12 Miles of Bad Road is a television show originally created for HBO centered on a Texas matriarch who must reconcile her booming real estate business and immense wealth with the day-to-day struggles of her dysfunctional family

Dysfunctional family

A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...

 life.

Cast

The cast includes:

Actor	Role
Lily Tomlin Lily Tomlin Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...	Amelia Shakespeare
Mary Kay Place Mary Kay Place Mary Kay Place is an American actress, singer, director and screen writer. She is best known as portraying Loretta Haggers on the television series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a role which won her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress - Comedy Series in 1977...	C.Z. Shakespeare
Leslie Jordan Leslie Jordan Leslie Allen Jordan is an American actor and playwright.- Early life and career :Hailing from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and at a height of 4 ft 11 in , Jordan has made numerous appearances in both film and television...	Kenny Kingman
Gary Cole Gary Cole Gary Michael Cole is an American actor. Cole is known for his supporting roles in numerous film and television productions since the 1990s.-Early life:...	Jerry Shakespeare
Katherine LaNasa	Juliet Shakespeare
Eliza Coupe Eliza Coupe Eliza Coupe is an American actress best known for her role as Denise "Jo" Mahoney in the medical comedy Scrubs, in which she became a regular for the ninth season. Coupe currently stars as Jane Williams in the ABC comedy series Happy Endings.-Career:Coupe grew up in New Hampshire and graduated...	Gaylor Shakespeare
David Andrews David Andrews (actor) David Andrews is an American actor, best known for his role as General Robert Brewster in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.Andrews was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana...	Saxby Hall
Kim Dickens Kim Dickens Kimberly Jan "Kim" Dickens is an American actress and model.-Early life:Dickens was born in Huntsville, Alabama, graduated from that city's Lee High School, and attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she majored in communication...	Jonelle Shakespeare
Cameron Richardson Cameron Richardson Cameron Richardson is an American actress and model, who portrayed Chloe Carter on the CBS television series Harper's Island.- Early life :Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Cameron grew up in New Jersey....	McKenna Hall
Ivana Milicevic Ivana Milicevic -Early life:Miličević was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina to a Croatian family, the daughter of Tonka, a homemaker, and Damir Miličević, a slaughterhouse worker and entrepreneur. She emigrated to the United States at the age of five and was raised in Michigan...	Montserrat
Sean Bridgers	Lyle Hartsong
Leigh Allyn Baker	Marilyn Hartsong
Tara Karsian Tara Karsian Tara Karsian is an American stage and film actress.Karsian is the daughter of actress Pat Carroll, and the sister of casting director Kerry Karsian.Karsian went to Beverly Hills High School....	Deputy Deborah Falcon
Ron White Ron White Ronald "Ron" White is an American stand up comedian and satirist who has had two Grammy Award-nominations, and is RIAA certified 10x Platinum for CD and DVD sales of over 10 million units...	Spain Dollarhyde

Production

12 Miles of Bad Road was created by writer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason is an American writer and television producer....

, creator of the television hits Designing Women

Designing Women

Designing Women is an American television sitcom that centered on the working and personal lives of four Southern women and one man in an interior design firm in Atlanta, Georgia. It aired on the CBS television network from September 29, 1986 until May 24, 1993. The show was created by head writer...

, Hearts Afire

Hearts Afire

Hearts Afire is a sitcom that aired from September 14, 1992 to February 1, 1995 on CBS. It starred John Ritter and Markie Post, with Post portraying a journalist and Ritter playing a senator's aide....

, and Evening Shade

Evening Shade

Evening Shade was an American sitcom television series that aired on CBS from 1990 to 1994. The series starred Burt Reynolds as Wood Newton, an ex-professional football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who returns to rural Evening Shade, Arkansas to coach a high school football team with a long...

. It was produced by Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason

Harry Thomason

Harry Z. Thomason, , is an American film and television producer and director, best known for the television series Designing Women. Thomason and his wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, are close friends of President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and played a major...

's Mozark Productions

Mozark Productions

Mozark Productions is a production company for TV shows such as Designing Women and Hearts Afire. This production company is the vanity card for creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason....

, as well as HBO. The pilot was shot in 2007. Set in Dallas

Dallas, Texas

Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...

, but shot in Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, the characters live in the wealthy north Dallas neighborhood of Preston Hollow

Preston Hollow, Dallas, Texas

Preston Hollow is a neighborhood in north Dallas, Texas, USA.-History:In 1924 Ira De-Loache bought a farm in 1924. Preston Hollow's first lots were carved out of the former farm parcels. De-Loache and Al Joyce developed Preston Hollow, with development largely occurring in the 1930s. Initially...

.

Ten episodes of the series were ordered by HBO, but because of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike

2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike

The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, more commonly referred to as simply the Writers' Strike, was a strike by the Writers Guild of America, East and the Writers Guild of America, West ....

, only six episodes were shot. On March 17, 2008, HBO announced that it was not planning to air the show and the creators were shopping the episodes around to other networks.

The title is a lyric from the song "Crush With Eyeliner" by R.E.M. off their 1995 album "Monster".

Critical reception

Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

called it "a scabrously funny satire of real-estate magnates in Dubya's Texas".

The Los Angeles Times reported that after HBO passed on the show, "despite its price and pedigree" of prestigious actors and producers, the critics got a look:
From the June 2008 issue of Texas Monthly

Texas Monthly

Texas Monthly is a monthly American magazine headquartered in Austin, Texas. Texas Monthly is published by Emmis Publishing, L.P. and was founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy, Texas Monthly chronicles life in contemporary Texas, writing on politics, the environment, industry, and education...

:
On the producers' decision to send the un-aired episodes to critics, the Toronto Star

Toronto Star

The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...

wrote:

Episodes

1. - Pilot
2. - The Dirty White Girl
3. - Tremors
4. - Collateral Verbiage
5. - Texas Stadium
6. - Moon-shadow