The Cleaner: Where Else But on A&E?

They really couldn’t have plotted it better.

Network execs are always hoping their series finds an audience. The new entry on A&E, The Cleaner (July 15, 10pm), seems to already have a built-in audience. Co-creator and showrunner Jonathan Prince says it was not a coincidence that he pitched The Cleaner to A&E, home of hit original reality series Intervention. “A&E was the only place I pitched this to,” Prince says in an interview at TCA.

The Cleaner, based on the life of co-exec prod Warren Boyd, is about a crew of former addicts led by William Banks (Benjamin Bratt) that rescues people from their addictions and delivers them to a safe house and eventually to rehab. Later in the season it is revealed that Banks has a hand in a rehab facility.

On top of his stressful occupation, Banks also must balance his chaotic home life as a husband and father of two teens. His marriage is rocky, he sleeps on the couch, and rescuing addicts can’t be done on a schedule, which means he often is unable to fulfill obligations to his kids and wife. On the other hand, when he’s with his family his job sometimes calls. (To illustrate how busy Boyd is, Prince notes that during his pitch to A&E, Boyd was at the pitch table juggling 3 Blackberries. He was exchanging messages with addicts or their families that he was trying to help, Prince says. The reality of the situation didn’t hurt the pitch, Prince believes.)

But Prince’s logic was not simply that a series about addiction and rehab would fit on the network home of Intervention. The series fits into A&E’s sweet spot in several other ways too. “Look,” he says, “beside Intervention, A&E has The Sopranos, which is the greatest TV drama, but it’s partly about a dysfunctional family with a strong male character.” The Cleaner also has a strong male character and much of the show revolves Banks’ family and his crew, his professional family. Prince also points to other A&E series with strong male leads, like Dog The Bounty Hunter. “Look, I’ve been canceled before,” Prince says. “I’ve had the right show at the wrong network. So I was careful this time.”

But The Cleaner, A&E’s first original scripted series in six years, is not a dramatized version of Intervention, co-creator and exec prod Robert Munic insists. And A&E SVP Tana Nugent Jamieson says, “We won’t have Intervention leading in to The Closer.” Still, Munic believes “I think people who are interested in Intervention will want to see The Closer.” I think he’ll be proven right. From there the series itself must be good enough to make viewers stick. Judging from the pilot, it just might be.