I understand some of the people's impatience with the show last year. I think that Lisa's (Lili Taylor) story line (marrying Nate with minimal motivation in season three) became a little bit of a diversion - and that happens. It happens in every show.

Throughout my career, I've realized that there are a lot of great opportunities out there to be associated with programming. It may have started elsewhere, as Crimson Petal did in the UK. So, our main strategy for Encore is to go through those types of partnership acquisitions.

Movie people think things are movies, and authors think things should be movies because, up until recently, movies have been the jewel in the crown. But, that seems to be changing.

How do you get the protagonists and antagonists together, in the same space, without somebody having to die? So, we ended up having to tell two distinct stories, which is never the ultimate way to create a great serialized drama. So then, of course, we had the tragedy with Andy [Whitfield], which made everything very difficult and pushed back.

I think television is a unique form, in terms of storytelling. Having source material for these really dense, complicated, serialized dramas is a great way of world-building.