Limited series · 8 episodes · Scripts complete
The Red
Stick
Mortui vivis praecipant. Let the dead teach the living.
A Louisiana death investigator processing Hurricane Katrina's dead starts finding bodies the flood didn't kill. The man responsible has used American disasters as cover for thirteen years, and he is not the first to do it.
The show
September 2005. In a warehouse morgue in St. Gabriel, Dr. Chris Grisham flags a body bag with no chain of custody, handed to a loading crew by a FEMA volunteer nobody can name. The thread runs back through Hurricane Ivan, the Jarrell tornado, and a prison bus that went off a Florida bridge during Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
The killer is Joaquin "QuiQuin" Masson: credentialed, helpful, forgettable. He is an untreated schizophrenic whose illness speaks to him as a stone face in any reflective surface, and it explains to him what he is. Between storms he lives as a man named Mike, plays guitar better than he should, and opens jars for his neighbors.
Then a cold open in Galveston, 1900, shows someone doing the same thing a century earlier, and someone else protecting the record.
Why now
The disaster response apparatus is real, documented, and almost untouched as drama: FEMA credentialing, DMORT morgues, chain of custody at mass casualty sites. No prestige series has gone inside post-Katrina Louisiana. This one goes in with a death investigator's precision.
The people
Dr. Chris Grisham
Medico-legal death investigator. Clinical to the point of detachment, which is his most disciplined form of care. Vision cast: Mahershala Ali.
QuiQuin Masson
Escaped prisoner turned credentialed FEMA volunteer. Never raises his voice. Never looks back.
Sgt. Felix Arceneaux
Louisiana State Police. His daughter was in Gentilly when the levees broke. She was never found.
Andrea Marti
Court TV correspondent eleven months on the road. Follows threads before she knows where they go.
Season one
- 01Assembly Line2005St. Gabriel, Louisiana
- 02Andrew1992South Florida
- 03Zip Tie2006Baton Rouge and the Lower Ninth Ward
- 04Double Vortex1997Jarrell, Texas
- 05Ivan2004Gulf Shores, Alabama
- 06Galveston1900Bolivar Peninsula, Texas
- 07Vivis2006Baton Rouge
- 08Praecipant2006Baton Rouge
Tone
True Detective, Season 1 · Mindhunter · Justified · The Leftovers
Where it stands
- All eight scripts written, with a full series bible.
- Season 2 mapped, opening on Vesuvius in 79 AD.
- A proof-of-concept short, Ivan, in pre-production in Atlanta.
Scripts and bible available on request.
Created by
Alexander Jaramillo, an Atlanta filmmaker with more than fifteen years in film and live broadcast. He directed and produced the horror short Rigidez Cadavérica (Crimson Screen Horror Film Fest, Official Selection) and has shot as director of photography and Steadicam operator. He also manages live event production for The Coca-Cola Company, from the Olympic Games to the FIFA World Cup.