12 Miles of Bad Road is a television show originally created for HBO[1] centered on a Texas matriarch who must reconcile her booming real estate business and immense wealth with the day-to-day struggles of her dysfunctional family life.[2]
Ten episodes of the series were ordered by HBO, but because of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, only six episodes were shot.[citation needed] On March 17, 2008, HBO announced that it was not planning to air the show and the creators were shopping the episodes around to other networks.[3]
Newsweek called it "a scabrously funny satire of real-estate magnates in Dubya's Texas".[4]
The Los Angeles Times reported that after HBO passed on the show, "despite its price and pedigree" of prestigious actors and producers, the critics got a look:[5]
Sent out to critics by its creators, who hoped to prove that HBO was making a grave mistake, 12 Miles is a nightmare tug of war between the bold, the brilliant and the really, truly terrible. The tale of a Texas real estate dynasty, it cries out not for a review but a psychiatric diagnosis -- schizophrenia? Bipolar disorder? Never have so many Emmy-deserving performances been trapped in such a muddled mess of a more than occasionally offensive storyline.
Critics be damned, 12 Miles of Bad Road is a blast, a hair-spray-spritzed, bourbon-soaked mash-up of Dallas, Desperate Housewives, and MTV's Cribs...12 Miles is post-camp, a knowingly sincere (or sincerely knowing) attempt to resuscitate a genre that was long ago drowned out by our über-ironic culture...it qualifies as the most underrated show of the decade that almost no one has had the chance to see.
On the producers' decision to send the un-aired episodes to critics, the Toronto Star wrote:[7]
A risky proposition, depending on prevailing opinion, with one thin-skinned critic having already weighed in, objecting to the show's somewhat cynical characters and tone. I beg to differ. The show is beyond hilarious, cleverly written and flawlessly cast.
