“If I survive this and I have the chance to make more films, my cinema will have changed forever. I feel like like I’m observing, I’m watching injustice and something really horrible, and I just need to save it in my body, remember it and put it in films later, to share it with the world. If I survive this, I will make films about what happened.”

The pilot orders send a distinct message that Kahl, CBS' longtime scheduling exec who replaced Glenn Geller as entertainment president last May, is looking to change the narrative surrounding the network. In making his first appearance before the press at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour in August, Kahl and his exec vp programming Thom Sherman were grilled over CBS' lack of inclusion and female-fronted shows. Last pilot season, all of the network's drama and comedy series pickups were fronted by men.