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An Example of Television Coverage
Coverage of a television script asks the questions television has to answer. A pilot is judged as a pilot: whether it sets up a series rather than telling a closed story, whether it establishes what the show would be week to week, and whether the hour ends on a reason to watch the next one. Everything else is as it is for a feature - the overview and the logline, the score out of a hundred and the nine marks behind it (Premise, Theme, Structure, Character, Dialogue, Originality, Writing Style, Story Logic and Marketability), the strongest thing in the script, the scene by scene read, what works and what does not, and what to fix next. Theme asks where the emotional centre of the episode lives and whether it reaches a reader, which for a pilot is a question about whether anyone would come back next week.
Below is a complete, unedited example of one, on the pilot episode of an hour-long drama:
from the First Draft · 61 pages · read as a 1 Hour Episodic TV
This writer's real gift is world-building through image rather than exposition -- the alternate-history setting is established almost entirely by what a reader sees, not by anyone explaining it.
A GLOBE. It's odd. Different from our globe. Countries are cordoned off differently. North America is now one country split into three sections.p.9
The logline we would write for it
In a Los Angeles still occupied by the Soviet Union sixty years after invasion, a young thief trying to go straight for his pregnant fiancée is dragged back into the underworld when his crew's reckless friend triggers a war between a crime queenpin's resistance and the KGB officer determined to crush it.
Our overall conclusions
This is a high-concept alternate-history pilot -- a Soviet-occupied Los Angeles in 2014 -- braided through a five-strand ensemble: a thief trying to get out, his hot-headed friend, a cop with a resistance-leader father, a priest living a double life, and the crime boss who wants them all. The teaser is a genuinely strong piece of action writing that plants a killing (Alec's throat-cutting) whose consequences ripple credibly through the whole hour, and the world itself -- the defaced Hollywood sign, the re-drawn globe, the hammer-and-sickle posters over trash-strewn streets -- is rendered visually and economically from page one. Where it struggles is in the middle: five character threads run in parallel for long stretches without pulling toward a single question, so a strand like Frederick's reservation trip, though well written on its own terms, stalls the hour's momentum rather than building it. A few plot mechanics -- who the alleyway vigilante actually is, how the warehouse ambush was engineered, what Maklikov's 'man in Charlie's camp' amounts to -- are left so unmarked that they read as gaps rather than the deliberate mysteries they may be intended as. Charlie and Frederick are the strongest inventions on the page, each genuinely contradictory in ways that are dramatized rather than stated; Willem and Jacque are thinner, mostly defined by what they're reacting against. The pilot ends on a clean, earned cliffhanger that closes the loop on its opening voiceover about choice and fate, which is the episode's best piece of construction.
Comparable titles
The Man in the High Castle · The Americans · Peaky Blinders · Gomorrah
Audience
Adult drama viewers who follow prestige genre television -- fans of alternate-history speculative fiction crossed with crime-family ensemble drama.
How we viewed the script
A Soviet-occupied Los Angeles in 2014, sixty years after an invasion of America, is a genuinely strong hook for an hour of television -- it promises institutional intrigue, a criminal underworld operating in the cracks of an occupying regime, and a resistance movement, all at once. The script establishes this with real confidence and without a wasted line of exposition: the crumbling HOLLYWOOD LAND sign, the red posters over filthy streets, the re-drawn globe with its Cyrillic-named American territories, all do the worldbuilding work visually before anyone has to say a word about it. The premise also earns its stakes immediately -- the teaser's jewelry heist escalates into two dead KGB officers within the first eight pages, so the occupation isn't background color, it's the engine of the plot from minute one. Where the premise strains a little is in scope: five distinct character strands (thief, hothead, cop, priest, crime boss) are a lot to service in a single pilot, and the throughline connecting them -- beyond 'everyone knows everyone' -- isn't yet fully visible by the end of the hour. Still, the central idea is one a viewer hasn't seen packaged quite this way, and it is kept alive scene to scene rather than parked in a premise document.
Walls plastered with red posters, yellow sickle, hammer and star nearly glowing against their filthy background.p.1 — World established through image in the opening seconds
Beyond them, up in the distant Hollywood hills, the HOLLYWOOD LAND sign is a dank, dirty reminder of what once was. The first 'L' and second 'O' have completely crumbled.p.3 — A single visual carries the entire premise's emotional weight
It's two thousand fourteen. You have security cameras, yes?p.9 — Casual dialogue that confirms the setting without lecturing
The script's emotional center lives in the tension between agency and circumstance -- Willem's opening voiceover insists 'Fate's just a figment of a weak imagination,' and the episode is essentially a test of whether that's true once the walls close in on him. The scene where this should land hardest is the closing standoff, where Willem is forced into an impossible choice that directly contradicts his stated philosophy -- and it does land, because the closing voiceover ('We make a choice and we move forward... But how the hell did it get to this?') consciously undercuts the opening's bravado. That's a real piece of construction. But the theme is diffused across too many characters to build real pressure in a single sitting: Frederick's faith-versus-suffering arc, Jacque's fear of repeating her mother's life, and Charlie's revolutionary rhetoric are all thematically adjacent but never quite rhyme with each other on the page, so no single argument accumulates weight. The script is also more comfortable stating its theme through speeches (Roland's sermons, Charlie's monologues) than dramatizing it through consequence, which keeps the emotional temperature at 'interesting' rather than 'felt.'
We're presented circumstance. We make a choice and we move. Forward. Always forward. Fate? Forget fate. Fate's just a figment of a weak imagination.p.1 — Thesis statement of the episode, stated in voiceover
But how the hell did it get to this?p.60 — The closing echo that gives the theme its one real payoff
You have this romanticized version of your life where you're a gangster and you grow into this kingpin and you buy into Charlie's Freedom Fighter bullshit.p.44 — Theme delivered as direct address rather than dramatized consequence
The teaser-plus-five-act shape is used correctly for a one-hour drama, and the act breaks generally land on real turns: the teaser ends on a double murder, Act One ends with Maklikov's mole reveal, Act Four ends with an ambush, and the episode closes on a genuine unresolved cliffhanger. The problem is the middle: Act Two and Act Three spend a great deal of time on parallel character-establishing scenes (Frederick and Roland's cathedral and reservation material runs many consecutive pages) that are well written in isolation but don't advance the pressure the teaser created, so momentum sags exactly where a one-hour drama needs to be tightening. The warehouse heist, which functions as the episode's real spine, isn't set up until page 32 and doesn't pay off until page 50, meaning the connective tissue between 'four friends killed two KGB men' and 'Alec's crew walks into an ambush' is thin -- they're related mostly by character overlap rather than causal plot mechanics. The ending, however, is a clean piece of structural work: the countdown mirrors the opening's philosophy about choice almost exactly, giving the hour a real sense of closure on its idea even while the plot stays wide open.
END TEASERp.8 — Teaser closes on the inciting act of violence that drives the whole hour
I... have a man in Charlie's camp.p.20 — Act One curtain -- a real hook, though never followed up within the episode
THIS ISN'T A GODDAMN MULTIPLE CHOICE!p.60 — Closing cliffhanger, well-placed and unresolved by design
Several of these characters are genuinely contradictory in ways that are dramatized rather than announced. Charlie is the standout: she tortures a kid with a railroad spike and defenestrates an old man she calls family in the same scene she describes herself as leading a 'freedom fight,' and the script lets both truths sit uncomfortably next to each other rather than resolving them. Alec is similarly well-drawn -- a man who slits a throat in cold terror and then, pages later, tries and fails to land a dumb joke at dinner, wanting nothing more than his friends' and Charlie's respect. Frederick's double life as priest and (implied) vigilante is the richest single throughline in the pilot, built scene by scene rather than revealed in one beat. Willem, as the ostensible protagonist, is comparatively thin -- his want (get out, for Jacque) is clear and concrete, but he's mostly defined by refusal and reaction rather than by anything he actively pursues on the page. Jacque suffers the same problem more acutely: she pleads, she worries, she meets suspiciously with Maklikov, but her own want beyond 'please stop' is never articulated, which makes her function more as plot mechanism (informant thread, pregnancy reveal) than as a person with her own throughline.
Me and my guys, we take back what was stolen from us, give it back to OUR people. Anything else is lies. Okay?p.16 — Charlie's self-justification immediately after brutal violence
Tornadoes and women are the same... They both moan like hell when they come and they take the house when they leave.p.19 — Alec seeking approval moments after having committed murder
The kind who protects his flock.p.63 — Frederick's vigilante identity paid off through action, not explanation
At its best, the dialogue gives characters a distinct rhythm -- Charlie's digressive little speeches ('Tea never really caught on in this country... it wards off cancer, erases undesirable odors, promotes fertility in men') tell you everything about her control and her theatricality without a word of exposition attached. Chirkoff and Maklikov's exchanges have real texture too, with Chirkoff's weary pragmatism ('It is a season. It will pass, as it has before.') playing convincingly against Maklikov's zealotry. But a fair amount of the dialogue exists purely to deliver worldbuilding or plot information, and it shows: Colin citing 'The Reasonable Search Act of 2010' to a KGB officer reads like a index card, not a line a person under gun-point would say, and Roland's history lectures to Frederick sometimes function as encyclopedia entries rather than as a father figure needling his son. The gap between the best and worst dialogue in the script is wide enough that it's worth the writer's attention scene by scene.
The Reasonable Search Act of 2010 says you can't search without reasonable cause. But you know that, Comrade.p.4 — Exposition delivered under duress, in a voice that doesn't sound like fear
Tea never really caught on in this country. Coffee, we drink. But tea is actually a far better option. It wards off cancer, erases undesirable odors, promotes fertility in men, not that that's desirable.p.46 — A genuinely distinct character voice, at its best
How the road to hell is paved, and all that, I guess.p.15 — Chilling understatement immediately before an act of violence
The alternate-history conceit -- a Soviet occupation of America that has calcified into decades of institutionalized crime, corruption, and resistance -- is a fresh combination of genres that a reader is unlikely to have encountered in quite this configuration, and the specific details (the defaced Hollywood sign, the re-drawn map, the Black Band armbands worn by both gangsters and dirty KGB men) show real invention in the worldbuilding. Set against that, however, most of the individual plot mechanics are drawn from very familiar crime-drama stock: the crime boss who wants to recruit the reluctant good thief, the hothead who gets the crew in over their heads, the corrupt-cop father protecting his son, the mole planted in a rival organization, the heist that turns out to be a trap. None of these beats is executed badly, but none of them surprises either -- the novelty here is entirely in the setting the tropes are placed inside, not in the tropes themselves.
the East Coast to what was once Illinois down to Mississippi is titled 'Vostoke Zapretnyy'; from Louisiana to Colorado, 'Srednyayazona'; and Utah west, 'Zapadnoye.'p.9 — A genuinely fresh piece of world invention
I want you to run a crew for me.p.41 — A very familiar crime-genre beat, executed competently but not surprisingly
I... have a man in Charlie's camp.p.20 — The mole-in-the-organization device is a stock convention of the genre
The action writing is at its best in the teaser, where short, kinetic lines keep the eye moving down the page: 'Four MASKED MEN speed around a corner. Then through a zig zag of empty streets.' That economy is inconsistent, though -- some later sequences, particularly the extended cathedral and reservation material, lean into long dialogue exchanges with comparatively static staging, and the read slows accordingly. There are also a handful of outright errors that interrupt clarity rather than just style: a sentence in the teaser reads 'Frederick and Willem attack Officer Alec pulls the knife from his pants,' which appears to be missing punctuation or a dropped clause, and 'Willem pulls out his gun, aims it at Officer' cuts off mid-sentence. These aren't frequent enough to call the draft unpolished, but a pass to catch dropped words and unclear pronoun references (particularly around which masked man is which in the teaser) would help a reader who doesn't already know the cast.
Four MASKED MEN speed around a corner. Then through a zig zag of empty streets.p.1 — Lean, visual action writing at its best
Frederick and Willem attack Officer Alec pulls the knife from his pants.p.6 — A dropped word or missing punctuation makes this sentence unreadable on first pass
Willem pulls out his gun, aims it at Officerp.6 — Sentence appears to cut off mid-thought
The pilot sets up several threads it deliberately leaves open for later episodes -- Maklikov's mole in Charlie's camp, Jacque's suspicious relationship with Maklikov -- which is legitimate serialized construction and not a fault on its own. But a few things read as unresolved gaps rather than intentional mystery. The identity of the shadowy vigilante who kills a KGB rapist and mutilates the body is never clarified, and the scene cuts directly into Colin's unrelated reckoning with his own murder weapon, which invites a reader to assume they're connected when nothing on the page confirms it either way. Relatedly, Colin plants his teaser murder weapon (a gun) at the crime scene of a killing that was clearly committed by beating rather than by gunshot -- 'I think I found something here' -- and the physical mismatch between weapon and wound is never addressed, which undercuts the plausibility of the frame-up as written. The warehouse ambush also depends on Linkhart having set Alec's crew up, which the reader has to infer entirely from implication (his 'schedule conflict' and sideways look at Alec) rather than anything stated -- a viable choice for a slow-burn reveal, but currently indistinguishable from an underwritten connection.
As he reaches the edge of the alleyway, he reaches down, picks up two bags of groceries sitting on the sidewalk, then looks both ways, then disappearsp.34 — Vigilante's identity left genuinely ambiguous with no clear payoff within the episode
I'm, uh, guessing the killer dropped this in the struggle.p.36 — Planted evidence doesn't match the method of the murder at that scene
Look, we all had to do something to impress her at some point.p.27 — Linkhart's setup of Alec is implied but never made explicit
This is a strong, sellable high concept -- a Soviet-occupied America is an easy elevator pitch for a premium cable or streaming buyer, and the crime-family/heist engine gives it week-to-week plot machinery beyond the alternate-history premise alone. It sits comfortably on a shelf next to prestige genre dramas that mix speculative premise with grounded crime plotting, and the ensemble cast (a conflicted thief, a ruthless crime boss, a secretly compromised priest, a dirty cop) gives a network several possible lead performances to build around. The production demands are real but not prohibitive for the space it's competing in -- period-adjacent costuming, some action set pieces, night exteriors -- roughly comparable to other mid-budget premium crime dramas rather than requiring feature-scale spectacle. The genre space is a little crowded with occupation-based alternate history at this point, so the pitch will need to lean hard on the crime-family engine and the ensemble to differentiate itself, but the premise alone should get a read.
A large, red, hammer and sickle flag hangs from a first story window.p.3 — Immediately conveys the show's hook visually, useful for a pitch deck or trailer
I want you to run a crew for me.p.41 — Familiar crime-genre engine that gives the show recognizable weekly plot machinery
Scene by scene
What works
- The alternate-history world is established almost entirely through visual detail rather than exposition -- the defaced Hollywood sign, the re-drawn globe, the posters -- from the very first page.
- Charlie is a genuinely contradictory, well-drawn figure whose brutality and stated idealism are dramatized side by side rather than explained.
- The teaser is a strong, efficient action sequence that plants a consequence (Alec's killing) that credibly drives the rest of the episode's plot.
- Frederick's double life as priest and vigilante is the richest character throughline in the pilot, built scene by scene through his relationship with Roland.
- The closing cliffhanger deliberately echoes the opening voiceover about fate and choice, giving the hour real thematic closure even while the plot stays open.
What does not
- The middle of the episode runs five character strands in parallel for long stretches without a shared clock, which stalls momentum, particularly in the extended reservation sequence.
- The alleyway vigilante's identity and the mechanics of how the warehouse ambush was set up are left so unmarked that they read as gaps rather than deliberate mysteries.
- Jacque is thinly drawn relative to the other principals -- mostly reactive, defined by what she fears rather than what she wants.
- Dialogue occasionally slips into lecture mode to deliver worldbuilding or legal exposition, most noticeably in Roland's and Colin's expository lines.
- A specific continuity problem: the murder weapon Colin plants doesn't match the method of the killing at the scene where he plants it.
The one change worth making
Tighten the connective tissue in the middle third so all five character strands are visibly building toward the same pressure point (the warehouse job) rather than running as loosely related character studies -- right now the teaser and ending are the strongest structural work in the script, and the middle needs to earn its place between them.
What to do next
- Structuresome scenes
Rebalance the middle third so all five character strands visibly build toward the warehouse job's clock rather than running in parallel with only loose thematic overlap -- intercut the reservation material with the warehouse setup rather than presenting it as an uninterrupted block.
This is where momentum currently sags; tightening the connective tissue here would let the strong teaser and strong ending bookend a middle that earns its length.
Acts Two and Three, roughly pages 21-45
- Story Logica pass
Decide and clarify whether the alleyway vigilante's identity is meant to be withheld as a season-long mystery or is meant to be legible now; if the former, plant a clearer breadcrumb, if the latter, make the connection to the following scene explicit.
Currently it reads as an accidental gap rather than an intentional withholding, which costs the writer credit for a choice they may have already made.
pages 33-35
- Story Logica pass
Reconcile the planted murder weapon with the actual method of the killing it's being attached to, or change the method of the alley killing so the frame-up is physically plausible.
As written, a gun is planted at a scene where the victim was beaten to death, which undercuts the credibility of the frame-up.
pages 32-36
- Charactersome scenes
Give Jacque an active want of her own -- something she is pursuing rather than only fearing -- so her scenes with Maklikov and Frederick read as choices rather than as things happening to her.
She currently functions mainly as plot mechanism (pregnancy reveal, informant thread) rather than as a person with her own throughline, which weakens the stakes of Willem's central choice.
her scenes throughout, especially the cafe scene with Maklikov and the confrontation with Willem
- Dialoguea pass
Cut or dramatize the expository dialogue that currently explains world rules directly (the Reasonable Search Act line, Roland's history lectures) by finding behavioral or visual equivalents instead.
These moments read as the writer speaking through the character rather than the character speaking, and they're the weakest dialogue in an otherwise voice-driven script.
page 4 (Colin), pages 21-23 (Roland/Frederick)
What we could not judge
Whether the tonal swings between broad crew comedy (the dinner-table jokes), grim political menace, and body-horror violence (the castration, the foot-shooting) play as intended when performed, and whether the pacing of the middle third feels as slow in a filmed 44-minute cut as it does on the page, are things only a table read or a cut could confirm.
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