Playmakers
| Playmakers | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Genre | Drama |
| Created by | John Eisendrath |
| Written by | John Eisendrath Michael Angeli Craig Sweeney |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | American English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 11 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | John Eisendrath Micheal Angeli Craig Sweeney |
| Running time | 60 Minutes (including commercials) |
| Production company(s) |
ESPN Unscripted, Inc. Touchstone Television |
| Distributor | Buena Vista Television |
| Release | |
| Original network | ESPN |
| Original release | August 26 – November 11, 2003 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Playmakers is an American television series that aired on ESPN from August 26, 2003 to November 11, 2003. It depicted the lives of the Cougars, a fictional professional football team in an unidentified city. The show starred Omar Gooding, Marcello Thedford, Christopher Wiehl, Jason Matthew Smith, Russell Hornsby, and Tony Denison. The show, which ran eleven episodes, was the first original drama series created by ESPN. Although the ratings were very high for ESPN—Playmakers was the highest-rated show on the network other than its Sunday night NFL and Saturday college football games—ESPN eventually canceled the series under pressure from the National Football League, who disliked the portrayal of the negative aspects of its players' lives off the field.
The show followed the lives of various members of an ensemble cast who portray the players and personnel on a fictional American football team, the Cougars, in a fictional league (referred to in the series as "The League") during the regular season.
Many of these segments are prefaced by an internal monologue in the format of a character narrating in his head.
Hidden Pasts: Each character has some skeletons in his closet. For instance, throughout the show Leon Taylor is portrayed as a veteran and likeable protagonist, getting the audience to sympathize with him, while at the same time they portray DH in an antagonistic light. This is interesting because both have some major problems in their past, yet Leon's seem to almost overshadow DH's. As a teenager Leon beat up his stepfather badly in retaliation to his stepfather beating his mother that the man had cranial bleeding and had to go to the hospital. It's also revealed Leon has a daughter that Robyn doesn't know about. Throughout the show we see how Leon gets physical not only with Robyn when he pushes her, but with the Coach as he slams him up against the wall, DH when he punches him, and Olcyzk when he punches him too.
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Wikipedia