The 'Taken' Prequel TV Series Hires A Director With A Particular Set Of Skills

Attention NBC's new Taken prequel series: I don't know what you are. I don't know why you exist. If you are looking for my viewership, I can tell you I cut the cord ages ago. But what I do have is a very particular set of tastes, tastes I have acquired over a brief-but-eventful career. Tastes that make me a nightmare for shows like you. If you give me a reason to care about a young Bryan Mills, that'll be the end of it. I will watch you, I will stream you on Hulu. But if you don't, I will not watch you, I will write smarmy things about you... and I will kill you.

Sorry. That escalated quickly. Anyway, this newfangled Taken show has found a director in Alex Graves, a veteran television director who has worked on shows your probably love.

Deadline reports that Graves will direct and executive produce the Taken pilot, joining writer and executive producer Alex Cary and executive producer Luc Besson, who directed the first film and co-wrote and produced its sequels. Here's how the show was described when it was first announced last September:

Bryan Mills, the character played by Neeson in the movies, is a young man with no wife and kids. ... The series will focus on how Mills acquires his "very particular set of skills" and becomes the character we all know. The series will bend time as it will be set in modern day, not decades in the past.

In other words, this will be show explaining exactly how some ordinary man went from being Just Some Guy to an action hero capable of killing roughly 17% of the European criminal underworld without breaking a sweat. The big issue here is that we'll be stuck watching some some schmuck learn how to be at the badass who gives that famous speech instead of the total badass who delivers that famous speech and actually lives up to his words.

The lack of Liam Neeson (he's busy playing tree monsters and such) is also a bummer, since it's his intense presence that elevates the original Taken from decent schlock into terrific schlock. The less said about the sequels, the better.

But Graves is a solid director and a good choice for an action series like this. Although he got his start directing dramas like The West Wing (for which he won two Emmy awards) and The Practice, he showcased his genre skills by directing episodes of Terra Nova, Game of Thrones, Homeland, and Bloodline. Recently, he served as a director and executive producer on Proof. Graves is the exact kind of guy you spearheading a television pilot.

And we'll leave you with this question to ponder: will the Taken series actually feature someone being taken in every single episode? Otherwise, that title is going to be really weird and it will drive me crazy.