ABC is adding to its roster of dramas.
The network has given a series order to RJ Decker (a working title), starring Scott Speedman as a South Florida private investigator. The show, based on Carl Hiaasen’s novel Double Whammy, is set to air later in the 2025-26 season.
Rob Doherty (Elementary) adapted Hiaasen’s novel and is executive producing with the author, Carl Beverly, Sarah Timberman and pilot director Paul McGuigan. Speedman is a producer. Disney’s 20th Television is the studio.
Speedman (Grey’s Anatomy, Felicity) plays the title role in RJ Decker, a disgraced newspaper photographer and ex-con who starts over as a private investigator in South Florida. The show’s logline reads, “The series follows him as he tackles cases that range from slightly odd to outright bizarre with the help of his journalist ex, her police detective wife, and a shadowy new benefactor, a woman from his past who could be his greatest ally or his one-way ticket back to prison.”
Adelaide Clemens (Under the Banner of Heaven) plays Decker’s ex, Catherine Delacroix. Bevin Bru (Batwoman) plays Melody Romero, Catherine’s wife and a Fort Lauderdale PD detective. Kevin Rankin (Justified, Claws) also stars as Aloysius, Decker’s former cellmate who owns a bar. Weruche Opia also starred in the pilot, but her part is being recast.
ABC ordered a pilot for the series in the spring. Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich told The Hollywood Reporter in May that the script was an “extraordinarily funny procedural that is highly original, a very singular character. I think it’s very much in the vein of the success we’ve had on Tuesday nights with shows like The Rookie and Will Trent and High Potential.”
RJ Decker is the second series based on a Hiaasen book to earn a series order recently. Apple TV+ is in production on the second season Bad Monkey, starring Vince Vaughn and based on Hiaasen’s 2013 novel.
Doherty is repped by UTA and Hansen Jacobson; Speedman, by CAA, Untitled Entertainment and Johnson Shapiro; Clemens, by Gersh, Untitled Entertainment and Jackoway Austen; Bru, by Emerald Artists Agency and Authentic Talent; Rankin, by Gersh, Haven Entertainment and Yorn Levine; and Hiaasen, by CAA.
