• by Paul Gough , April 8, 2003

Lifetime is aiming to extend its franchise in drama with its largest two-year financial commitment to development and fielding the most original primetime programming in the network's 19-year history.

Beginning in the summer, Lifetime will premiere two more hours of primetime dramas on Saturdays and three new unscripted shows to in the 8 p.m. hour that has been home to Unsolved Mysteries for the past several years. It's part of an $800 million investment in programming the network has announced.

The Saturday dramas have yet to be picked from a pool of four pilots. The two shows will debut in August. They include 1-800 Missing, about a female FBI agent and her partner who has the psychic ability to find missing people; Follow the Leeds, about two women who run a private investigation firm with their mother (and starring Sharon Lawrence, Maria Pitillo and Marsha Mason); Nick and Shelly, about a female detective whose partner is her ex-husband; and Wild Card, a series about a former blackjack dealer who becomes an insurance fraud investigator.

Tim Brooks, Lifetime's SVP of research, said Lifetime's rise to the top of cable networks was sparked by a commitment to a Sunday night drama block. It began with Any Day Now in 1998-99 and continued with Strong Medicine and The Division (Any Day Now has since departed). "It's really what brought the Lifetime brand together for a lot of women," Brooks said. Brooks said Lifetime wants to extend the Sunday night dramatic franchise into Saturdays, and have even more than two of the top cable dramas on the air.

One part of the schedule getting a refit is the 8 p.m. block. Fridays are already occupied by Final Justice, a series hosted by Erin Brockovich that premiered in January. It will be joined next week by What Should You Do? That show, featuring a number of experts, offers real-life solutions to real-life problems in a kind of public-service unscripted series that features recreations like Unsolved Mysteries does. Secret Lives is a limited-run series hosted by soap-opera star Kristian Alfonso, which shows the true stories of people who have lived double lives or have a secret past. Another series, Make Me Over, features makeovers by trusted friends and Merge helps newly married couples become one household.

Brooks said Lifetime is trying to develop shows that are similar in tone to Unsolved Mysteries - featuring the same kind of mystery-based, solution-based programs - and plant them on different nights. Several other unscripted programs are in the works and it's possible, Brooks said, that an individual show would be expanded to run twice a week in the 8 p.m. programming block.