We’re all enamored with true crime stories, from Serial to Law & Order. Fortunately, the David Duchovny-led drama Aquarius, which premieres on NBC on May 28 and is set in the 1960s, is all about crime. Sam Hodiak, played by David Duchovny, is a homicide detective who is investigating the disappearance of an old girlfriend’s daughter. But how genuine is this new show? Is Aquarius based on a true story, a novel, a play, or a film?
No, not at all. The story for Aquarius comes from from creator John McNamara’s mind. In an interview with Deadline, McNamara remarked, “I thought of this idea of an older cop from the 1960s and how a 45-year old might observe hippies.” “What if he was coupled with a 22-year-old narc?” “It took me three years to think about it.”
According to Deadline, McNamara first pitched the plot as a series of novels, but producer Marty Adelstein told him he’d miss out on all of the groovy ’60s music if he did. However, just because Aquarius isn’t based on a true story doesn’t mean it isn’t filled with real-life themes. Here are six examples of how Aquarius combines fantasy with reality.
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Is the TV show Aquarius based on the zodiac sign Aquarius?
Aquarius is a period criminal drama television series set in the United States. The series begins in Los Angeles in 1967. The story is based on true events and people, but it also includes fictional characters and stories. It stars David Duchovny as Sam Hodiak, a fictional LAPD investigator who, together with his younger colleague undercover narcotics officer Brian Shafe, is investigating the case of a missing adolescent girl called Emma Karn (Emma Dumont) (Grey Damon). Hodiak finds himself in a confrontation with Charles Manson.
NBC’s Aquarius was conceived by John McNamara. From May 28, 2015, through September 10, 2016, it aired on ABC. In 2015, it was one of eight series to win the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Most Exciting New Series, out of a total of eight nominations. After two seasons, NBC decided to terminate the show on October 1, 2016.
How much of the Aquarius series is based on fact?
“Inspired in part by historical events, this program incorporates imaginary people, places, and circumstances,” NBC’s new summer series Aquarius warns at the start of each episode. Aquarius is set during the historically accurate “Summer of Love,” often known as the summer of 1967. It follows fictional Los Angeles homicide detective Sam Hodiak (played by David Duchovny) as he investigates the disappearance of a former girlfriend’s teenage daughter; as you’ll see in the first episode, that daughter, Emma Karn, has taken up with Charles Manson, a real-life murderer and cult leader who lived with his followers at an abandoned ranch in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles in 1967. Is Emma Karn from Aquarius based on a real Charles Manson follower? In regards to this topic, the lines between reality and television shows are getting that druggy haze surrounding them.
Aquarius is essentially a fictitious account of Charles Manson’s life in the two years leading up to the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders. However, because many of the Manson narrative pieces are based on true events, it can be difficult to tell what is true and what is fiction within the developing community that Manson is creating around himself. While the name Emma Karn does not appear in any Charles Manson biographies, her character’s rapid rise through the ranks of Aquarius closely resembles the real-life persons who followed, revered, and murdered for Manson…
What caused Aquarius to be canceled?
Aquarius will not be renewed for a third season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The drama was picked up for a full season straight away and broadcast in the summer of 2015. Following the premiere of the first episode, NBC opted to make the full 12-episode season available for streaming for four weeks. Aquarius was the first broadcast show in television history to employ this novel marketing tactic. At the time, the unusual move was viewed as an experiment, but it now appears to be the first step toward the show’s demise.
Aquarius was never able to garner big ratings or buzz, which is most likely why it was canceled. Season 1 had a terrible 1.05 rating among adults 18-49, though that number rose slightly when delayed viewings were taken into account. NBC unexpectedly renewed the sitcom for Season 2 despite the low numbers. The second season began in June 2016 with a two-hour episode on Thursday. Surprisingly, NBC broadcasted this two-hour block ad-free, yet it only received a 0.4 rating. The show’s fate was sealed when it was relocated to Saturdaythe TV graveyardas the ratings plummeted throughout the weeks. The series finale aired on September 10 and had a 0.2 rating.
Was Sam Hodiak a real person or a fictional character?
Have you finished watching the NBC series Aquarius yet? Despite the unusual new technique of airing the episodes (the first two were broadcast live on NBC and the rest were instantly made accessible to stream online), the program has a fantastic hook. While I never imagined the Charles Manson narrative as something that needed embellishing, Aquarius managed to transform it into a pulpy crime drama. Is Charles Manson, however, the only figure based on a factual story, or is investigator Sam Hodiak also based on a real person? Hodiak, also known as the clear lead and lifelong heartthrob, is played by David Duchovny, a gruff and witty character. (Sorry, Gray Damon and Gethin Anthony.) And, while Hodiak is surrounded by individuals who are based on real persons (Charles Manson, Bunchy Carter, Mary Brunner), he is entirely imaginary.
The perfect uptight man to juxtapose all of the chaos that goes on in the 1960s is this not-quite-by-the-books archetypal cop. Even though he appears to be a fairly realistic rendition of a member of The Greatest Generation, returning from war and unsure of what America has become in his absence, he isn’t based on anyone in particular. “I thought of this idea of an older cop during the 1960s and how a 45-year old might see hippies,” series creator John McNamara told Deadline about his inspiration for both Hodiak and the show.
Who stood up for Charles Manson?
Irving Kanarek, a Los Angeles lawyer who defended Charles Manson in the cult murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others, and Jimmy Smith, whose murder of a cop was chillingly retold in Joseph Wambaugh’s 1973 best seller, “On Wednesday, the author of “The Onion Field” passed away in Garden Grove, California. He was a hundred years old.
Those murders were among the most well-known crimes of the 1960s, and the national spotlight on their trials made Mr. Kanarek’s riotous courtroom antics almost as fascinating as his bizarre clients Mr. Manson, the cult leader with a twisted sense of humor “Mr. Smith, a petty thief who didn’t know how to use the automatic pistol he was carrying, and his “family” of young drifters.
The trials were high moments in Mr. Kanarek’s three-decade career of handling a more normal caseload of personal injury and property damage claims. He didn’t start off wanting to be a lawyer. He had worked for North American Aviation as an aeronautical engineer, but he had lost his Air Force security clearance and his job after being wrongly suspected of Communist ties in the 1950s. He cleared his identity, but the ordeal had tainted his opinion of science.
On a March night in 1963, in Los Angeles, a routine traffic stop for a broken taillight on a car containing Mr. Smith and Gregory Powell resulted in his first big case. Mr. Smith and Mr. Powell pulled weapons, disarmed the officers, and drove them 90 miles north to a desolate onion farm near Bakersfield, Calif., as two officers, Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger, approached.
In Aquarius, who is the serial killer?
Gary Ridgway, No. 1 Gary Ridgway, dubbed “the Green River Killer,” is a serial killer who is accused of murdering 49 women by driving them to rural locales, strangling them, and then dumping their remains in the Green River.
What is the significance of the name Aquarius for the show?
The “Age Of Aquarius” is a catchy term for the cultural emphasis on tolerance, acceptance, and self-examination that fueled a youth movement in the New Age of the 1960s and 1970s, and for stage-dwelling pseudo-hippies at community theaters around the country.
Is Aquarius the last sign of the zodiac?
The Aquarius experiment on NBC has come to a close. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the summer Charles Manson drama starring David Duchovny has been canceled by the network. With Duchovny aboard, the project from creator John McNamara was originally taken up straight to series.
Why are there only two Aquarius seasons?
The series’ linear ratings have dropped following its second-season renewal in August, according to Deadline, when Aquarius was relocated from Thursday to the low-trafficked Saturday night. For the second year in a row, NBC has downgraded the series’ time slot, this time without a renewal in sight.