Dirt (TV series)

Dirt
Dirt television logo
Created by	Matthew Carnahan
Starring	Courteney Cox Arquette Ian Hart Laura Allen Will McCormack Josh Stewart Jeffrey Nordling
Opening theme	Season 1: "Dig Deep" by Debby Holiday Season 2: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	20 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	David Arquette Courteney Cox Arquette
Running time	56 - 60 min (season 1) 40 - 42 min (season 2)
Production companies	Coquette Productions Touchstone Television
Original release
Network	FX Networks
Release	January 2, 2007 – April 13, 2008

Dirt (styled d!rt for logos) is an American television serial presented by the FX network. It premiered on January 2, 2007 and stars Courteney Cox Arquette as Lucy Spiller, the editor-in-chief of the first-of-its-kind "glossy tabloid" magazine DirtNow, which was previously two separate publications: D!rt! (a tabloid) and Now (a glossy magazine with a more respectful reputation.).

The show centers around the publication of the DirtNow magazine and the lives of Spiller and her long time friend Don Konkey, a paparazzo and functioning schizophrenic who is deeply loyal to her. Also included are the lives of some of the celebrities covered by the magazine, including Holt McLaren and Julia Mallory, a celebrity couple.

A 13 episode second season was announced on May 8 2007. Only seven episodes were produced prior to the 2007 WGA strike shut down production. The shortened second season began airing on March 2 2008.

The show was produced by Coquette Productions and ABC Studios (Disney). It is distributed outside the US by Disney.

On June 8, 2008, Cox Arquette revealed that the series had been canceled after two seasons.

Plot

Main article: List of Dirt episodes

Season One

The series revolves around Lucy Spiller and her best friend, the schizophrenic freelance photographer Don Konkey, who aids Lucy in her career as editor-in-chief of Dirt and Now Magazine, which Lucy merges into a single magazine at the end of the second episode due to budget issues. Most episodes focus upon Lucy's never-ending quest to find new news stories regarding celebrities, with help of her staff of reporters and photographers, most notably Don and the young upstart writer Willa McPherson.

As the series progresses, we learn more about Lucy and Don's personal lives. Don is a functional schizophrenic, who regularly hallucinates and hears voices, which is often filtered through his sense of guilt over the questionable actions he takes in order to help Lucy land her stories and the fall-out that comes from exposing people's dark secrets. Lucy meanwhile is a secretly depressed person whose life is totally devoted towards the magazine, to the extent of forgoing any sort of social life whatsoever. Her relationship with her family is strained, in part due to the mysterious suicide of her father, which haunts Lucy due to the cryptic suicide note that he left her, which she kept from the rest of her family.

One of the main subplots of season one is Lucy and Don's relationship with Holt McLaren and the love triangle that erupts between Lucy, Holt, and Holt's current girlfriend Julia Mallory, a popular sitcom star who's begun breaking out into movies while Holt's career has tanked after a series of movies he has done, flopped. In an attempt to convert Holt into a secret source for potential stories, Lucy offers to use the full resources of her magazine to revive Holt's career. In exchange, Holt reveals that Julia's best friend is pregnant after a one-night stand with a fellow actor and the actress (who thinks Julia leaked the story) kills herself via a drug overdose as a result of the public humiliation. Furthermore, Lucy reveals that Julia has cheated on Holt with the co-star of her recently released film, causing Holt to have a mini-breakdown while driving and purposely crashing his car while driving along with Julia. This causes Julia to suffer severe injuries, which leads to an addiction to painkillers and ultimately full-blown drug addiction. To revive her career and gain public sympathy, Julia secretly obtains and leaks a copy of her having sex with her co-star and falsely accuses her co-star of rape, though Lucy ultimately exposes her lies in the magazine.

As Holt's star rises and his girlfriend's plummets, Holt and Lucy begin a relationship which ultimately is exposed to Julia by a rival magazine editor/friend of Lucy's. Julia ultimately realizes that Lucy has helped ruined her life and attacks her with a knife, leaving Lucy bleeding to death. Contacting Don, season one ends with Lucy ordering Don to take the requisite photos of her laying on the ground horribly wounded, in order to ensure that her magazine will be able to have the requisite photos for the story on the attempt on her life.

Season Two

Season two opens with Lucy surviving the attempt on her life and Julia dying. Returning to work with a young idealistic male writer she met and ultimately hires during her stay at the hospital, Lucy finds the magazine floundering without her hard driving leadership. While Lucy's boss Brent arranges for the sale of the magazine to a womanizing, pill-popping foreign investor, Lucy blackmails a down on her luck pop star, Sharlee Cates, to hire Don (now back on his medication) as her personal photographer in order to keep tabs on her. This causes problems between Don and Lucy, as Don becomes friends with the singer, whose marriage collapses upon the revelation that her ex-husband is sleeping with his first wife and only married the singer in order to divorce her and take half her fortune. Lucy, on the other hand, wants to use his friendship with Sharlee to exploit her problems, including the cutting off of her hair, divorce, and her confrontation with a pop legend, Mia, at an awards show. Meanwhile Lucy's new hire, Farber, begins a relationship with Willa, who ultimately betrays him in order to break the story involving a former child-star friend of her new boyfriend, who was caught soliciting sex from an undercover officer. After an awards show, Brent dies from carbon monoxide poisoning, caused by passing out in his still-running car.

Holt begins work on a new film project and struggles to deal with pretending to be in mourning over his deceased girlfriend while lusting after Lucy. Lucy begins to date a powerful studio exectutive, but it ends after he suspects Lucy would rather be involved with Holt. Ultimately, after Lucy's mother dies during a blotched plastic surgery procedure, Lucy agrees to Holt's ultimatum that they go public with their relationship after he completes work on his new movie.

Characters

Main characters

Main article: List of Dirt characters

Character	Actor/Actress	Description
Lucy Spiller	Courteney Cox	The editor of DirtNow magazine, the "glossy tabloid". She's a workaholic who wastes no time on boring stories or unverifiable gossip, instead obsessed with constantly breaking new news stories. She has little remorse about the lives she tangles with and often will destroy lives of celebrities if they refuse to cooperate with her. Out of the office, Lucy lives a lonely life with no boyfriend (until she begins secretly dating Holt McLaren), with strained relationship with her family, caused in part due to her unresolved issues regarding her father's suicide when she was 15.
Don Konkey	Ian Hart	Lucy's long time friend and most trusted paparazzo. He's an exceptional photographer, one of the few who still shoots with film as opposed to digital equipment, and willing to go to great lengths (even cutting off a finger) to get his assigned story. He suffers from a manageable schizophrenia, though he's often reluctant to take his prescribed medication.
Holt McLaren	Josh Stewart	A has-been actor at the beginning of the series, only notable for past works and his ongoing relationship with rising actress Julia Mallory. After striking a deal with Lucy Spiller to provide stories in exchange for good press, his star rises again. Unfortunately, the information provided has unexpected consequences towards his girlfriend Julia, ultimately driving him and Lucy into a relationship as his relationship with Julia collapses.
Willa McPherson	Alex Breckenridge	A young reporter on the DirtNow staff. She is frequently on thin ice with Lucy due to Lucy's extremely high standards, even though Willa is willing to do anything (including doing drugs and sleeping with someone in exchange for information) in order to fulfill Lucy's various demands regarding her assignments, shows signs of wanting to possibly becoming Lucy's heir apparent at DirtNow.

Former cast/recurring members

Character	Actor/Actress	Last Appearance	Description
Julia Mallory	Laura Allen	Welcome to Normal	A famous actress and Holt McLaren's girlfriend. She's one of the people hurt by the information McLaren gives the magazine, both emotionally and physically. After he flips the car they're in she becomes addicted to painkillers and her life begins to spiral out of control, ultimately costing her career, her relationship with Holt, and finally leading to stabbing Lucy in revenge.
Brent Barrow	Jeffrey Nordling	In Lieu of Flowers	DirtNow's publisher. He and Lucy come into conflict over numerous things, including the budget and stories published. Was nearly sexually mutilated due to Lucy's investigation of a murdered rapper, leading to him outing the identity of Lucy's source in the investigation in order to save his genitals from harm.

Production

The first season consisted of 13 one-hour-long episodes. Production began in September 2006, but the pilot was reshot to include a cameo by David Fincher and to add more of Courteney Cox's character. Production on the original pilot began in Los Angeles in March 2006,

Dirt was the ninth drama series pilot shot for FX. Matthew Carnahan, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette serve as the shows executive producers, with Thea Mann producing for Cox and Arquette's Coquette Productions, and Touchstone Television and FX co-producing the series.

Season Two Premiere and Ratings

Dirt was originally picked up for an additional 13 episodes. However, prior to the writer's strike, only 7 episodes had been written. Shooting wrapped on these episodes in December 2007. After the strike was resolved, FX opted not to produce the remaining 6 episodes for "economic reasons" that didn't effect the show's chances at renewal.

Not only was the season shortened from 13 to 7 episodes, but it was also moved to a competitive timeslot, Sundays at 10 P.M. FX began heavy promotion for the show in December 2007, but only about 1.7 million people tuned into the premiere on March 2, 2008.

The season started off with consistent ratings in the first few weeks. But after reaching its peak at 1.6 million in the middle of the season, the ratings began to slip ending with 1.06 million in the finale.

According to Courteney Cox Arquette in a TV Guide interview, Dirt has not been renewed for a third season. She and husband David Arquette are working on new projects.

Screening Countries

Region	Aired on	Comments
United Kingdom	Five US	Began airing 9 July 2007. The show brought the channel its highest ever ratings of 629,000 viewers. Every two or three weeks the network has a "Dirty Night In" on Saturdays, repeating the last few episodes. Dirt moved from Five US to its sister channel Fiver for the screening of its second season, which started on Monday 28th April 2008 at 9:00pm and only drew in 89,000 for the opening episode of season 2. The series concluded on Monday 9th June 2008.
South Africa	M-Net Series	The show was so successful and popular, it went into a rebroadcast on Tuesday Nights at 21:30 on Go with its encore on Saturday Night at 21:30. Go recently aired the Season 1 Cliffhanger on Tuesday 26th February 2008.
Serbia	FOX life cable TV	Title translated as "Shame".
France	France 4
Latin America	People+Arts	Screened Sundays at 9:00pm.
The Netherlands	NET 5	Season 1 commenced on 1 January 2008 with a double episode. Both episodes rated well for a non-Dutch program with episode 1 attracting 756,000 viewers (9.5%, 19th place) and episode 2 attracting 713,000 (9.0%, 21st place). The regular time slot is Tuesdays at 9:30pm.
Australia	Movie Extra subscription channel	Premiered 15 December 2007. It currently screens Saturdays at 8:30pm AEST, with encores throughout the week. Season 2 premiered on October 5th 2008
Bulgaria	Nova Television	Began airing on December 5 2007, Monday to Friday at 22:30.
Turkey	e2	The show's regular screening time was Thursdays at 10:00pm.
Latvia	LTV1	Screens Fridays at 9:10pm.
Ireland	Channel 6	Screens Wednesdays at 9:25pm.
Slovenia	POP TV	Premiered on 17 December 2007 and is scheduled to be shown every Monday at 09:50pm GMT+1. The show's title is translated into "Tabloid".
Croatia	HRT	Premiered near the end of 2007 and was shown every Friday at 09:50pm GMT+1. The show's title is translated into "Tabloid Editor".
New Zealand	TV2	Season 1 is currently being screened. It's regular screening time is Mondays at 10:30pm.
The Philippines	VELVET
Singapore	MediaCorp TV Channel 5	Premiered on Monday, 28th January 2008 and is screened weekly at 11pm (GMT+0800).
Sweden	TV6	Season one was shown on Thursdays at about 10pm.
Hungary	Viasat3	Season one was shown on Fridays at about 10pm as DIRT: A hetilap (DIRT: The Weekly).
Italy	La7
Israel	Yes Satellite TV channel 12 ("Yes Stars 1")	Airs Sundays 10:00pm.

DVD release

Title	Release date	Ep #	Additional information
The Complete First Season	December 11 2007	13	Featurettes: Celebrity Couple Gets Dirty; Through A Lens, Darkly; Tabloid Wars. Deleted Scenes, Gag Reel, Season 2 Preview

The series is licensed for DVD release to Buena Vista Home Video.

Trivia

• Courteney Cox Arquette feels embarrassed by her periodic sex scenes on the show. During filming of these scenes, she ordered co-executive producer and husband David Arquette off the set.

• Debby Holiday sings the theme song of the first season called "Dig Deep" In the second season the main title was replaced with a rock version of the popular nursery rhyme "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". The second season features three songs from UK band Kava Kava

• Ian Hart, who plays Don Konkey, is English. He affects an American accent to play this character. In the final episode of the first series he halucinates a version of himself with a painted face and a Liverpudlian accent.

• On January 16, 2007, it was announced that Cox's former Friends co-star Jennifer Aniston would guest-star in the season finale of the show, which aired on March 27. Aniston played Tina Harrod, a fellow magazine editor and bitter rival to Cox's character, with whom she shared a friendly goodbye kiss.

External links

• Season 2 Premiere in the UK Dirt makes muted return for fiver
• Dirt Official website at FXNetworks.com
• Official DVD site
• Dirt at IMDb
• Dirt Fan Site at TV-Dirt.com
• Dirt at The Futon Critic
• Dirt at five.tv
• Dirt (Tabloid) at POP TV Template:Sl icon