Airdate: Boss

It’s still a little way off, but I thought readers would like to know that Kelsey Grammer’s Boss will be screening on Australian television from July.

With Grammer in a dramatic role, this one has attracted quite a bit of buzz, including a Golden Globe win as Best Actor (defeating some serious competition including Hugh Laurie, Michael C. Hall. Jon Hamm and Bryan Cranston.

The series was produced for cable network Starz, while Hollywood director Gus Van Sant (Milk, Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho) also directed the premiere episode.

Looking forward to this!

Mayor Tom Kane (Grammer) sits like a spider at the centre of Chicago’s web of power; a web built on a covenant with the people. They want to be led; they want disputes settled, jobs dispensed, and loyalties rewarded. If he achieves all this through deception and immorality, so be it.

Yet despite being the most effective mayor in recent history, a degenerative brain disorder is ripping everything away from him. He can’t trust his memory, his closest allies, or even himself.

“Kane has now reached a point in his life where he must confront himself and to me it’s always more interesting when a character flirts with the idea of redemption rather than genuinely seeking it out,” says the Juilliard-trained Grammer, who collected four of his five Emmy Awards® plus two Golden Globes® playing the title role in the eleven season comedy Frasier.

“… Grammer shines just as steady and bright playing a corrupt city official as he did an arrogant radio therapist.” Los Angeles Times.

“Grammer is in nearly every scene of Boss, and he’s superb in all of them…. It’s a little like The West Wing in a bloody street brawl, with a lot more swearing and nudity and minus the adoration for what politics can be at its aspirational best.

“Screw that, Boss” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Joining Grammer in the main cast of Boss are Connie Nielsen (Gladiator, The Devil’s Advocate) as his wife Meredith, a formidable Chicago power player in her own right; Jeff Hephner (The O.C., Hellcats, Easy Money) as ambitious young politician Ben Zajac; Hannah Ware (Cop Out) as Kane’s estranged daughter Emma; Kathleen Robertson (Girls Club, Beverly Hills 90210, Hollywoodland) as Mayor Kane’s supremely organised chief of staff Kitty O’Neil; Martin Donovan (Weeds, Unthinkable) as Kane’s senior advisor; and Troy Garity (Sunshine, Bandits) as enterprising journalist Sam Miller, who is zeroing in on Kane.

Boss was created by Farhad Safinia who is also an executive producer on the series, along with Grammer, Gus Van Sant, Brian Sher, Stella Bulochnikov, Richard Levine and Lyn Greene. Lionsgate Television is producing Boss in association with Grammer’s Gramnet Productions and Sher and Bulochnikov’s Category 5 Entertainment.

8.30pm Wednesday July 11 on W (updated).