Serial killers are a dime a dozen on TV this year, what with “The Following,” “Hannibal,” and the various CBS procedurals that trade in grisly specifics and menace directed at women.
This summer, NBC is trying to change up the game by taking the standard features of the crime drama and moving it overseas.
“Crossing Lines,” an Ed Bernero (“Criminal Minds”) production premiering June 23 (9 p.m.), moves the action to Prague, Amsterdam, Paris and the south of France as an international investigative team hunts down a serial killer who’s been leaving his victims in Europe’s famous parks (Dublin’s Phoenix, London’s Richmond and Paris’s Bois de Boulogne).
The team is headed by up by Carl Hickman, a retired, disabled former New York cop who lives in Amsterdam and picks up trash at an amusement park.
Hickman is played by William Fichtner, one of those actors who so often shows up in small parts in movies that you see him and say, “Hey, there’s that guy.”
As the only American on the case, Fichtner is a fish out of water.
In one key scene, he finds a corpse and, panicked, dials the American emergency number — 911 — and then quickly realizes that he’s in Paris (and that the correct number is 17).
Fichtner is working with European actors, whose wrinkles and facial creases — features that may develop during years of police work — may startle American viewers more accustomed to the Botox-smoothed faces of Hollywood performers.
But he says he was thrilled to be in their company.
“Because we have a multinational cast, it’s not just a gimmick,” he told reporters.
“And I found that was not just something that was kind of a nifty thing but part of the heartbeat of the show,” Fichtner says.
And basing the show in Europe gave the writers a lot of flexibility.
“Criminals can travel the borders, can cross over without being really monitored or checked anymore,” says executive producer Rola Bauer.
“And Europe didn’t have anything that was proactive.”