Profit (TV series)

Did You Know?

• Adrian Pasdar was nominated for a 1996 Petcabus Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Jim Profit.
• In the never-produced second season, Joanne Meltzer was to die in a phone booth explosion in Ireland, planted by the Irish Republican Army at Profit's behest.
• The series holds a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 16 reviews.

Characters

After chaining his father to a bed and setting it on fire as a teenager, Profit reinvented himself as an Ivy League-educated corporate executive. He worked in auditing before becoming junior vice president of Acquisitions at Gracen & Gracen, aiming to become president of Acquisitions by covertly ruining those who opposed him. Joanne Meltzer (Lisa Zane) was G&G's West Coast chief of security and Profit's archenemy. A former police detective, she was driven to expose Profit by his parallels to her abusive older sister and by the downfall of Jack Walters, with whom she had a short-lived affair. Charles Henry 'Chaz' Gracen (Keith Szarabajka) was G&G's CEO, known for his violent temper and paranoid nature. He pretended to be friendly to outsiders, berated his brother, and resented working under his father, the company's founder.

Controversy and cancellation

Profit was canceled after only 5 of the 9 produced hours were broadcast, officially due to low Nielsen ratings; it ranked 138th of 160 shows in 1996. Viewers flooded Fox affiliates with complaints about Jim Profit's immoral actions, with some in the Bible Belt calling him 'Satan in a Suit.' Some affiliates threatened to pre-empt the show. Members of the business community were outraged by the portrayal of corporate America, and it was rumored that Fox founder Rupert Murdoch objected to the show's edgy content, though Adrian Pasdar claimed Profit was Murdoch's favorite show. The series lost almost all of the lead-in audience from Melrose Place, which reportedly displeased executive producer Aaron Spelling, especially after Time and Entertainment Weekly gave Profit glowing reviews while criticizing Melrose Place. Co-creator David Greenwalt suggested that the show's affront to conventional television may have turned off viewers. Viewers for Quality Television lamented the cancellation, with founder Dorothy Swanson calling it spellbinding but not mainstream.

Home media

Anchor Bay Entertainment released the complete series on DVD in Region 1 on August 9, 2005, as a three-disc set containing the two-hour pilot and seven episodes, including four that did not air on Fox. The set includes a 67-minute documentary called Greed Kills and audio commentaries for the pilot and three episodes. This release went out of print in 2010. Free Dolphin Entertainment released the complete series on DVD in Region 2 on October 20, 2005, with French subtitles or French-dubbed audio, plus a 23-minute featurette titled 'Profit Special' and Fox promotional spots. Ostalgica released the series on DVD in Region 2 on April 24, 2012, under the German title Jim Profit – Ein Mann geht über Leichen, with English or German-dubbed audio. The content of episodes is identical across all releases except for the opening voiceover in the pilot, which differs between Region 1 and other versions.

Production

Profit was produced by Greenwalt/McNamara Productions and Stephen J. Cannell Productions in association with New World Television, and was the final series from Cannell's company. Exterior shots of the Gracen & Gracen twin towers were filmed at the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel in Vancouver, with a placard and G&G logo monuments placed on the plaza. Interior office shots for the pilot were taken at the working offices of B.C. Gas and a law firm in downtown Vancouver; later episodes used studio sets. The hospital scene in 'Healing' was shot at St. Paul's Hospital across from the Sheraton Wall Centre. Profit's apartment building exterior was Eugenia Place in Vancouver's West End, notable for a 35-foot Pin oak tree on its roof. Profit's computer network exploration used a 3D Virtual Reality Modeling Language interface, inspired by films such as The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, and Disclosure.