Seattle Represent!

Seattle may be making a comeback in popular culture due to a pair of new television series. Both CBS and MTV have new shows debuting that prominently feature the emerald city. CBS is premiering Harper’s Island tonight at 10pm, a throwback whodunit style murder mystery, and MTV is premiering The Phone on April 21st, a reality show that puts contestants in seemingly dangerous situations.

From the official Harper’s Island site: “HARPER’S ISLAND is about a group of family and friends who travel to a secluded island off the coast of Seattle for a destination wedding. This island is famous for a streak of unsolved murders from seven years ago. Although they’ve come to laugh and to love, what they don’t know is they’ve also come… to die. As the wedding festivities begin, friendships are tested and secrets exposed as a murderer claims victims, one by one, transforming the wedding week of fun and celebration into a terrifying struggle for survival.”

From the opening episode, Harper’s Island looks like typical big network fare, but is still entertaining and suspenseful at times. Seattle is mentioned more often than it probably should, but the characters seem more like New England country club types than Seattleites.

MTV’s The Phone is a reality show homage to the movie The Game, produced by everyone’s favorite little box of tricks, Justin Timberlake. Seattle is the backdrop to several of the prominent scenes in the trailer, including one where a person appears to be scaling the outside of the Space Needle.

From the official The Phone site: “In each episode, players will see their day go from average to insane as they’re plunged into a dangerous high-stakes game with $50,000 on the line. One minute they might be sipping on a latte, watching the world go by. One phone call later, they could find themselves hanging from the edge of Seattle’s Space Needle or racing into a burning building to save the life of a man about to be executed.”