Roslyn-raised producer Howard Gordon: Old-school shows like 'Accused' still viable

Roslyn-raised Howard Gordon was once a master of the universe — that TV one, where his shows like "24" and "Homeland" won Emmys, viewers and a vast cultural cache. But masters come and go, and more recently, so do the universes they ruled. So-called linear networks like Fox have been swept aside in the streaming revolution, or they have for the moment anyway. 

 As a specialist in that form of television, or perhaps just unwilling to let go of the past, Gordon, 61, has returned to where he started. Along with Alex Gansa, his longtime colleague and fellow showrunner on "Homeland," he's launching "Accused," a new anthology series on Fox/5 (premiering Jan. 22 after the NFC divisional game, before moving into its regular Tuesday-at-9 p.m. time slot.) 

 Each of the 15 episodes begins with someone who has been accused of a crime — for example, a doctor (Michael Chiklis) on trial, or a father (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) in jail. Protagonists have lost their bearings and so will viewers who must piece together the story in reverse. The idea behind "Accused" — adapted from a short-lived British series of the same name — is to keep everyone off balance until the final act, when there's a resolution, or at least a few answers. 

To an extent, the draw here is star power. Besides Chiklis and Warner, other big names in individual episodes include Abigail Breslin, Margo Martindale and Rhea Perlman, to name a few. 

But are stars and inventive narratives enough to bring viewers back to a classic form of watching — at an appointed time on a commercial network? Gordon wonders about the same thing. We spoke recently by phone about his new series and the state of TV right now. The interview was edited for brevity and clarity. 

This is a real reunion — you, Alex and Fox — right?

 Very much so. Fox is still a linear network, but if anything, it's a small family business, and so far outside the ecosystems of algorithms and Silicon Valley. 

Exactly. Since "24" left the air [the final season, or "Day 8," wrapped in 2010] the entire business has undergone a couple of revolutions. 

It's so different — the relationship between how people watch, and the way we distribute [shows]. There was a tremendous advantage to having a weekly curated time when you could look forward to something, a Pavlovian feeling that you had before you were about to watch "Seinfeld," But we've lost that, and that's a bad thing for our culture.

So an anthology is the way to get that back? 

In fact, nobody wanted to do an anthology and people were looking for excuses not to do this — hard to promote or they wanted something serialized. But I do think these stories got under their skin [at Fox] and in a good way. This type of storytelling is also less forbidding. I find myself trapped by shows — oh, I gotta get through this — but with this, you can watch whatever you want and in whatever order you want. 

The original series only lasted a short time back in 2010; why reboot it? 

Because there was something about this that could speak to our times. Ten years ago, we didn't have the vocabulary to do those stories. I could never have done, for example, "24" without cellphones. Similarly, these stories are along the fault lines of race, class, power, identity and truth. The world is changing and we are living in a revolutionary time. It's intimidating and I'm mostly terrified of it, but this was my way to tell it fictionally. 

Lots of big-name producers have pivoted to streaming, but not you. Why? 

People ask me, what do you want to do a show on Fox for or on network TV? It's a question I would never have asked! But I do have a personal connection here, and I do like going against the grain, or maybe I'm too old to care. Nevertheless, there is a [streaming] contraction going on and maybe it will be good for linear TV. 

Is that much-hyped Peak TV era officially over? 

Shows are being "unordered," or whatever the term is, and a lot of stuff is being consolidated. At the end of the day, we had too much to watch and it wasn't all good. 

In this reboot-crazed world, will we ever see one more return of "24" — which has already been rebooted twice — or "Homeland"? 

Obviously, there's great institutional interest for both of those to have a new life, but we feel it's got to be a good idea. I wouldn't count [either] out, but Kiefer [Sutherland] has said you'd better do it fast, before I'm on a walker. 

You left Roslyn after college [Princeton] and never really looked back, or have you?

I went straight out to Los Angeles after college and made money tutoring on SATs. I had a tutoring company with Alex Gansa called Testtakers — and we gave classes at Brentwood School and Campbell Hall [in Studio City] on Sundays. And that's how I got my first job — the father of one of my students was a producer on a new show called "Spenser: For Hire." But I have a cousin in Roslyn, and come back out and occasionally visit. Otherwise, it's lived on in [my] mind, as kind of a Joyce's Dublin.