Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway by Scivally Bruce

Author:Scivally, Bruce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2014-11-28T23:00:00+00:00

9

Lois and Clark

Capitalizing on the new-found popularity of the Man of Steel, Warner Bros. put a new Superman series into development, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. As the title suggested, the new series would focus more on the romance of Lois Lane and Clark Kent, instead of emphasizing the heroics of Superman (though there would certainly be no shortage of superfeats in each episode). In omitting Superboy’s existence and putting the emphasis on Clark Kent, the show reflected the new direction of the John Byrne “revamp.”

After Lorimar Productions sold the idea for a new Superman series to ABC, they went to a writer/producer they had under contract, Deborah Joy Levine, to execute it. Lorimar, said Levine, chose her because they didn’t want to just go the action-adventure route with the series, but rather they wanted to make it a relationship show, and Levine was known as a “relationship” writer. Levine had previously produced the TV movies Murder by Reason of Insanity (1985) and Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story (1986), and wrote Something to Live For: The Alison Gertz Story (1992). Levine said she didn’t want to do a new Superman series, but she wouldn’t mind writing a romantic comedy called Lois & Clark, with Lois Lane being “the boss of Superman.” Once she came up with the title, the rest of the concept naturally fell into place. “The main twist that I did—and the one which people seem to be responding to—is that I wanted a more human Clark,” Levine told Edward Gross and Mark Altman. Her focus wasn’t on doing a show about Superman, but about two people who worked at the Daily Planet who had a love/hate relationship and, oh yes, one of them came from Krypton. Following on from that, instead of Superman creating the Clark Kent persona to disguise himself as a mild-mannered reporter, Levine saw Kent as someone who really wanted more than anything else to be human, to have a family, to be a good writer and to be a good reporter. Co-producer Bryce Zabel said it was pretty clear that they were influenced by the John Byrne revamp, although they tried to put their own stamp on it. “The whole idea that there were a lot of barnacles on the ship of Superman is something we’ve tried to address and we’ve done a little scraping here and there,” said Zabel.732

Lois Lane receiving first billing in the title was a clear indication that she would be receiving as much, if not more, of the focus of the show as Clark Kent. Consequently, the character of Lois Lane was much more developed in this series than in any previous incarnation of Superman. In effect, it was as if the producers were harking back to the more romance-themed Lois Lane comic books than the Superman comics; it was a fresh, feminist take on the ultimate masculine superhero.

Levine first wrote a two-hour TV movie to act as a pilot for the series. Robert Butler,

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