Well it looks as if J.J. Abrams’ upcoming science fiction/police-procedural mash-up ‘Almost Human‘ might be in trouble before it’s even started. The show is set to debut on November 4th and has just lost one of its two showrunners!

Naren Shankar (‘Farscape’) has just stepped down from co-running the show with J.H. Wyman (‘Fringe‘). There hasn’t been a real reason on why he had left at this point as season 1 is been pretty far along in development and the two had reportedly gotten along. What could it mean you have to wonder?

Shankar was brought in for his police-procedural background due to his experience on shows such as ‘CSI’ and ‘Grimm’. He’s clearly had no issues with science fiction having worked on ‘Farscape’ in the past. In fact, his work successfully merging the two genres on ‘Grimm’ was one of the main reasons he was brought on board in the first place.

Ever since the first ‘Almost Human’ trailer was released, I’ve been wanting to see more. It helps that I enjoy most of what Abrams is involved in, but a show that takes place in the future and combines police with androids? Call me curious.

While losing a showrunner isn’t necessarily the end of the world, it’s rare to see it happen so quickly. ‘The Walking Dead’ has gone through multiple showrunners at this point and is still a juggernaut on the air. However in the cases of two past Abrams projects both ‘Fringe‘ and ‘Alcatraz‘ only swapped out showrunners immediately before they ended up being off the air.

Not a good sign for future Abrams’ projects to lose showrunners like this one. Fortunately ‘Almost Human’ has two showrunners and with J.H. Wyman being such a successful force behind ‘Fringe,’ I can only hope he continues that success on this show. As he is the guiding force of the show to date, it’s good to see he’s still here – I’m just curious what went wrong.

What do you think? Was this a case of too many cooks in the kitchen or did the genres not blend enough in Naren’s eyes? Are you still excited for ‘Almost Human’ with the production problems that appear to be popping up? Let us know below!

Synopsis:

Executive-produced by Emmy Award winner J.J. Abrams (“Fringe,” “Lost,” the “Star Trek” and “Mission: Impossible” franchises) and creator J.H. Wyman (“Fringe,” “The Mexican”) and starring Karl Urban (“Star Trek”), Michael Ealy (“Sleeper Cell,” “Common Law”) and Emmy Award nomineeLili Taylor (“Six Feet Under,”), ALMOST HUMAN is a high-tech, high-stakes action drama set 35 years in the future, when police officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids. An unlikely partnership is forged when a part-machine cop (Urban) is forced to pair with a part-human robot (Ealy) as they fight crime and investigate a deeper cover-up in a futuristic new world.

Source: Blastr