SQUID FRY 08.08.13 - Made For TV…

MADE FOR TV… Two Brits skulking around just days before the launch of annual Car Week festivities isn’t unusual. But two Brits skulking around the Peninsula just before Car Week with murder in mind? That’s a mystery that called for Squid (outfitted in a Sherlock-style deerstalker hat) to solve.

A tipster reports our foreign friends are kind of big deals over there. Based on Squid’s investigation, they’re about to become big deals here too. Chris Chibnall, who has written and produced some of the U.K.’s hottest shows of the past decade (Dr. Who, Camelot, Law and Order: UK and – OMG, squee! – Torchwood) and Chibnall’s favorite script executive, Sam Hoyle, are about to see their wildly successful hit Broadchurch launch on BBC America. (Premiere was Wednesday, although it’s available on YouTube and Comcast.) The eight-episode series, starring David Tennant of Dr. Who fame, focuses on the murder of a young boy in a picturesque coastal town.

Not coincidentally, the Peninsula is famous for picturesque coastal towns. Chibnall and Hoyle are researching to see if Pacific Grove might provide the backdrop for the American version of the show.

Elementary, says Squid. And just how big is the series over there? After the last episode aired in Great Britain, the whodunnit was on the front page of multiple island newspapers the next morning.

ON BASE… Fool Squid once, shame on you. Try to fool Squid twice, and you feel some serious wrath. Monterey City Manager Fred Meurer abides by a similar policy.

After Fort Ord closed, Meurer didn’t want to let another swath of the region get shut down – and if it did, he didn’t want to be caught up in decades of indecision. So in 1995, Meurer delivered a pre-emptive, unsolicited proposal for the city to manage all the stuff the Defense Language Institute needs – streets, a sewer system, a fire department. “‘If the Army is not interested in operating the Presidio,’ I said, ‘Why don’t we operate it?’” Meurer recounted to a group of about 30 military minds in Monterey Aug. 5-6.

In the military, it’s known as the Monterey Model, and it’s one everyone from Meurer to Rep. Sam Farr to Ivan Bolden, Army chief of privatization and partnerships, favors. Bolden and Meurer convened in Monterey Aug. 5-6 to present how cities can bend over backward to accommodate the military, and the military can offload onto cities.

“One of the reasons I’m out here is to get lessons from Fred,” Bolden says.

It’s no secret that Meurer, who’s retiring after more than two decades, is something of an omniscient entity around town. Turns out he also gets to play deity for the military.