Press Release: Fox has ordered second seasons of the crime anthology Accused and the procedural Alert: Missing Persons Unit, for sophomore seasons. Both Accused and Alert are co-produced by Sony Pictures Television and FOX Entertainment. Their pick-ups follow FOX’s recent renewal of The Cleaning Lady for a third season.
Based on the BBC’s BAFTA-winning crime anthology, Accused is a collection of 15 intense, topical and exquisitely human stories of crime and punishment. Told from the defendant’s point of view through flashbacks, each episode is a fast-paced provocative thriller, exploring a different crime, in a different city, with an entirely original cast. The series’ first season is anchored by Oscar, Tony and Emmy-winning talent, including Michael Chiklis, Abigail Breslin, Whitney Cummings, Margo Martindale, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Wendell Pierce, Rachel Bilson, Jack Davenport, Molly Parker, Rhea Perlman, Betsy Brandt, Keith Carradine, Aisha Dee, Jason Ritter and directors Billy Porter, Marlee Matlin, Tazbah Chavez and Michael Chiklis.
Accused is co-produced by Sony Pictures Television and FOX Entertainment, and executive-produced and developed for American television by Howard Gordon, and executive-produced by Alex Gansa, David Shore, Glenn Geller, Erin Gunn, All3Media America’s Jacob Cohen-Holmes, and Jimmy McGovern, Sita Williams, Roxy Spencer and Louise Pedersen for All3Media International. Frank Siracusa and John Weber also serve as executive producers. Created by Jimmy McGovern, the original series debuted in 2010 on BBC One.
Set in the Philadelphia Police Department’s Missing Persons Unit, each episode of Alert: Missing Persons Unit features a heart-pounding, life-or-death search for a missing person driven by police officers Jason Grant (Caan) and Nikki Batista’s (Ramirez), whose complicated personal lives are evolving after the loss of their son. Alert is co-produced by Sony Pictures Television and FOX Entertainment. The series is executive produced by Jamie Foxx and John Eisendrath, who also served as showrunner for Season One. Carla Kettner is set to join the creative team as executive producer and showrunner for Season Two.
Carla Kettner has written and produced hundreds of hours of television, primarily dramas. Most recently she co-created and was showrunner on Panhandle, a “crimedy” for Spectrum Originals/Roku Originals starring Luke Kirby and Tiana Okoye. Prior to that, Kettner was Executive Producer of The Blacklist, Bones, Vanished and Mob Doctor. Other credits include Zoo, Night Shift, Early Edition, Judging Amy, Due South and Strong Medicine.