AMC Greenlights Kevin Smith, Workplace Security Reality Series

AMC has given the green light to a pair of unscripted reality series.

The first, Secret Stash, hails from executive producer Kevin Smith and will be set in the Clerks scribe’s Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash comic book store in New Jersey. AMC has ordered six hourlong episodes and set a first quarter 2012 launch.

“Draper. Meth. Zombies. This show couldn’t be on a better network,” Smith said in a statement referencing the network’s scripted seriesMad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. “AMC is to television what Miramax was to cinema back when I first got in the game: they’re the premier destination for any story-teller looking to spin an offbeat yarn that no other outlet has the stones to touch.”

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STORY: AMC Developing Reality Show Set in Kevin Smith’s Comic Book Shop

Smith will executive produce the series with Charlie Corwin’s Original Media (LA Ink, Storm Chasers) and Elyse Seiden (Red State).

“The comic book store is, in many ways, the corner bar for comic book fans,” said Joel Stillerman, AMC senior vp original programming, production and digital content. “It is still this place where everybody knows your name, and you can go and geek out with like minded people. If I lived closer, I’d want to hang out at here.”

Secret Stash will revolve around local shoppers and the subsequent comic community. It will document the daily banter of The Secret Stash and its employees and devoted customers; and it will capture the fun and emotion of buying and selling collectibles and comic memorabilia that happens in comic book stores all across the country and in mega-venues like Comic-Con.  

The second series, JJK Security, will revolve around employees of a family-owned private security firm in rural Georgia and is described as a Southern workplace dramedy and is inspired by filmmakers including the Coen brothers and Christopher Guest.

AMC has ordered eight half-hour episodes and set a third-quarter 2012 launch, with production now under way. Each episode will revolve around the nuts-and-bolts work of a private security firm: including ongoing investigations, security assignments, training new recruits.

“From the momentthat I set foot in the JJK offices and met the staff, I fell in love with them and knew they were a show,” executive producer Ken Druckerman said. “But I couldn’t think of anything like it on TV, so naturally I was worried that we would never find the right home.   Fortunately, AMC fell in love with the cast and their story for the same reasons that we did.”

Druckerman and Banks Tarver from Left/Right (This American Life) will executive produce.

Meanwhile, AMC is not moving forward with Inside the DHS from reality producer Craig Piligian. The project was designed to take viewers behind-the-scenes workings of the Department of Homeland Security and its personnel, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Email: Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit