Just Another Day in Midnight

At first glance, Midnight resembles any other dusty west Texas town.

But a closer look reveals that it’s filled with misfits — a troubled psychic, a 200-year-old vampire, a hit woman, a witch and an angel that has graced the earth for 1,000 years.

They’re all part of NBC’s summer series, Midnight, Texas, a drama adapt-ed from the best-selling book series by Charlaine Harris, known for the True Blood novels.

“We start the series with Manfred Bernardo [François Arnaud], an extraordinarily powerful psychic who sees the dead and can be hijacked by them,” explains executive producer Monica Owusu-Breen. “His grandma, who happens to be dead, accompanies him in his RV and tells him, ‘You’ll be safe in Midnight.’”

But in the town of outcasts, he finds a group just as peculiar as he is.

Harris found inspiration for the plot from summers spent visiting her mother’s Texas hometown. “It was such a different society with different rules and priorities,” says the author, who is a consulting producer on the series. “So I thought up this tiny town where only the people that live there are in the club. It’s a strange family, but ultimately it works because they support each other.”

As the series unfolds, viewers will learn what brought each resident to Midnight and the special  skills they’ll use to protect their town.

“At its core, it’s about a community who is keeping each other’s backs,” says Owusu-Breen. And Harris’s knack for eccentricity, she adds, is what brought the project to life.

“You’re just as likely to go on a hit with a hit woman as you are to flash back to angels 1,000 years ago,” says the producer, noting that the series tackles everything from the supernatural to action, romance, friendship and horror. “When I first read this, I thought, ‘These are all my favorite things in a blender!’”

Sarah Ramos, who plays a waitress named Creek, was attracted to the project because Midnight, Texas is unlike anything she’s ever seen on television. “We’re always looking at each other on set like, ‘I can’t believe that we’re making this show,’” she explains. “It’s incredibly weird…but a good weird!”

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 3, 2017