A new Showtime documentary series proved uncomfortably timely this week, with the pay channel pulling a repeat of “Active Shooter: America Under Fire” on Monday night, after the mass shooting event in Las Vegas.
The eight-episode series, which premiered to little fanfare on September 29, focuses on a different mass shooting in each installment, interviewing survivors, law enforcement and relatives of victims.
The program premiered with an hour on the 2012 theater killings in Aurora, Colorado. Subsequent episodes will be devoted to San Bernardino, Charleston, the Washington D.C. Navy Yard, Santa Monica, Oak Creek, Orlando and Columbine.
The premiere includes a discussion of the No Notoriety movement, which asks the media to limit coverage of shooters to deprive them the attention they seek. It is currently available on demand.
Thomas and Caren Teves, whose son Alex died in Aurora, are interviewed in the first documentary, and shown making media appearances urging news outlets to name shooters as sparingly as possible.
“There’s nothing in it for us,” Thomas Teves says. “It’s not going to bring Alex back.”
In that episode, it’s noted that Aurora shooter James Holmes — who killed a dozen people and wounded 70 — was at the time the worst mass killer in history, “and then somebody else comes along.”
Showtime announced Tuesday that it will air the second episode, on San Bernardino, as scheduled on Friday.
The producers on the series are Eli Holzman (“Undercover Boss”), Aaron Saidman (“Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath”) and Star Price (“Penn & Teller: Bull—t!”).