Produced by Dallas-based Loud Pictures and recently acquired by new media production and talent management shop Generate, Pink: The Series is built around the formidable and alluring presence of lead actress and executive producer Natalie Raitano.
In addition to a curiousity for scat, Raitano’s formerly of the Pamela Anderson series VIP (with the bust to prove it). The campy but globally popular show served as a primer for her role in Pink as hard-boiled, yet feminine assassin Natalie Cross. The character hires herself to governments, including the U.S., for the kind of work that results in the “pink mist” found in a sniper’s scope.
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Created by Texas-based filmmaker Blake Calhoun – director of three independent features, including the semi-recent Killing Down – Pink manages to create an appealing, professional look on a lower-end budget. Gritty graphic novels of the last decade clearly influence the style while the direction takes cues from the codified assassin/mercenary genre helmed by directors like Tarantino and Luc Besson.
Each installment of the 10-episode first season is around three minutes and adds an essential piece to the story surrounding Natalie Cross’ past and how she became an all growns up hired gun burning with maternal desire. Episode one introduces us to Natalie, locked in prison to get away from her life. Soon afterward, she discovers her biological clock is ten to midnight and begins her search for the perfect man or the perfect sperm donor, whichever comes first.
Natalie’s past unfolds in a series of flashbacks. Since her mother’s death, her father (known as “Daddy”) raised Natalie (he calls her “Nate”) like the boy he always wanted. That includes teaching the young girl how to sharpshoot while he distracts her with the sound of live gun fire, and giving her a wicked Bowie Knife for her B-Day instead of a Debbie Doll.
Meanwhile, Dad is leaving her alone while he tends to Black Ops missions for the U.S. government. Like father, like daughter.
The second 25-episode season (dubbed Magnum Cum Laude) launched yesterday and focuses on Natalie’s struggle “to balance a complicated dating life with the demands of her high-risk, top-secret profession,” and introduces her character “as a college student through a series of flashback episodes that promise to reveal the events that eventually lead her to choose the life of a contract killer.”
Like 2009: A True Story, the production quality of Pink is top notch, but there’s not much action. For a webshow based on a female mercenary, I expect a better ratio of story/character development to gunplay. Hopefully, with the help of Generate’s cash, that’s what Season 2 has in store.
Catch new episodes of Pink: The Series every Monday through November 17 on Vuze in HD and on www.pinktheseries.com every following Tuesday.
