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Gravity aired from April until June 2010 on Starz.

Gravity” was an offbeat series about a support group for people who had attempted suicide. Unlikely relationships were forged when the colorful cast faced the challenges and opportunities that came along with a second shot at life. Robert and Lily ( Ivan Sergai, Krysten Ritter), two star-crossed lovers from very different worlds, were particularly tested when the mysterious Detective Miller( Eric Schaeffer) took an unusual interest in them. The couple joined the likes of an aging supermodel, construction worker, hormonal teenager and picture-perfect housewife as the group learned to live and love again in New York City.

A Review from The New York Times

Television Review | 'Gravity'
Suicide Support Group as a Scene for Singles
Starz

By MIKE HALE
Published: April 22, 2010

It gives a whole new meaning to meeting cute: at a support group for people who have survived suicide attempts, Lily (Krysten Ritter) and Robert (Ivan Sergei) are paired up, fight, yell about his dead wife and her (imaginary) dead lover and then have sex on the sidewalk.

That scene comes about 12 minutes into “Gravity,” a half-hour dramedy that begins Friday night on Starz, and it’s actually more believable than the opening, in which Robert drives his Mercedes off the Palisades Interstate Parkway and flies far enough through the air to crash into a swimming pool aboard a cruise ship on the Hudson.

There always seems to be a place on premium cable for a not-quite-comedy about death (or in this case, near death), from “Six Feet Under” on HBO to “Dead Like Me” on Showtime to “Gravity.” The trick is to find a tone that works. Each of those previous shows erred, if only slightly, on the side of seriousness and enjoyed some success.

“Gravity” is going for something jokier. “Hey, guys!” yells Ving Rhames as the leader of the support group, waiting impatiently for Lily and Robert, “We’re all dying over here.” A running motif in Episode 3 involves one group member’s small penis, which contributes to the poor self-image that makes him suicidal. He confronts this particular demon by joking about it at an open-mike comedy show (hosted by the downtown New York fixture Murray Hill): “I’m one cold swim away from joining the W.N.B.A.”

Maybe the producers are afraid that anything genuinely funny would be in bad taste and have decided to stick with arched eyebrows and easy irony. Or maybe that’s just their natural style. (Eric Schaeffer, who’s an executive producer, writer and director of the show and plays a creepy cop who befriends Lily, was responsible for another coy comedy involving suicide, the 1996 feature film “If Lucy Fell.”)

In any case, it comes off as condescending to the characters (all of them except Mr. Schaeffer’s cop, that is). That’s too bad, because they’re already suffering from the synthetic secondhand feel of the dramatic sections, where their back stories are filled in and their reasons for suicide are revealed.

Ms. Ritter usually manages to be funny no matter how unpromising the material — “27 Dresses,” the Web series “Woke Up Dead” — but she’s defeated here, playing a woman with daddy issues who bakes herself a chocolate cake and then downs a bottle of codeine. Through the first four episodes Lily and the other characters are simply stick figures that the writers can dress up in their choice of neuroses.

It might be possible to make a good show in which a suicide support group served as the framework for an offbeat relationship comedy, but for now “Gravity” is like that Mercedes, flying through the air and losing altitude fast.

GRAVITY

Starz, Friday nights at 10:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 9:30, Central time.

Created and written by Jill Franklyn and Eric Schaeffer; directed by Mr. Schaeffer; Ms. Franklyn, Mr. Schaeffer and Dan Pasternack, executive producers; Daniel Hank, producer; Marc Blandori, director of photography; Alan Bruckner, production designer; Lisa Bromwell, editor; music by Matthew Puckett. Produced by Five Minutes Before the Miracle in association with Starz Originals.

WITH: Krysten Ritter (Lily Champagne), Ivan Sergei (Robert Collingsworth), Eric Schaeffer (Christian Miller), Seth Numrich (Adam Rosenblum), Rachel Hunter (Shawna Rollins), Ving Rhames (Dogg McFee), Robyn Cohen (Carla Glick) and James Martinez (Jorge Sanchez).

A Review from Slant Magazine

Gravity: Season One ***½

by Aubry D'Arminio on April 23, 2010

There is something inherently off-putting about a Friday-night suicide sitcom. It's not the seemingly incongruous melding of "suicide" and "funny." (We've all seen The Lonely Guy.) And it's not the irony of airing a show about unhappy, friendless people to those sitting at home watching TV on the weekend. It's that in today's TV landscape, where oddities are already the norm, with comedies about multiple personality disorder and a suburban mom selling weed, and dramas about a high school teacher making crank and a police analyst who's also a serial killer, Gravity feels like just another bit of quirky telly, an attempt to be distinguishable and different in a way that just upholds the status quo.

Yet, it's also actually very good. Gravity knows exactly how to make you laugh (the show's hero drives his Mercedes off a cliff and is saved by plummeting directly into the pool of a passing gay cruise) and when you should cry (his future lover bites tearfully into a chocolate cake laced with codeine). The pair, Robert and Lily (made wonderfully complicated, yet easy to identify with, by Ivan Sergei and Krysten Ritter) meet up at a mandatory support group for suicidal New Yorkers where they're forced into a sort of makeshift family by its leader, Dogg (a wheelchair bound Ving Rhames). Each subsequent episode uncovers why and how another member of the group tried to end it all—from the seemingly perfect housewife (a heartbreakingly good Robyn Cohen) to the faded former model (a surprisingly comfortable Rachel Hunter)—while continuing to deconstruct Robert and Lily as they navigate the world they no longer wanted to experience.

Lily is also being watched over by the cop who saved her life, Detective Miller—and it soon becomes clear how obsessed with her he really is (he's got her baby pictures on his computer and wears a pair of her stolen underwear). Portrayed by the show's co-creator and writer, Eric Schaeffer, the character of gambling addict Miller seems at once a misguided attempt to add a serialized mystery to the show and the perfect antidote to the dour members of the support group, who just can't roll with the punches the way he does.

There are also excellent cameos by Jessica Walter as Robert's overbearing, extremely religious mother and Robert Klein as his glib priest, but Gravity's strength is in its lead performances and Shaeffer's writing. Shaeffer is no stranger to the wacky: He was also responsible for FX's excellent but short-lived eating-disorder comedy, Starved, in which he appeared as an anorexic who, similar to Robert, meets likeminded friends in a support group. That show was more challenging than Gravity, whose suicide attempts are often quick and slightly comic—as opposed to the slow, bodily horror that is starving one's body to death.

An Article from NY Magazine
April 18, 2010

Force of Attraction
With Gravity, Krysten Ritter kicks the best friend habit.

Generally speaking, choking on your own vomit isn’t a career enhancer. Krysten Ritter proves otherwise. The 28-year-old actress was in something of a rut until landing the part of Jesse Pinkman’s junkie girlfriend, Jane Margolis, for Breaking Bad’s second season. “Up until then, I was getting a lot of comedic sidekick roles,” says Ritter, who had pretty much sewn up the feisty best friend in romantic comedies (27 Dresses, What Happens in Vegas, Confessions of a Shopaholic, She’s Out of My League). But one dark role has begotten another darkish one: She’s now starring in Gravity (debuting April 23 on Starz), an ensemble dramedy about an A.A.-style group for suicide survivors. In many ways, Gravity’s Lily is like Jane: smart, acerbic, and quirky. But this time her character lives, hooking up with a grieving widower who drives his car off a bridge only to be thwarted by a passing cruise ship. “Krysten has this intangible energy,” says Eric Schaeffer, Gravity’s creator. “She can go from downright melancholy, to sarcastic, to very light and kooky.”

Her mind does travel interesting paths. We start talking about an upcoming film role, playing the manager of an Irish band in Killing Bono. “It’s based on a book of the same name, a true story about U2 and a band called Shook Up!,” she says. “They came up around the same time. This is a pretty bold statement,” she adds, “but I think one of the guys in the movie, Robbie Sheehan, is going to be the next Johnny Depp. He’s electric, only 22, and he’s also got some big CGI movie with Nic Cage coming out: Season of the Witch.” Ritter pauses. “What is it about Nic Cage that people find appealing, I wonder?” I suggest that he has done some great work. “He was in Leaving Las Vegas—and he was kind of awesome in Face/Off,” she says. “He’s too old for me. I don’t look at men that age. I just don’t. I usually date young boys.” Younger than you? “No, just my age. Older guys are nurturing, they like to take care of you, and sometimes it’s nice to be fed and watered, but there’s nothing worse than a grumpy old man.”

Dressed in scuffed motorcycle boots and a plaid button-down, the actress could easily pass for her former self, a Lower East Side–dwelling model (discovered in a rural Pennsylvania mall when she was 16), or the lead singer and guitarist for a rock band called, say, Ex Vivian—which, as it turns out, is Ritter’s gig when she’s not acting. And since not acting isn’t happening much lately, “at the moment I’m just trying to maintain my skill as a musician,” she says. “I try to pick up my guitar—a classic nylon-string that I call Guitarlos—for fifteen minutes every morning. When I don’t, I’m starting off on the wrong foot. I’m going back to L.A. after this interview, and I can’t wait to be playing my guitar and not have hair and makeup.”

Ritter admits to a wanton lack of pickiness when it comes to her work. “I take every single job that comes my way,” she says. “I know so many complete assholes who’ve got a lot of money in the bank and got it quickly and have no concept how hard you have to work.” But with the move from supporting parts to leads, she’s been forced to employ restraint, even turning down a role for the first time. “I’ve been working for six months straight, and otherwise I would be useless in [my next project] Vamps.”

For some bizarre reason, when every film and TV show seems to boast a vampire, the deathly pale, gothic beauty is just now playing one. (I mean, look at her!) Out next year, Vamps is a comedy from Clueless director Amy Heckerling, who cast Ritter to star opposite Alicia Silverstone. “It kind of sucks,” says Ritter of the vampire glut. “Amy’s been working on this movie for a long time—it’s her passion project. But Vamps is first and foremost an Amy Heckerling movie, not a vampire movie, like Twilight—though I can’t really say since I haven’t seen it. I might be the only person.”

Gravity
Starz.
Premieres April 23 at 10:30 p.m.

An Article from NY Magazine

Eric Schaeffer on Gravity, His Penis Size, and Why People Hate Him So Much

* 4/23/10 at 3:00 PM

Eric Schaeffer's new Starz show, Gravity (starring Krysten Ritter), follows a group of people who've tried (and failed) to kill themselves. It's a return to talk-therapy form for the director-writer-actor, who starred in and created Starved, a season-long FX dramedy about a support group for eating-disorder sufferers, and Showtime's docu-series I Can't Believe I'm Still Single, about Schaeffer's personal quest to find love. That show was prompted by a blog turned book deal with the same title, and Schaeffer suffered backlash for what many saw as degrading takes on women and his kinky lifestyle (he was in the running for Gawker's Douche of the Decade award). While he used to respond to these flames, now he says he's stopped engaging. (Sorry, commenters!) "I’m not into negative press or anything, it’s not fun or interesting to me, I think the whole gossip machine is boring." We spoke with Schaeffer recently about Gravity, making Internet enemies, and not playing the leading man for once.

Was Gravity, a show about a suicide support group, your idea?
Not fully. I got a call from a woman I had written for in the past, and she said she had an idea about a group of people who had tried to commit suicide but survived, like a Suicide for Dummies thing, which I thought was funny — in that dark, comedic way I found it interesting to me. I decided to get involved with the project and flesh it out and make it a viable show.

Your show Starved was also about a support group, so I figured this idea came from that.
The seed of the idea came from my co-creator, but it had no story arc, no other characters, so all that stuff had to be created. Then we imbued it with the tapestry of colorful characters and story lines, and then I produced and directed it, like I did with Starved.

You also act in it, but not as the romantic lead, which is a departure for you.
At this point, I’m only interested in doing stuff that I’m acting in. Starz said to me, “Hey, you’re always the lead guy in your movies and shows, would you be willing to play a different part this time?” And I said, “Ummmm, sure, that’d be fine.” I had initially thought I’d be playing the Robert character, who’s the lead, but I don’t know why they didn’t want me to be the lead. So I suggested I play the cop character, Miller. In terms of plot arc over the season, Miller’s just as integral as the two leads.

You’re usually playing the guy who gets the hot girl; in If Lucy Fell, Elle Macpherson falls in love with you, in Fall it was Amanda De Cadenet.
Yeah, I guess I always play the "leading man" in terms of the love interest, and for this it was somewhat off-center. But in a five-year series, there’s certainly room for Miller to get a girlfriend.

You like to draw on autobiographical themes for your work. Were you ever suicidal?
I never, so far, have been close to planning a suicide. I don’t have clinical depression, I think I’m in the realm of people who have some depression. And I used to drink and do a lot of drugs, and what comes with that is a predilection for edgier, dark thinking. When people think something’s sad, alcoholics think it’s the end of the world.

One of the group members in Gravity tries to kill himself because his penis is so small. Do you think people will draw a connection to you?
Emma, you’re an excellent crack journalist, but you’re not going to get my dick size out of me. I don’t have a three-inch dick, which I’m very grateful for. It’s a very normal and functional size, so, no, that was not one that was born out of personal experience. That was from my imagination.

A couple of years ago you incurred a lot of backlash for your Still Single book.
It’s all gone, it was short lived, it was a flurry, and it went away. I think people have that kind of reaction to my work because they’re terrified of their own humanity. People want to put themselves in boxes — I’m a straight man; I’m a straight woman; I’m a real lady; I’m not a slut — people don’t want to acknowledge that they have conflicting beliefs, that you could be a refined, sweet, moral woman, but still have thoughts about wanting to get thrown down and fucked by your boyfriend. Or a man can’t be a strong, virile guy and still have a fantasy about getting fucked by a hot chick with a strap-on. These thoughts freak people out, and all my work deals with that stuff and puts it out there.

So are you still single?
Sadly, I’m still on the search for the right girl.

To watch some clips from Gravity go to http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gravity+starz&aq=f

For a Website dedicated to Krysten Ritter go to http://krysten-ritter.net/

For a Website dedicated to Krysten ritter go to http://www.krystenritter.org/

For The Official Website of Rachel Hunter go to http://www.rachelhunter.com/