’s two men versus a man and woman that suddenly makes everyone think it’s so shocking. And that’s depressing.”

For Falahee, the opportunity to play a groundbreaking character is one he never expected. Little more than a year ago, the Michigan native was paying the bills working for Lyft, a ride-sharing service for which drivers use their own cars. These days, people are flagging his Prius down for an entirely different reason. “I was at a stoplight the other day, singing to Beyoncé superloud, and someone in the car next to me yells, ‘Hey, you’re on that show—you’re great!’” he recalls.

The rest of the young cast has seen life change in the wake of Murder’s success, too. Souza, who’d previously worked largely in her native Mexico, is now recognized in the States, while King is often stopped at the grocery store by fans “wanting to know what’s gonna happen next,” she says, “and I say I’m as eager to find out as anyone else!” And even as his profile has grown, Enoch—a British actor who appeared in the Harry Potter films—has continued to stick to his routine of taking public transportation to set, which has made for some interesting interactions with fellow commuters. “I sat down next to this lady who looked at me and went, ‘What are you doing on the bus?’”

The drama’s upcoming twists will likely throw fans for a loop as well. In the midseason premiere, Annalise—with an assist by her loyal associate Frank (Charlie Weber)—goes to extreme lengths to get charges dropped against Rebecca, who stands accused of bumping off Lila Stangard, Sam’s sorority-girl mistress. While Annalise, Bonnie, and the students all suspect Sam killed the coed, that’s not necessarily the case. “You will get an answer to who did it this season,” Nowalk promises. “We’ll see Lila alive again [in flashbacks]. We’ll see more of her murder night, and exactly where Sam was.”

Two major guest stars also promise to make a vivid impression: Emmy winner Cicely Tyson is booked for a one-episode mystery role (might she be Annalise’s mother?), and Oscar winner Harden is sticking around for a three-episode arc. “Hannah’s a dog with a bone about finding the truth,” says Harden, whose character shares decades of dysfunctional history with Annalise, “and yet she’s presumptuous about what she thinks the truth is.” Nowalk warns against presuming anything about the drama’s top-secret two-hour season finale on February 26. The only guarantees? “It will be big,” he allows. “It will be shocking. And it will be satisfying.” Much like Murder itself.

Downton Abbey Returns With More High-Society Secrets–And Sex!

This could be the year that Lady Mary takes a lover — or, at the very least, takes control. In the Season 5 premiere of PBS’s smash period drama Downton Abbey the eldest Crawley daughter (Michelle Dockery) considers a gentleman caller’s indecent proposal as they converse in her bedroom. Her one caveat if she is to agree to the tryst: “No one must ever find out.”

After two years of mourning her husband, Matthew, Mary is ready to “embrace her life and embrace change,” Dockery says. She’s regained the regal air and acerbic wit inherited from her formidable grandmother, the Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith, who has won two Emmys for her withering repartee). As Mary explains in the season premiere, she not only wants a proper father for her toddler, George, but also someone she can commit to without reservation — “I intend to be as happy with my second husband as I was with the first” — and she wants to ensure they’re compatible in every way. To that end, she’s still juggling the two suitors who wooed her last season: the sincere-seeming Tony Gillingham (Tom Cullen) and the blunt-talking Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden). “She’s leaning toward one of them,” Dockery teases, “but both are handsome, eligible men.”

Whether either will suit Mary’s standards is far from decided. “The forging of a second marriage is a complicated business,” executive producer Gareth Neame says. And Mary’s not the only one contemplating a second chance at love. Lord Merton (Douglas Reith) continues to woo Matthew’s mother, Isobel (Penelope Wilton), and Violet plays matchmaker. “Romance,” Neame says, “is not entirely reserved for the young.”

Mary’s reignited confidence extends outside the bedroom. The budding businesswoman is intent on making the financially precarious Downton profitable, and her plans often conflict with the old-fashioned ways of her father, Robert (Hugh Bonneville). “Robert has a morality based on the responsibilities of a 19th-century landowner. It’s adorable, but it leaves him and the estate vulnerable,” says creator Julian Fellowes, who himself lives in a 17th-century English manor house. “From a historical perspective, Downton’s future is far from certain. The 1920s are the first wave of the great families and their great houses going under. Mary is more a creature of the modern world.”

Still, as modern as she tries to be, Mary knows from experience that shattering society’s taboos is not something to undertake lightly. Losing her virginity in Season 1 to a visiting Turkish diplomat — who then died in her bed — nearly derailed her plans after the secret was leaked by her resentful sister Edith (Laura Carmichael). To save her family embarrassment, Mary agreed to marry an arrogant newspaper publisher so he wouldn’t write the story. (In the end, he showed a gentlemanly streak and quashed the exposé.) Since Mary feels obligated to enter marriage with complete honesty, will the next man she chooses be as forgiving as Matthew was when he learned the truth?

Secrets run though Downton like a river this season. No one is hiding a bigger one than Edith, who had a daughter after a dalliance with her married — and now missing — employer, Michael Gregson (Charles Edwards). Only her aunt Rosamund (Samantha Bond) and grandmother Violet know that Edith gave birth to a baby girl, but even they are unaware that Edith has placed the child, named Marigold, with a local farmer and his wife. “She’s trying to find a way to be part of Marigold’s life while keeping it from her family,” Carmichael says. “If they find out, it would be shocking and shameful.”

“[Society] could turn a blind eye to a widow having an affair,” says Fellowes, “but it wouldn’t forgive a young woman who got pregnant by a man who couldn’t marry her.” Between Mary and Edith’s bad luck the first time each had sex, Carmichael jokes, “I think Julian is trying to send a message to young women.”

Young men in the Downton era may have more sexual freedom, but they’re still shackled by class. Tom Branson (Allen Leech), the Crawleys’ former chauffeur and widower of youngest daughter Sybil, is caught between his Irish nationalist past and his present as a privileged guest of his titled in-laws. “Tom is trying to find his place in the world,” says Leech, adding that his fiery socialist friend, teacher Sarah Bunting (Daisy Lewis), is helping him. “The difficult question for Tom is, to be his own man, will he have to leave Downton?”

The downstairs members of the household also live in dread of secrets getting spilled. Baxter (Raquel Cassidy), Cora’s maid, is being blackmailed by conniving underbutler Thomas (Rob James-Collier). He knows about a crime from Baxter’s past and is forcing her to spy on maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt) and her husband, Bates (Brendan Coyle), whom Thomas has hated since Bates got the coveted job of Robert’s valet. What neither Baxter nor Thomas know is that Bates is a suspect in the murder of Green, Lord Gillingham’s valet, who raped Anna last season. Could Bates have avenged his wife by pushing Green under a bus? “There’s a danger about Bates,” Fellowes says, “that goes back to his time in prison when he was falsely convicted of killing his first wife.” Even Anna worries about his possible guilt. “What happened still haunts them,” Neame says. “As a fan, I hope this couple will get back to the heart of their relationship, which is incredibly strong and warm.”

With all these stories in play, viewers are lucky that Downton Abbey, again up for top honors at the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in January, has already been renewed for a sixth season. And despite reports that Season 6 would be the last, Fellowes says he has no plans to shutter the estate just yet. He cautions, however, that he’s not interested in “aging up the characters” or dragging them into the depressing 1930s.

Of course, if it were up to PBS, the Crawleys and their staff would see the 1950s and beyond. “Each year has surpassed the last,” says Rebecca Eaton, who for 29 years has been the executive producer of Masterpiec, the programming umbrella under which Downton falls. The ratings for Downton‘s fourth season grew 12 percent from the third, and the Masterpiece franchise has risen more than 100 percent since before Downton‘s premiere. This year PBS gave Masterpiece 20 more hours to program. New series include Grantchester, about a clergyman in 1950s England, premiering January 18; and Wolf Hall, an adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s prize-winning historical novels, debuting in April and starring Homeland‘s Damian Lewis.

Dockery, for one, plans to stay with Downton until Fellowes is finished. “I love playing Mary, and I love being part of a show that for all of us has been really special,” she says. “None of us ever imagined how huge a success it would become. Why would I want to leave that?”