You may not know his name, but chances are you know at least a variation of Tim Minear’s story. He’s the guy who is toiling away in Hollywood, perpetually thisclose to being the next big thing. In the way that George Clooney starred in 15 failed TV pilots before hitting the jackpot with ER, or how Judd Apatow’s sitcoms kept getting canceled before he became a huge movie director, Minear has produced multiple shows that ended before their time.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, after a bidding war, Minear’s new drama, Miracle Man, has ended up at ABC. Minear’s latest show “centers on a disgraced former televangelist, a man of no faith, who finds that God is using him to perform real miracles and change lives, starting with his own.”
Heading up the project with Minear is Emmy winner Todd Holland, with whom Minear first worked on the beloved but short-lived show Wonderfalls. Both are executive producing, while Minear is writing and Holland is handling directing duties.
The story behind Miracle Man is a personal one. Minear grew up in an evangelical household where he listened to preachers tape sermons in his father’s recording studio. While Miracle is based partly on this as well as the sex and fraud-related Televangelist scandals of the 1980s, Minear is quick to point out that his show “is not in any way an indictment to religion. It's a love letter to the religious.”
Hopefully for Minear, coming back to ABC will prove to be a fortuitous event. He was first there a decade ago working on Lois & Clark, his first full-time series job. Fox, who lost the bidding war to ABC, and with whom Minear has a development deal, is the network that unceremoniously dropped his last four projects (Drive, Standoff, The Inside and Wonderfalls).
As the deal is only for a pilot commitment, there is no scheduled premiere date for Miracle Man.
