Mario Bello is set to lead the provocatively titled new HBO drama, “Emergency Sex” which she will also produce alongside Russell Crowe and “Slumdog Millionaire” scribe Simon Beaufoy.
The show will chronicle the “larger-than-life exploits of expatriate nongovernment-organization workers who find their sanity tested in the face of atrocities, loneliness and primal desires.” If that sounds made up, it’s not. It’s based on the memoir “Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story From Hell on Earth,” by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson in which they recount the seamier side of their U.N. peacekeeping missions in places such as Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda and Liberia. Crowe purchased the rights to the book, hence his involvement.
This looks like it will be another winner from HBO who this year seem determined to prevent us from leaving the house. The Tom Hanks-produced followup to “Band Of Brothers,” “The Pacific,” “Boardwalk Empire” (with a pilot directed by Martin Scorsese) and David Simon’s “Treme” are all set to debut this year, and that’s not counting the stuff we already watch like “Hung” and “Bored To Death” returning with new seasons.
There are no production timelines yet for “Emergency Sex” but we would imagine it will air sometime in 2011.