Today is a good day. Not only is it my sister’s birthday (everyone say HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEKAELA), it’s also a day in which I will bestow glorious power upon you. Like, okay, theoretical glorious power, but POWER NONETHELESS.
Here’s what I’d like you to do, if you’re willing to play along: cast your dream TV show. The plot of your show itself doesn’t matter so much and can be any genre–personally, I’m leaning towards team-based space opera myself, but to each her own–but everyone has to follow certain rules. You must cast at least 5 actors, maximum 13, from the 13 television shows listed below. Your actors must have either played a main character or a very prominent recurring character in these shows–don’t cheat by picking an actress who was in three episodes of a 150-episode show, people. Furthermore, you’re only allowed to cast 1 actor per show. That’s right, Firefly fans: you don’t get to have both Gina Torres and Alan Tudyk. You must CHOOSE. (The only exception to this is if you pick an actor who starred in two different shows from the list, in which case you could pick him from Show A and pick someone else from Show B. Otherwise, that’s it. No cheating.)
Don’t recognize a lot of these shows? Don’t worry, you can still play! Just check out the links to look at the actors involved. Even if you haven’t watched the actual TV show in question (I actually haven’t watched all 13 myself), I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll recognize at least 5 people among these casts.
Your shows to choose from:
Luke Cage
The Walking Dead
The Expanse
Firefly
The Flash
The Wire
The West Wing
Person of Interest
Parks & Recreations
Lost
Orange is the New Black
Grey’s Anatomy
Game Of Thrones
I hope you play. I really love hearing about people’s dream casts. Feel free to be as generic or specific as you want. You can just comment with your list of actors, or you can go for broke and give them names and job titles and dark secrets and horoscopes. I’m not gonna lie: I’m gonna give bonus points for dark secrets and horoscopes.
Also! Apparently, my blog has been eating some comments because it doesn’t actually like me? So I’ve recently made some changes to my settings that will hopefully make it easier to comment. Just in case that’s been holding you back. Talk to me. I’m so alooooooooone.
My Geek Blasphemy 
I need a source for Clancy Brown and an alternate source for Gina Torres or Alan Tudyk because my ultimate TV show would have all three.
If only I’d included Carnivale and Suits. Or maybe Powerless. Alas. There are so many TV shows. Compromises must be made. (Thinking about it, I am also a little sad about Clancy Brown. He’s kind of magnificent. But what’s done is done.)
The Last Starfighter (TV Remake)
Alex Rogan / Beta Alex – Chris Pratt (Parks & Recreation)
Grig – Mike Colter (Luke Gage)
Maggie Gordon – Katherine Heigel (Grey’s Anatomy)
Xur – Michael Emerson (Person of Interest)
Centauri – Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones)
Lord Kril – Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Lost)
Kodan Officer – Alan Tudyk (Firefly)
Enduran (president) – Martin Sheen (The West Wing)
Louis Rogan – Chandler Riggs (The Walking Dead)
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I can’t say I watched the original The Last Starfighter, so I know none of these characters myself, but anything with both Michael Emerson and Alan Tudyk would definitely get my interest. 🙂
Rusty Lake (series adaptation)
All characters would be played physically by the actors, not animated with voiceovers. They would wear excellent SFX makeup augmented by a small amount of CG, so it came off as classy and surreal instead of doofy and low-budget. This includes the dog and the parrot, both of which would use movie magic to make the actor appear the size of the pet in a convincing but uncanny-valley style costume.
The characters are largely taken from Rusty Lake Hotel, but the series would utilize flashbacks to go over their backstories and make it clear how their visit to Rusty Lake is the result of a confluence of events which is solved or in some way finalized by what transpires on the hotel grounds.
Mr. Crow – Michael Emerson (POI)
Mr. Owl – Erik LaRay Harvey (Luke Cage)
Mr. Boar – Maisie Williams, doing as deep of a voice as she can manage (GoT)
Ms. Pheasant – Uzo Aduba (OitNB)
Ms. Pigeon – Dominique Tipper (The Expanse)
Mr. Bat – Stockard Channing, whose part will require silent sarcasm (The West Wing)
bird prisoner – Jorge Garcia (Lost)
Harvey – Norman Reedus (Walking Dead)
the Dog – Chris Pratt (Parks & Rec)
Deer skull + antlers in a suit – Sandra Oh, who will never be cast as a masked villain ever unless i do it, so here’s my gift to you, Oh! (Grey’s Anatomy)
Corrupted soul(s) – Nathan Fillion, whose part mostly requires screaming (Firefly)
Now that i played by the rules, i just have to say that if i could swap three out for random actors, i’d put Kristen Schaal in for Norman Reedus’s part, give Nathan Fillion’s part to Dana Snyder, and have the bird prisoner played by Louis CK instead.
* There are a few male characters being played by women because idgaf. Men do female characters on television, in movies, and in cartoons and have for all of film history, but unless it’s Peter Pan, it rarely goes the other way. That’s bullshit. (I’m looking at you, Bob’s Burgers. You’re a great show but you sure don’t like to pay women to voice women, do you? DO YOU?)
Bart Simpson is voiced by a woman. That’s all I’ve got, though.
Right? It’s hard to think of any. They exist here and there, but in contrast, i can name women-voiced-by-men for pages. (I’d be way okay with that if it also went the other way more often, because, for example, Doctor Mrs The Monarch is a treasure i would hate to lose.)
First let me thank you, sincerely, for playing by the rules before breaking them. I appreciate that.
I’ve never heard of these games before, but after reading your email, I’m officially interested. I did look up a COUPLE of screen caps, but only to get an idea of what some of the characters would look like for a live-action TV show. I think you have considerably more faith in makeup/CGI than I do. That being said, I’m pretty sure you’re gonna win for Most Original Dream Show. 🙂
You have a pretty fantastic cast here . . . though I admit to being amused that you managed to pick the one and only actor in Luke Cage that I didn’t like. Otherwise, I’m basically just drooling over this lineup.
I’ve never seen an episode of Bob’s Burgers in my life, but your ire with them warms my heart regardless. 🙂
How can you not watch Bob’s?! It’s about a functional family that sticks together and loves each other for their sometimes annoying idiosyncrasies as well as their more agreeable traits. And they’re all artists who fail at their art a lot (with the exception of Bob, who fails at MARKETING his art, and maybe Louise is more of a con artist).
ANYWAY
I wasn’t particularly sold on Harvey’s performance in Luke Cage either, but his voice would make a fantastic Mr. Owl, and i think someone else casting would have gone for a pudgy owl but i like the idea of a muscular one!
I am probably being optimistic about the makeup/CGI, but then again, i can think of some pretty good combinations of those things that i found maybe not realistically convincing, but at least classy and capable of suspending my disbelief! 😀
Historically, cartoons are more likely to catch my attention if they have superheroes or aliens or giant robots. And until you commented, I’ve never heard a plot description for that show that didn’t basically go like “family tries to make burger restaurant work and they kind of suck at it, ha ha, the laughs.” It never piqued my interest.
I usually won’t watch anything, cartoon or not, that isn’t technically impossible. I have plenty of real life all around me, so when i’m focusing on fiction i want it to move beyond reality. I see that as a noble use of our sentience, to not just perceive and reflect upon that which exists, but to actually predict and project and ruminate on what-if’s and perhapses.
So sometime you should give it a shot, because i love it in spite of the fact that there are literally no unicorns, spaceships, or ghosts. ❥
I would cast Chris Pratt, Alan Tudyk, Jim Caviezel, Bradley Whitfield, and Kate Mulgrew. I’m picturing a comedic murder mystery, ala Clue. I love mysteries and these people all have awesome comedic timing. I’m picturing Caviezel as the red herring, and Tudyk as the actual murderer. I feel like he could go from goofy to terrifying really well.
OH MY GOD I WANT THIS RIGHT NOW. I’m also 100% with you on Tudyk. Actually, I’ve kind of seen him do just that.
I just love those moments when you think back and realize that a twist makes perfect sense and was properly foreshadowed, while still not having predicted it at all. Say Tuydk being seen coming out of a room he shouldn’t have been in, but he is such a goofball it doesn’t hit your radar. Until he drop the act and is about to kill Bradley Whitford’s character ( Chris Pratt is already dead and he plans to frame Caviezel).
Agreed. Properly foreshadowed twists can be hard to pull off, but when people do it right, it’s AWESOME. (But . . . someone save Bradley Whitford’s character!)
Don’t worry. Kate Mulgrew shoots Tudyk dead square in the head at the last second. She was only pretending to be dead earlier!
Please tell me you’re going to just write this as…what would you call this? It’s not really fanfic, it’s just like… original fic with celebrity casting? Is there a word for this that i don’t know? Anyway i really want to read it.
I promise i’ll forget about the twist and be surprised!
EXCELLENT.
I also want this now. I’m sort of disappointed it’s not a thing. (Quick, become a wealthy, influential producer and make it happen.)
Sadly, the shows you provided don’t have nearly enough hot Asian actors to cast my fantasy kdrama based on my interactive novel idea about an ace/aro girl who gets hired to work at a mythological creature menagerie and has to save the world by getting the various mythological creatures to find true love with each other.
WHICH WE WILL MAKE
OOOH, that sounds awesome. I want, I want.
And yes, sorry about that. Obviously, I don’t know enough kdramas yet. All I’ve got is Healer (which I’m still working through and I have no IDEA who I’d pick from it b/c they’re all so awesome) and Nightmare High/Nightmare Teacher (which totally doesn’t count but it had cool aspects! Unfortunately, it was also very repetitive and had a pretty weaksauce ending.)