Designated Survivor gets a creative reboot on Netflix, with topical storylines and rawer and more profane dialogue

Los Angeles Times

“This is a series about today,” new showrunner Neal Baer says of taking over the canceled ABC drama for its first Netflix season. The veteran executive producer on ER, Law & Order: SVU and Under the Dome wanted to bring the issue-oriented flavor from his past shows to Designated Survivor. "There are so many things that I want to explore that I can explore with this platform,” he said, adding: “I can’t see the networks doing those kinds of shows now because their business model is appealing to the widest number of people possible without offending them. I don’t think you get that kind of strong storytelling that we used to do, that I was able to do....I told Kiefer (Sutherland) I was going to give him a transgender sister-in-law and cast Jamie Clayton, who was on Sense8," he says. “I gave Lauren Holly’s character an opioid addiction — I really wanted to get into the companies that produce them. I wanted an HIV story showing two African American gay men in love, and what it’s like to be undetectable. That’s never been done on television before.” Sutherland says he welcomed the changes. “Neal had a very strong sense of what he wanted to do. We could lean into a more realistic sense of what was happening at the White House. I am very grateful to Netflix for that.”

ALSO:

• Profanity adds excitement to Designated Survivor, but the show struggles with its bolder direction: "Here’s the trouble: Those are storylines with heft, and Designated Survivor has never been interested in heft," says Allison Shoemaker. "In the seven episodes made available for this review—the first six, and the last—the show flails almost every time one of its original cast members approaches a scene of any gravity concerning the reelection. They just, with the exception of the invaluable Kal Penn, look bored. Some of that may simply be the flatness of the dialogue: The show is incredibly hesitant to ever make Kirkman seem as though he has things to learn or anything resembling a blind spot, so conversations with the president saying something, a nameless character responding with a probable audience question or objection, and Kirkman responding, in effect, with a 'No, that’s how other politicians do things, but I am good.' It often feels as though the series wants to anticipate the eye-rolls by having its most prominent character immediately declare them invalid, a frankly baffling approach that makes the show’s Bartlet-lite man of the people sometimes intolerable."
• Season 3 is finally (almost) the show it's always wanted to be:
• New showrunner Neal Baer says Kiefer Sutherland told him, "I do not want this to be any more like 24, where Kirkman, you know, saves the world from a tsunami"