Human drama blends with hi-tech in new CBS series about a man’s search for his daughter’s killer. Kavita Daswani talks to the cast and crew of Wisdom of the Crowd.

India’s Zee, driving an aggressive domestic entertainment agenda, put its hand up first for new CBS series, Wisdom of the Crowd, clearly betting that the tech-heavy treatment will go down in a nation high on all things IT.

Wisdom merges crime solving with crowdsourcing in a way that showcases “an inherent desire for community (and) altruism”, said executive producer Ted Humphrey (The Good Wife) during the Television Critics Association (TCA) event in Los Angeles in August. The series is produced in conjunction with Israel’s Keshet Media Group.

The Wisdom pilot opens with Silicon Valley tech billionaire Jeffrey Tanner (played by Jeremy Piven) relinquishing his company to focus on finding his daughter’s real murderer, believing that the wrong person is serving time for the crime.

His last act before walking away: unveiling Sophe, a platform designed to receive input from the world at large to help him solve his daughter’s death.

Humphrey, a former lawyer, said the idea is closer to reality than most people realise.

“Crowdsourcing is something we all use every day,” he says. “Yelp is crowdsourcing. Waze is crowdsourcing. The New York Times, when they tell you what the top email stories of the day are, is crowdsourcing. And police in law enforcement are beginning to use crowdsourcing,” he adds.

In launching Sophe, Tanner works with Detective Cavanaugh (played by Richard T Jones), who is initially against the idea, fearing it could lead to vigilantism (It does).

Adding conflict to the plot, Monica Potter plays Alex, Tanner’s ex-wife, who doesn’t agree with his single-minded focus on finding their child’s killer.

“This show deals with the impact that this has on his family and his ex-wife, the potentially devastating divisive impact it has,” Humphrey said, adding: “This is a man who upends his entire life and career and throws it all away in a quest to solve this.”

Piven said it was that sort of flawed determination that compelled him to sign on.

“I read this script and I was immediately drawn into the world and the characters and the premise and the idea that this guy is heartbroken and trying to fill that void,” he said.

“It’s such a fertile, beautiful premise because it can go anywhere. He simply wants to solve his daughter’s crime, and then there’s all that conflict within that. And to play a guy that has those layers and is a human being… and will ultimately do the wrong thing for the right reasons is a really brilliant premise,” Piven adds.

By the end of the opening episode, Sophe has been used for more than just finding Tanner’s daughter’s killer, although that continues to remain the driver. Humphrey said this will continue through the debut season.

“These things have a way of changing and morphing, depending on how much story there is to tell and how fun it is to tell it,” he added.

“It will go on as long as it’s interesting. And I do think that the vehicle of the show can exist without it at some point. But I also think that, coming in, it’s a very compelling and emotional story. And the emotion and heart of it are what we are really driving at.”

Published on Issue Four of ContentAsia's inprint+online (7 September 2017)