National Geographic's first scripted drama - Killing Lincoln - is due to hit screens 'in 2013' according to IMDB. Following the week's well-received trailer for the show, which is likely to be followed by Killing Kennedy, the show's producer and writer, Erik Jendresen, has been talking about the subject matter, reports The Wrap.

John Wilkes Booth could have been a modern-day "poster child for the Tea Party," he says. "This is not the act of somebody who can be easily dismissed as a psychopath so that it's easy to understand: 'Oh, well, he was crazy.' No. It's more disturbing to find out who Booth was," Jendresen added. "This is a man who believed what still probably 20 percent of this country still believes. He could be a poster child for the Tea Party."

"I can't speak for Mr. O'Reilly," he told TheWrap. "I think that if you look at the sort of politics of the time, and a lot of the epithets that were being hurled at Lincoln, there was a feeling in the nation that's not dissimilar from what we've experienced in the past four years in response to Barack Obama - the sense of an imperial presidency or soundbytes about somebody who's going to proclaim himself king and take over."

His comments shocked TV critics at Winter TV Press Tour 2013 as he asserted that Booth was not mad, but rather, that his views were commonplace at the time. Killing Kennedy will be narrated by Tom Hanks.