History Channel to squeeze more out of Hatfields & McCoys with a reality series

By Sean O'Neal | December 14, 2012 | 5:03pm

Aux Features TV

With the Hatfields & McCoys miniseries having achieved the apotheosis of all History Channel programming, through setting record ratings and providing the ultimate scenes of hillbillies fighting with each other, the network is naturally looking to expand on that ostensible franchise (before NBC and Charlize Theron can) with a new reality series. History's professedly nonfictional Hatfields & McCoys will focus on the modern-day descendants of the feuding West Virginia families who obviously really sucked at feuding, else they wouldn't have descendants, though beyond that there aren't many details.

Deadline does say it's "safe to assume that the contemporary Hatfields and McCoys will no longer be feuding"—or at least not in the sense that they will be killing each other, or doing anything else that might get in the way of mutually profiting from their long-dormant rivalry. But finally, their not-as-interesting-anymore story will be told, the mundane day-to-day of two clans exploiting their family name, like a Kardashians with a longer history of bloodshed. Then, just to spice things up, maybe the producers leave a couple Winchesters lying around…