The Greatest TV Pilots Of All Time

The Killing

AMC knows how to find shows with a great pilot episode. The Killing pilot certainly owes a lot to its Danish predecessor, Forbrydelsen (The Crime). In the first episode, police detective Sarah Linden is planning to retire, but she’s sucked into an investigation involving the disappearance of a young girl named Rosie Larsen. As viewers, we’re just as sucked in as Linden.

When filiming the pilot The Killing’s director, Patty Jenkins, had to make a decision on whether or not the first episode could be graphic. She told AMCTV.com, “I think there were some fears that people would want more graphic detail out of it, but that moment never happened. That [might have been] a dealbreaker for me. I felt like we needed to do the bare minimum to get the point across, not to revel in details. If it had crossed that line I would have been very uncomfortable, and I think everybody would have been very uncomfortable. It’s always about what’s nevessary to tell the story you’re telling. This is not a story of sensationalism. This is an emotionally-based story, so that was all we needed and wanted.”