12 Miles of Bad Road is a television show originally created for HBO[1] 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 life.
[2] 12 Miles of Bad Road was created by writer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, creator of the television hits Designing Women, Hearts Afire, and Evening Shade.
Sent out to critics by its creators, who hoped to prove that HBO was making a grave mistake, 12 Miles is a nightmare tug of war between the bold, the brilliant and the really, truly terrible.
Critics be damned, 12 Miles of Bad Road is a blast, a hair-spray-spritzed, bourbon-soaked mash-up of Dallas, Desperate Housewives, and MTV's Cribs...12 Miles is post-camp, a knowingly sincere (or sincerely knowing) attempt to resuscitate a genre that was long ago drowned out by our über-ironic culture...it qualifies as the most underrated show of the decade that almost no one has had the chance to see.On the producers' decision to send the un-aired episodes to critics, the Toronto Star wrote:[7]
A risky proposition, depending on prevailing opinion, with one thin-skinned critic having already weighed in, objecting to the show's somewhat cynical characters and tone.