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Inspiration can strike at any time and from any source. For some TV, the idea comes from true events throughout history.

While the storyline may get dramatized or include events that didn't occur, the true parts can be enough to inspire a story fit for entertainment.

We've found our favorite 11 TV shows based on real-life events. Find out about each story's truth, the actors who made it awesome, and where you can watch each piece.

American Crime Story (2016-ongoing)

Where to watch: Hulu subscription

American Crime Story is an anthology series focusing on criminals and crimes throughout the U.S.

This series has portrayed some of the biggest criminal cases fought in the American court system, starting with the trial of Oj Simpson in American Crime Story Season 1.

Other high-profile cases covered in this award-winning series include the death of popular clothes designer Gianni Versace and the affair between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

The genre-bending detective fiction series that is quickly becoming everybody’s favorite of the year is Sugar. The Apple TV+ series created by Mark Protosevich is set in Los Angeles and it follows the story of a private detective John Sugar as he is hired by a big-time film producer Jonathan Siegel to find his missing granddaughter Olivia. While, trying to find Olivia, Sugar stumbles into something far more dangerous than he could have anticipated. Sugar stars Colin Farrell in the lead role with Amy Ryan, James Cromwell, Sydney Chandler, Nate Corddry, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and Dennis Boutsikaris starring in supporting roles. If you loved the mystery and thrill of Sugar here are some similar shows you could check out next.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Showtime

The Man Who Fell to Earth is a sci-fi drama series created by Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman.

True Detective has to be one of the most brilliant anthology mystery thriller shows ever made. Originally created by Nic Pizzolatto, the HBO series told a dark and haunting tale through the brilliant performances by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in its first season. The quality of the series took a nosedive in its second season and the third season while better from Season 2 didn’t really match the expectation that the inaugural season of True Detective set. Now, we are in Season 4 titled Night Country and with a new creative force behind the series, the fans are getting exactly what they want. So, if you have already finished the much awaited Season 4 of True Detective and are hoping for a renewal, here are some similar shows you could watch while waiting for the new season.

Mare of Easttown (Max & Prime Video Add-On) Credit – HBO

Mare of Easttown is a...

Created by Sam Sheridan, TNT's six-part miniseries I Am The Night drew middling ratings and reviews upon its release in January of 2019. Starring Chris Pine and India Eisley, the series tracks the mysterious past of Fauna Hodel, a teenage girl in 1960s Los Angeles desperate to discover where she comes from and who her parents are.

Related: I Am The Night: 10 Fascinating Behind-The-Scenes Facts

The confusing and complicated crime story is very easy to get lost in due to the circuitous twists and hairpin turns it takes with each passing episode. Even fervent fans of the show have some difficulty keeping up with certain details.

TNT limited series I Am the Night was well-received when it came out in 2019. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an impressive score of 74% based on reviews from 70 critics. The six-part show starred Chris Pine and India Eisley. It was created by Same Sheridan, with Pine and Patty Jenkins also serving as executive producers.

Related: The Myers-Briggs® Types of I Am the Night Characters

I Am The Night tells the real-life story of author Fauna Hodel who was given up for adoption by her teenage mother when she was a little girl. While digging up information about her true parentage, she discovered that gynecologist George Hodel, the prime suspect in the Black Dahlia Murder Mystery was not only her grandfather but might have fathered her too. Here are some behind-the-scenes facts about the series that fans probably didn't know.

I am The Night tightly packs various topics including racism, crime, corruption, investigative journalism, Watts Riots, Battle of Chosin Reservoir, and more in just six episodes. Precisely, this series follows Fauna Hodel's (India Eisley) – also known as Pat –search for her real parents. Alongside, there is Jay Singletary (Chris Pine) – a journalist – who is researching a murder case that is similar to the Black Dahlia case that he covered in 1949.

Related: I Am The Night: Everything That Was Accurate, And What They Took Artistic Liberties On

While adding fiction to this true-events-inspired series makes the plot interesting to the audience, some details also rip off the coherence that the real story holds in itself. Thus resulting in these 10 things that make no sense.

It would be safe to say that Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness has become one of our latest obsessions. Joe Exotic is the subject of a very good in depth podcast from Wondery called Joe Exotic: Tiger King (it was formerly called Over My Dead Body: Joe Exotic). That podcast is a perfect companion to the Netflix documentary series and is now the inspiration for a scripted drama starring Kate McKinnon as Exotic’s nemesis, Carole Baskin.

This is not the first podcast to inspire a TV show, documentary, or dramatisation, and it certainly won’t be the last. Major studios and production companies use podcasts more and more as sources of original IP and a testing ground to see if there’s an appetite or an audience for the subject matter. Making a podcast is cheaper than making a TV pilot and gives you as much if not...

Patty Jenkins is now known as the director behind celebrated films “Monster” and “Wonder Woman,” as well as the recent gritty TNT limited drama series “I Am the Night.” But her first passion is comedy — and in particular, surreal, absurdist comedy.

“A lot of my friends who I’d known in the comedy world, in the ’90s, in New York, were shocked [after ‘Monster’ was released],” she told Variety‘s “My Favorite Episode” podcast. “They were sort of like, ‘we all thought you were, like, a comedy person — what happened?'”

Jenkins said she’s been obsessed with comedy since listening repeatedly to Steve Martin’s “Wild and Crazy Guy” album. “There was something about edgy, interesting comedy that always has really delighted me and caught my imagination,” she said. “I always was, all through my youth, going out of my way to find kind of underground, comedic things.”

As she...

The limited series I Am The Night premiered in January 2019 starring India Eisley and Chris Pine. It's based on the true story of Fauna Hodel, a girl who was given away at birth and grew up not knowing her mysterious origins. She travels to Los Angeles to find her birth family, only to find herself in the middle of one of La's most famous unsolved crimes. Patty Jenkin's series is full of murder, intrigue, drugs, alcohol, and police brutality, but the real story is in the desperate search to understand our roots so we can understand ourselves. There are few characters in the show, but each one is memorable for how that desperation plays out for them. Each character's Mbti® can shed a little light on how they deal with their own trauma.

In Hollywood, playing by the rules doesn’t cut it, especially as they keep changing. After directing her 2003 feature debut “Monster,” which won Charlize Theron the Best Actress Oscar, Patty Jenkins was inundated with offers to direct. They just weren’t what she was looking for. And when she decided to direct television for money – and movies for love – her advisers counseled her against it. But she helped to launch “Arrested Development” on Fox and AMC mystery series “The Killing,” and landed an Emmy nomination and DGA win for that 2011 pilot.

When Marvel changed direction on a superhero movie Jenkins had agreed to make, and proceeded with “Thor” instead, Jenkins withdrew as director. She knew that the odds were not in her favor, and should the movie not come out well, she’d be held more accountable than any male director. Things worked out: she had more passion for and...

In Hollywood, playing by the rules doesn’t cut it, especially as they keep changing. After directing her 2003 feature debut “Monster,” which won Charlize Theron the Best Actress Oscar, Patty Jenkins was inundated with offers to direct. They just weren’t what she was looking for. And when she decided to direct television for money – and movies for love – her advisers counseled her against it. But she helped to launch “Arrested Development” on Fox and AMC mystery series “The Killing,” and landed an Emmy nomination and DGA win for that 2011 pilot.

When Marvel changed direction on a superhero movie Jenkins had agreed to make, and proceeded with “Thor” instead, Jenkins withdrew as director. She knew that the odds were not in her favor, and should the movie not come out well, she’d be held more accountable than any male director. Things worked out: she had more passion for and...

“I Am The Night” costume designer Rhona Meyers is no stranger to female-centric stories in which the look of a character helped inform who that person was. She previously worked on films such as “Erin Brockovich” and “Monster,” for example. But the TNT limited series was her first foray into longer-form storytelling on the small screen and came with the new challenges of television’s “intense” pace, as well as having to find and make clothes reminiscent of multiple decades.

How did you get your start in costumes?

I was a fine arts major at UCLA and I worked on a music video where the director then wanted me to act in a commercial he was doing, and they called me in, but I completely blew the audition. They said the costume department needed some help, and that was my first wardrobe job, and I have been doing it ever since.

Creating a three-dimensional character full of complex emotions, complicated psychological makeup, and multi-faceted motivations is often the singular joy for performers because they get to step outside themselves. But when that character is based on a real person, the performer’s job can become much more complicated.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone play someone perfectly,” says Patricia Arquette. “I don’t think I could play myself perfectly. I think we’re all so guilty of so much self-deception in different things, so I definitely think there is room in the area of exploration.”

Arquette transformed herself for both the Showtime limited series “Escape at Dannemora,” in which she portrayed the prison worker Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell who helped two inmates escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility in 2015, as well as Hulu’s “The Act,” in which she took on the supporting role of Dee Dee Blanchard, who...

“The truth was being held in a bottle too tight, for too long,” says I Am the Night director and Ep Patty Jenkins about the enigmatic story of teenager Fauna Hodel, whose search for her real mother in 1960s Los Angeles plunged her into the city’s underbelly.

Fauna Hodel was a white girl raised by her adoptive black mother who believed she was of mixed racial origins. Fauna (played by India Eisley on the TNT series) learned that she was adopted under fraught circumstances and darted to La to find her mother Tamar. Fauna discovers that her grandfather is George Hodel, a perverse doctor, abortionist and lover of creepy erotic art who was part of the city’s 1% and a key suspect in the 1947 Black Dahlia murder.

Jenkins met the real Fauna in 2008 and originally wanted to adapt her memoir One Day She’ll Darken as a movie. Fauna...

Though she was “well aware of the Black Dahlia case,”actress India Eisley admits she had “never heard of” the story of Fauna Hodel before auditioning for that role in “I Am the Night.” Adapted from the true-crime memoir “One Day She’ll Darken,” this TNT limited series tells the story of Hodel, a teenager who discovers her origins are a bit mysterious. She teams up with a down-on-his-luck reporter (Chris Pine) to uncover her dark family secrets, which tie into the infamous 1947 murder. Watch our exclusive video interview with Eisley above.

See Patty Jenkins interview: “I Am the Night”

Eisley read Hodel’s book to better understand “what her emotional state was at any given time.” Because the series is a “highly fictionalized” version of the true events, she “wanted to realistically get a hold of where she was at emotionally” in order to best represent the real person and her experiences.

Chris Pine’s character didn’t have a drug problem in “I Am the Night,” but he did do a lot of drugs.

“The joke was Jay’s got a lot of problems, but drugs aren’t really a problem,” writer and executive producer Sam Sheridan said, speaking at TNT’s Fyc event for the program. “They’re like a symptom, [but] we didn’t want to make it [about that].”

Still, as Jay Singletary, Pine felt like a bit of a loser, especially when the limited series’ fictional protagonist met up with its real-life hero, Fauna Hodel (played by India Eisley).

“I felt creepy, you know?” Pine said. “It was that weird dynamic where you have the leading man and the leading lady, and you think something romantic may happen, but it can’t happen. So you have to toe this line, and we play it in one episode that was odd […] in Hawaii.

“This is a story I’ve known for so long, and had tried to do many times before,” reveals Patty Jenkins about “I Am the Night.” Based on the book “One Day She’ll Darken,” this TNT limited series tells the true story of Fauna Hodel (India Eisley), a teenager who discovers she isn’t who she thinks she is. She connects with a disgraced reporter (Chris Pine) to uncover her dark family secrets, which involve the 1947 “Black Dahlia” murder. Watch our exclusive video interview with Jenkins above.

See Emmys 2019 exclusive: TBS and TNT categories for ‘I Am the Night,’ ‘Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,’ ‘The Last O.G.’ and more

Jenkins helmed the first two episodes, but she already “had been telling this story for many years” by the time she told Pine about it while the two were filming “Wonder Woman” (2017). “He was so captivated,” she recalls. Meanwhile,...

Chris Pine is taking the lead in the non-stop action-thriller Violence of Action from Thunder Road Films and 30West.

Tarik Saleh (The Nile Hilton Incident) will direct from a script by J.P. Davis.

After being involuntarily discharged from the Marines, James Reed (Pine) joins a paramilitary organization in order to support his family in the only way he knows how. Reed travels to Poland with his elite team on a black ops mission to investigate a mysterious threat. Barely into his first assignment, Reed finds himself alone and hunted in Eastern Europe, where he must fight to stay alive long enough to get home and uncover the true motives of those who betrayed him. Production begins this fall.

Pine recently collaborated with director Patty Jenkins again following their $800M-plus success on Wonder Woman in the TNT noir series I Am the Night as a dogged crime beat reporter who assists...

Vulture Watch

Has morning finally broken for Fauna Hodel? Is the I Am the Night TV show cancelled or renewed for a second season on TNT? The television vulture is watching all the latest cancellation and renewal news, so this page is the place to track the status of I Am the Night, season two. Bookmark it, or subscribe for the latest updates. Remember, the television vulture is watching your shows. Are you?

What's This TV Show About?

A TNT limited drama series, I Am the Night stars stars Chris Pine, India Eisley, Jefferson Mays, Yul Vazquez, Justin Cornwell, Dylan Smith, Jay Paulson, Golden Brooks, and Leland Orser. Inspired by the book, One Day She’ll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel (by Hodel), the limited series explores adoptee Fauna’s (Eisley) connection to the murder of Elizabeth Short, i.e. the “Black Dahlia” slaying. Along with...

I Am the Night captivated audiences from its promos to its ending. Chris Pine's performance as troubled journalist Jay Singletary, accompanied by India Eisley's performance as Fauna Hodel, kept audiences tuned in each week for the six-part limited series that aired on TNT. The series was inspired by the autobiography One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel, written by Fauna Hodel before her death in 2017. For all those wanting to know what was real and what was embellished for entertainment, here it is!

The Black Dahlia murderer paints himself into a corner as I Am the Night episode 6, "Queen's Gambit, Accepted," ends a dream within a dream.

Culture

This I Am the Night review contains spoilers.

I Am the Night Episode 6

I Am the Night episode 6, "Queen's Gambit, Accepted," opens with a young George Hodel playing for his mentor,  Rachmaninoff. The famed piano maestro, who really did tutor the musical prodigy Hodel, declares his proposed student inartistic. The boy with the super-high Iq who would go on to perform surgery for the Los Angeles' richest and most powerful, is eavesdropping. We can see him imagining where his first cut should be.

I Am the Night squanders a lot of its possibilities. Director Patty Jenkins teases the audience with cryptic bookends, promising a glimpse into the depths of the evil Hodel will go. But she never gives more than a taste, especially for those who don't know the backstory.

Recalling scenes shot many months prior isn’t always the easiest task, but when you’re trying to do so from the recesses of a labyrinthine restroom within a suspected serial killer’s house, well, it’s a bit harder still. Chris Pine and Patty Jenkins, the star and director of TNT’s limited series “I Am the Night,” are trying to remember one such scene while tucked inside a corner of the Sowden House — a shooting location for the show and former home to suspected Black Dahlia killer, George Hodel.

“It is absolutely written on purpose,” Patty Jenkins said, perched on the edge of a cushy chair that doesn’t really belong in an ornate master bath. Lounging next to her is Chris Pine, who just a few moments ago — while using his excellent Hannibal Lecter impression — joked about the nearby koi pond being part of his preposterous movie star demands.

Whether you’re stuck in weather-related traffic, waiting at an airport for a flight to decide to leave, or just holing up at home, winter is a great time for podcasts, since they provide an intimate, in-depth look at all sorts of subjects while you try to stay cozy. Here are five we recommend binging.

The Drop Out

At this point, Elizabeth Holmes’ Silicon Valley con might be all but forgotten — but thanks to this fantastic new podcast from ABC News and Nightline, this strange saga is making it back to the mainstream.

I Am the Night episode 5, "Aloha," says goodbye and hello to a recurring past.

Culture

This I Am the Night review contains spoilers.

I Am the Night Episode 5

I Am the Night episode 5, "Aloha," opens at Dr. George Hodel's (Jefferson Mays) 1949 incest trial. A psychiatric expert is explaining how 14-year-old Tamar suffers from a kind of dementia that causes delusions of grandeur and comes from a mania for sex. This was apparent even when Tama was 11. The daughter has been making up stories about her father for a long time, and the list of accusations includes the Black Dahlia murder, the testimony continues.

The series has a lot of ground to cover in the George Hodel backstory, most of which directly affects how we see the main character, Fauna Hodel (India Eisley), his granddaughter. Jay Singletary (Chris Pine) covered the original trial. It destroyed his career. As he drops off...

Black Dahlia obsessives, take note — TNT’s new drama series, I Am the Night (which debuted on January 28th), is getting a companion podcast that will dig into the true events which inspired the series and made George Hodel a primary suspect in Elizabeth Short’s 1947 unsolved murder. Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia, produced in partnership with Cadence13, will premiere the first of eight episodes on February 13th.

I Am the Night, directed by Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), tells the story...

I Am the Night Episode 4 brings a surrealistic look at a true crime as the "Matador" prepares to check a queen.

This I Am the Night review contains spoilers.

I Am the Night Episode 4

I Am the Night episode 4, "Matador," puts the pieces at play as Sepp (Dylan Smith) wiles away the hours by a poolside chessboard at Dr. Hodel's (Jefferson Mays) mansion. The doctor's protégé is an imposing figure, even in the course of a retreat, having just moved from a four-move to a two-move checkmate. His boss isn't happy with him, as he lost track of Fauna Hodel (India Eisley), the most important piece on the board.

Sepp may have been keeping the conversation less than lively with Dr. Hodel's clientele, but his silent demeanor, and barely contained rage, makes him appear like a trained dog. The doctor then proceeds to treat his potential patients the same way,...

The characters come together as the mystery unfolds on I Am the Night episode 3, "Dark Flower."

This I Am the Night review contains spoilers.

I Am the Night Episode 3

I Am the Night episode 3, "Dark Flower," opens in 1945, two years before the January 15, 1947 murder of 22-year-old actress Elizabeth Short. The Black Dahlia is a conspiracy theorist's wet dream. Still unsolved, the suspects in the case all had fascinatingly perverse backgrounds. George Hodel, who came to the attention of the officers covering the gruesome death after an underage, incest-rape trial, had one of the most perverse.

Well-known to the police and well treated by them, Hodel was renowned for his Hollywood parties. They were lavish affairs held at his mansion, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son, which was modeled after a Mayan temple. The place had its own ill repute. "Dark Flower" opens at one of the parties, in this...

The best Los Angeles-set noir films—The Big Sleep, Chinatown, L.A. Confidential—serve as a shadow-history of the city. I Am The Night starts to find its raison d’être in this week’s episode “Phenomenon Of Interference” in the scenes where Fauna Hodel learns how much different her life will be in L.A., depending on…...

True crime stories have taken off in the past several months, but the new TNT drama I Am the Night takes a slightly different tack: a semifictionalized story based on real criminal cases that have fascinated Americans for decades. The noir drama debuted on Jan. 27, and viewers are already wondering just how much of the eerie story is true. The answer is more complicated than a simple fact vs. fiction comparison.

I Am the Night is based on an autobiography by Fauna Hodel, titled One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel. Fauna herself is credited as a cowriter on the TV miniseries, although she passed away from breast cancer in 2017. Fauna's story is the kind of tale that sounds like a Hollywood noir film - but it actually happened. Horrifying crimes, secret adoption, and an infamous cold case all play a part in I Am the Night...

Tony Sokol Feb 4, 2019

I Am the Night's Jefferson Mays gives his impression of a surrealistic killer.

TNT's limited series I Am the Night follows real life characters surrounding one of Hollywood's most famous infamous, and still unsolved, crimes: the January 15, 1947 murder of 22 years old actress Elizabeth Short. Dubbed the Black Dahlia, Short's body was found cut in half and mutilated in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. Authorities focused on about 25 suspects. No one was convicted.

I Am the Night is based on the book One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel, written by the granddaughter of one of the prime suspects, Fauna Hodel, played by India Eisley in the series. Her biological mother Tamar Hodel was one of eleven children the real life Dr. George Hodel fathered by five women. Fauna and Tamar weren't the only family members to accuse the Beverly Hills gynecologist of the murder.

Image Source: Everett Collection

If your fascination with true crime rivals your infatuation with Chris Pine, then I Am the Night is the new obsession you've been waiting for. The six-part TNT miniseries portrays the real-life events of the 1947 Black Dahlia murder, and though some of the events and characters are fictionalized, the terrifying murder at the heart of the show is totally real.

Nicknamed "the Black Dahlia," Elizabeth Short was a 22-year-old waitress and aspiring actress living in Los Angeles when she was found brutally murdered in a vacant lot near Leimert Park in 1947, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. In the series, Jay Singletary attempts to figure out who could be behind the murder by tracking down a young woman named Fauna Hodel after receiving an anonymous tip. What does Fauna have to do with anything? Though the real-life Fauna Hodel didn't know about her connection...

I am the Night explores the "Phenomenon of Interference" in episode 2, as both main characters find distraction.

This I Am the Night review contains spoilers.

I Am the Night Episode 2

I Am the Night episode 2, "Phenomenon of Interference," closes the gap between the two leads: Fauna Hodel (India Eisley), who just found out her grandfather is a rich Hollywood doctor, and Jay Singletary (Chris Pine), a reporter who is hell-bent on reopening old family wounds.

Fauna is settling in at her new home base in the opening and it's a little unsettling, especially to her cousin Tina (Shoniqua Shondai), who has to show her how to navigate L.A.'s mass transit system. On the way to the rich side of town, Fauna witnesses a racial incident on a bus that spills over to the streets. On one hand, it shows the heavy-handedness of the city cops' response, but it...

Image Source: Everett Collection

If you're looking for a chilling thriller to help you avoid the chilly weather, I Am the Night might be just what the doctor ordered. The six-part TNT miniseries stars Chris Pine and portrays the real-life events of the 1947 Black Dahlia murder - but that's just the beginning.

If you're not familiar with the story, then you probably want a little background before you start watching. Nicknamed "the Black Dahlia," Elizabeth Short was a 22-year-old waitress and aspiring actress living in Los Angeles when she was found brutally murdered in a vacant lot near Leimert Park in 1947, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. The Black Dahlia's killer was never found, making her murder one of the oldest, most infamous cold case files in Los Angeles history.

Chris Pine's I Am the Night character - a reporter named Jay Singletary investigating the case - is totally fictional,...

I Am the Night episode 1 introduces the players but obscures the game.

This I Am the Night review contains spoilers.

I Am the Night Episode 1

I Am the Night's pilot opens with an insistent beat made ominous by a camera which feels like it's bringing a malicious force to a sleepy house in Sparks, Nevada. The year is 1965 and the scene at the house is a mom getting her daughter ready for school. "It's right when I say it's right," we hear Jimmy Lee (Golden Brooks) tell her daughter Fauna, and we already get the sense of the home life dynamic. There's going to be some rancor bubbling under the surface, and rebellion. The young teen chides her mother with "who needs school anyway?" and her mom warns her that she's "different than that" loser talk. And now we see a protective mom who has a reason to be protective.

Welcome back to Tune In: our weekly newsletter offering a guide to the best of the week’s TV.

Each week, Variety’s TV team combs through the week’s schedule, selecting our picks of what to watch and when/how to watch them. This week, the Super Bowl airs on CBS and “Russian Doll” drops on Netflix.

“I Am the Night,” TNT, Monday, 9 p.m.

Inspired by true events, the series premiere of this drama tells the story of Fauna Hodel, a teenage girl who is given away at birth, and grows up outside of Reno, Nevada. Fauna lives more-or-less comfortably with the mysteries of her origin, until one day she makes a discovery that leads her to question everything.

“Russian Doll,” Netflix, Friday

Nathasha Lyonne stars in this comedy as a young woman named Nadia on her journey as the guest of honor at a seemingly inescapable party...

On I Am the Night, TNT’s true crime mini-series, the interest and involvement of director Patty Jenkins is now a tangible film. TNT’s I Am the Night is the story of Fauna Hodel (India Eisley) who was given away at birth and seeks her biological family. Jenkins learned of the life of Fauna Hodel and befriended the author of One Day She’ll Darken. It was Hodel’s book that captured Jenkins attention, primarily the story of her childhood and teenage years. But the connection to George Hodel, a prime suspect in the infamously gruesome and unsolved Black Dahlia killing in 1945 […]

The post I Am The Night exclusive: Leland Orser on Peter Sullivan and ‘creepy’ Sowden House appeared first on Monsters and Critics.

Created by Sam Sheridan, executive produced by Patty Jenkins (who also directed some of the episodes) and inspired by true events, the TNT series I Am the Night tells the story of Fauna Hodel (India Eisley), a naïve young girl growing up outside of Reno, Nevada with her co-dependent single mother (Golden Brooks), who she learns is hiding a big secret from her. Uncovering that life-changing secret sends teenaged Fauna on a desperate quest to Los Angeles to discover who she is, putting her right into the path of Jay Singletary (Chris Pine), a former Marine turned …...

Network: TNT.

Episodes: Ongoing (hour).

Seasons: Ongoing.

TV show dates: January 27, 2019 — present.

Series status: Has not been cancelled.

Performers include: Chris Pine, India Eisley, Jefferson Mays, Yul Vazquez, Justin Cornwell, Dylan Smith, Jay Paulson, Golden Brooks, and Leland Orser.

TV show description:

Inspired by the book, One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel (by Hodel), the I Am the Night TV show is a limited series which explores an adoptee's connection to the murder of Elizabeth Short, i.e. the "Black Dahlia" slaying.

As an innocent teenaged girl growing up in the Reno, Nevada area, Fauna Hodel (Eisley) knew she had been given away at birth. She also knew there were secrets surrounding her early...

Chris Pine and Patty Jenkins are going noir this weekend.  I Am the Night premieres on TNT in a sneak peek just after the SAG Awards, and it finds the pair who first worked together on Wonder Woman reteaming for a very different story about an equally compelling and even more mysterious and determined woman.  The show is based on the true story of Fauna Hodel (played by India Eisley), an adopted woman whose search for her real identity ended up being connected to the infamous and unsolved Black Dahlia murder. Pine's character, reporter Jay Singletary, is a fictional guy, but the story he's investigating is pretty real. Hodel herself wrote the book the show is based on, an autobiography...

For the cast and crew of TNT’s new mystery drama “I Am the Night,” filming in the John Sowden House was all too real. Nicknamed the “Jaws House” for its sharklike facade, the famous Los Angeles residence was once home to Dr. George Hodel, a well known Hollywood gynecologist in the 1940s and prime suspect in the Black Dahlia case.

The limited series tells the true story of Fauna Hodel, a young girl played by India Eisley who finds out that she’s Dr. Hodel’s biological granddaughter. Alongside Jay Singletary (Chris Pine), a washed up journalist obsessed with the Black Dahlia murder, the two delve into the secrets of the past and soon get twisted up in the surreal world of Dr. Hodel.

Variety spoke with the stars of the show, along with director Patty Jenkins, at Thursday’s premiere at the Harmony Gold Theater in Los Angeles.

The story of George Hodel and the infamous Sowden House has long been part of Hollywood lore, but for Patty Jenkins, the tale has a much more personal connection. 

Directed and exec produced by Jenkins and written and created by her husband, Sam Sheridan, the TNT limited series I Am the Night sheds new light on the story of George Hodel, a Los Angeles doctor who was suspected of multiple murders in the 1940s and '50s and is believed to be the Black Dahlia killer. The couple was close friends with Fauna Hodel, George's granddaughter and a ...

TNT’s I Am the Night feels like a show from another time, and not because the mystery limited series takes place in 1965 Los Angeles. Rather, it seems a throwback to five years ago, when the television business was racing to copy the success of True Detective Season One with a variety of anthological crime stories, often set in the past and/or featuring movie stars not known for working on the small screen. In Peak TV, five years is an eternity, enough time for the True Detective phenomenon to have cratered,...

A few seconds into the trailer for TNT's new limited series I Am the Night you realize that star Chris Pine and director Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) have teamed up for something really dark. The six-episode series premieres Monday, Jan. 28 and tells the story of Fauna Hodel (India Eisley), a young

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Other Links From TVGuide.com I Am the NightChris PinePatty JenkinsIndia EisleySam Sheridan...

The Black Dahlia cold case takes a back seat to a coming of age story in TNT's I Am the Night.

Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman, flips the noir narrative in I Am the Night. In most film noir movies, going back to the forties, a hapless male is endangered by a femme fatale. Here all the fatal attractions grow stubble. From daddy dearest to the journalist who stars in series to the cops protecting her, Fauna Hodel is constantly at risk of death.

The series is based on the real life story of Fauna Hodel, the biological grandfather of Dr. George Hodel (Jefferson Mays), a renowned Los Angeles gynecologist who may also be one of the most heinous criminals in the history of Hollywood: The Black Dahlia murderer. We know this going in because it is telegraphed on almost every frame, but also because main character...

Finding a new way into an old story is a framework to which television is uniquely suited, but it’s also trickier than it may seem. A show can take its time delving into different chapters of any single narrative, broadening and deepening perspectives that other adaptations may have given short shrift. But in trying to be comprehensive, a show can also default to tried-and-true tropes by flattening the characters into facsimiles rather than fleshing them out as people.

Such is the conflict at play in “I Am the Night,” TNT’s ambitious new noir drama, created by Sam Sheridan and executive produced by “Wonder Woman” helmer Patty Jenkins (who directed the first two episodes). The limited series is inspired by the extraordinary real life of Fauna Hodel, a white girl who grew up in Nevada thinking she was mixed race after a wealthy family gave her to a black...

A Tuesday night in December at London’s massive Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden complex, Patty Jenkins and Chris Pine are nearing the end of their third collaboration as director and actor. It’s one of Pine’s final days of shooting on “Wonder Woman 1984,” the breathlessly anticipated superhero sequel due out next year, and Jenkins, perched on a couch in her trailer, is trying to convince her star to stay a few more days for the wrap party. “We should talk about Saturday,” she insists.

“You see people drunk,” Pine says, “who you don’t want to see drunk.”

Jenkins laughs. “You’ll be too busy carrying me!”

In their work together — two “Wonder Woman” films, the first released in 2017, and the new TNT limited series “I Am the Night” (premiering Jan. 28) — Jenkins has seemed to be perpetually inviting Pine to the party, helping one of his generation’s...

Synopsis: The gripping story of Fauna Hodel, a teenage girl who is given away at birth, and grows up outside of Reno, Nevada. Fauna lives more-or-less comfortably with the mysteries of her origin, until one day she makes a discovery that leads her to question everything. As Fauna begins to investigate the secrets of her past, she meets a ruined reporter, haunted by the case that undid…...

India Eisley grew up on sets because her mother was an actress, and she booked her first role when she was only 10 years old. Her 15-year career has thus far consisted of quite a few films in addition to television (“The Secret Life of the American Teenager”). Now, Eisley portrays the real-life Fauna Hodel, a woman who grew up believing she was mixed race, only to learn some dark truths about her origin story much later in life, in TNT’s limited series “I Am The Night.”

You have other actors in your family. How did growing up around the business impact your interest in entering it?

You’re not going into it blindly thinking that it’s all going to be great. You have the reality of it — the grounded mentality that you need — because when you’re a kid you see things go wrong; you see a family...

So what’s shakin’ on the old tube this month, you ask? NBC re-introduces a cult sitcom yanked back from the brink of cancellation; Showtime’s got a snazzy period piece set in the coke-fueled world of high finance; Comedy Central pulls back the curtain on a new project from a pair of esteemed Saturday Night Live expats; Team Wonder Woman reunites on the small screen; and Fox drops the latest in live-musical, Broadway-to-your-living-room presentations. Here’s what you’ll be watching on TV as we ease into 2019. (For your best streaming options,...

TNT has dropped an official teaser trailer for I Am The Night, an upcoming original series that looks to expose the darkness lurking within the hearts of men. Based on true life events, the drama tells the gripping story of Fauna Hodel (India Eisley), a teenage girl who is given away at birth, and grows up outside of Reno, Nevada. Fauna lives more-or-less comfortably with the mysteries of…...