Multichannel News reports from the TCA press tour that BBC America’s OUTCASTS will be “soft” sci-fi.
The series, described as a kind of space western, stars GALACTICA’s Jamie Bamber and Eric Mabius (RESIDENT EVIL, UGLY BETTY).
The premise is that Earth is no longer habitable, and shipload of refugees have come to a planet named Carpathia (which could be a reference to the ship that rescued Titanic survivors or the European mountain range). The plot is centered on the question of whether or not the colonists’ socio-political attitudes and ecological practices that destroyed the Earth will be repeated, and whether the indigenous inhabitants of this new world will be friendly.
Ben Richards (LIFE ON MARS), the writer/creator of OUTCASTS, said that despite the extraterrestrial setting, the series is more like a western than what’s normally expected from a sci-fi series, focusing more on human interactions than futuristic technology.
Of course, that’s a description of what most modern science fiction—outside of films and TV—has been for the last thirty or fourty years.
OUCASTS is currently shooting in South Africa for a premeire on BBC America in December of this year.