FX Makes Tim Roth A Bank Robber

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LIE TO ME and RESERVOIR DOGS Star Gets New Show

Television continues to get its act together for the forthcoming Fall 2012 schedule, and today a doozy has been announced for all avowed crime-heads.  Tim Roth, star of such films as Reservoir Dogs and such TV shows as Fox’s Lie to Me, has worked a development deal with the FX network, home of our beloved Justified, to bring us a bank robber show.

A bank robber show!

Details are slim, but here’s the story according to Deadline: Roth and his co-creator on this as-yet untitled project, Homeland co-exec Alexander Cary, have received a script commitment from FX for this drama, which will star Roth, about “addiction, bank robbery, and an extremely volatile family dynamic.”

Good.  I want it now.  Please.

It’s a fairly vague synopsis, as one would expect at this early stage, but my finely-honed instincts are telling me it’ll be a Sopranos-esque sort of deal, a dramedy-type thing but instead of Mafiosi, we’ll have bank robbers.  And if Tim Roth isn’t a name you can trust, then I am sad for you because you’ve clearly been hurt badly before.

Tim Roth’s last big project was the Fox show, Lie to Me.  It was the British actor’s first starring US television role because, really, why should Hugh Laurie hog all the action?  He played Dr. Cal Lightman, who ran a private company of forensic psychologists who would be brought in on the really tough cases local law couldn’t handle.  Basically, they were really, really good profilers and negotiators, Roth’s character able to tell easily when someone was bullshitting him, hence the title.

I admit with some chagrin that I never saw Lie to Me.  For one thing, it was on the air at a time when I wasn’t watching a whole lot of TV (these comic books don’t read themselves).  And for another, it was on the air for a very short time, accumulating only 48 episodes over three seasons, from ’09 to just last year.  But I do remember seeing a promo and being very glad that ol’ Roth had some steady work.

Usually when a film actor deigns to do TV, it’s because his or her movie career isn’t exactly on fire.  And that’s kind of a bummer, but hey, it did wonders for Keifer Sutherland.  And frankly, Tim Roth can pretty much do whatever he wants as far as I’m concerned, whether it’s TV or movies, high quality or low.  And that is for the extremely sentimental reason that he was featured in two films that had a profound effect on me that resonates to this day.  I was a senior in high school when a little film called Pulp Fiction hit the theatres, and I was there on opening night at the old Krikorian in El Cajon, CA.  I had been excited for the film just from the trailers, but nothing could have prepared me for it, especially not that opening scene.  Roth and Amanda Plummer discussing bank robbery and what to do with their lives.  By the time Dick Dale’s “Misirlou” kicked in, I was hooked for life on all this crime stuff, forever and ever, hail Satan.  That very same week, my best friend and I rented and watched Reservoir Dogs at least two or three times, and the rest, as they say, is Jimmy likes Tim Roth a lot still, even if Four Rooms doesn’t really hold up anymore.

Keep your eyes here for any and all further developments on this new FX show.