'Damages' gets a new life on satellite

Glenn Close in "Damages."[Photo/The New York Times]

A select group of television viewers received an unusual voice mail recently. "Hi, this is John Goodman," it began, in that actor's familiar husky voice. "I'm calling to tell you about the season premiere of the Emmy Award-winning show 'Damages,' starring Glenn Close, Rose Byrne and me. Tune in tomorrow night on Channel 239. Hey, it's only the best show on television. And it's only on DirecTV."

The message was robo-called to certain subscribers of the satellite service DirecTV's Audience Network, a new iteration of its commercial-free channel. Programmed to arrive at times when it was most likely to go straight to an answering machine, it was part of a campaign to promote the service's newest offering: "Damages," the intricately plotted legal drama canceled by the FX network.

With its marquee stars, Ms. Close and Ms. Byrne, and season-long guests like Mr. Goodman, the series is a get for DirecTV, whose 19 million household subscribers are more accustomed to promos for sporting events. And for "Damages," now in its fourth season and appearing on Wednesdays, the change of venue means new life for a critical hit with a small but fervent fan base.

But given DirecTV's smaller reach, with resurrection came the challenge of creating a show knowing that the audience could shrink even further.

Rose Byrne, left, with Glenn Close on "Damages." The show is now carried by a satellite service.[Photo/The New York Times]

Though each season of "Damages" focuses on a single newsy case — the Enron and Madoff debacles have been inspirations — from the beginning the series has centered on two women: Ms. Close as Patty Hewes, the take-no-prisoners litigator, and Ms. Byrne as Patty's sweeter protégée, Ellen Parsons. (Ms. Byrne, a relative unknown when she was cast, is now a star of two summer hits, "Bridesmaids" and "X-Men: First Class.") Their power dynamic shifts from boss-employee to mother-daughter to some kind of sexually charged frenemies.

Todd A. Kessler, a veteran of "The Sopranos" who created "Damages" with his brother Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman for FX in 2007, said they envisioned it as a story arcing over five or six seasons. But the ratings languished, and FX canceled it after three.

Ms. Close was not surprised. "I always thought we were kind of a tricky fit for FX," she said, speaking by phone en route to her home in Maine. "I think FX was defined by 'The Shield,' which was a testosterone-laden show, and they continue to be a testosterone-laden network. I think we were kind of off-brand for them."

By the time "Damages" moved to the Audience Network, Todd Kessler said, it was clear that "it was a great challenge to figure out how to sell the show."

Enter the robo-calls, print ads and e-mails that sought to broaden viewership, and a change in advertising strategy. "Previously the show was marketed as a relationship between two women," said Paul Guyardo, chief marketing officer for DirecTV, explaining later, "We've always viewed it as a legal thriller where the viewer is just as manipulated as the characters within the show."

Though FX continues to have a small stake in the show, it is produced by Sony, which brokered the deal with DirecTV for two more seasons. (Ms. Close and Ms. Byrne are signed to Sony for a sixth.) In the lead-up to the fourth season, DirecTV broadcast the first three, and they outperformed their FX broadcasts, Mr. Guyardo said.

The series offers a way for the Audience Network to define itself as a provider of niche entertainment for an educated, upper-middle-class demographic, an experiment it started by picking up the football drama "Friday Night Lights" from NBC. But unlike that series, whose finale drew only 3.48 million viewers when it was rebroadcast on NBC, "Damages" will not be shown anywhere else.

While the show's fate was uncertain for months, Ms. Byrne shot "Bridesmaids," "X-Men" and the horror movie "Insidious" back to back, and Ms. Close completed a film she called a passion project, "Albert Nobbs," in which she plays a woman who passes for a male butler in Victorian Dublin. But when production on "Damages" resumed this year, the transition was smooth, Ms. Close said. The cast and crew had the same parking spaces at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn, and the budget remained the same — about $2 million an episode, Mr. Kessler said, compared with $4 million for a network drama — but for 10 episodes instead of 13.

Choreographing the multipart, time-shifting plots into fewer episodes was not as much of a challenge as the lack of commercials, the creators said. "There are advantages to having commercial breaks in terms of how you pace the story," Mr. Zelman said.