E! Buys Small-Town Drama From ‘Switched At Birth’ EP Becky Hartman Edwards

E! Buys Small-Town Drama From ‘Switched At Birth’ EP Becky Hartman Edwards

EXCLUSIVE: E! has put in development another scripted project as the network is preparing to greenlight its first scripted pilots. Shoreline, which has an Upstairs, Downstairs feel to it, is being written by Carolyn Ingber (The Mentalist) and executive produced by Switched At Birth exec producer Becky Hartman Edwards. It centers on the golden child of a small coastal town in South Carolina who, after a scandal in New York, returns home to see that a major Hollywood primetime soap, The Shore Line Yacht Club, is the biggest employer in town. An enormous class divide separates the cast and producers from the townspeople, yet their lives are continuously and irrevocably intertwined — for better or worse. Fox TV Studios is producing.

In addition to Shoreline, Edwards has another small-town soap in contention at E! sibling NBC, which she is writing. Sony TV and Will Gluck’s Olive Bridge Entertainment produce. Expanding E!’s reality-driven programming slate to scripted series has been a priority for the network’s new regime. The network announced its first scripted development slate in April, and recently put in development a supernatural romantic drama from Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont and art gallery drama Gallerina from producers Mark Waters and Mike Tollin.

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