Gordon was born to a
Reform Jewish family in
Queens, New York City and graduated from
Roslyn High School. After graduating from
Princeton with a major in creative writing in 1984, Gordon came to Los Angeles with fellow filmmaker
Alex Gansa to pursue a career in writing for television. Both broke into the industry with single episodes of
ABC's Spenser: For Hire. Their
Spenser work turned industry heads, and the pair joined the series
Beauty and the Beast as staff writers, and were later named
producers. In 1990, the Gansa-Gordon team was signed to a two-year deal with Witt-Thomas Productions, during which they produced several pilots. One was an ABC project called
Country Estates, which caught the attention of producer
Chris Carter. Soon after, Carter invited Gordon and Gansa to join
The X-Files as supervising producers; Gordon wrote or co-wrote several scripts each season, before departing from the series in 1997 to pursue other projects. After co-writing one episode of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gordon created his own show, the short-lived
Strange World in 1999.
Strange World went to seed 13 episodes in, but Gordon and
Strange World writer
Tim Minear's services were quickly snapped up by
Buffy creator
Joss Whedon on another project:
Angel. After two years with
Angel, Gordon jumped ship in 2001 for
FOX's successful
24, where he would write several episodes in Seasons 1 & 2, then crafted the entire story arcs for Seasons 3 and 4. Gordon temporarily left
24 in the middle of the 2004 season to re-join Minear, this time as co-creator of another FOX series,
The Inside. Despite
The Insides cancellation and short run, talk circulated of including the two Minear-Gordon series,
Strange World and
The Inside, on a special DVD set sometime in 2006. Beginning in 2006, Gordon became
24's
showrunner, a title he held through its
final season. The successful deal led up with his continuing deal at Fox. That same year, he was made partner with
24 creators
Joel Surnow and
Robert Cochran at Real Time Productions to develop projects, until the duo quit in 2008. In 2019, after a stint at Fox through Teakwood Lane Productions, he signed a deal with Sony. Gordon is also the author of the Gideon Davis novels.
Homeland In 2010, after finishing
24, Gordon began co-developing (along with
Gideon Raff and
Alex Gansa) the
thriller Homeland for
Showtime. Based on the Israeli series
Prisoners of War, it centers on a woman (
Claire Danes) who works for the CIA and is convinced a recently returned American prisoner of war (
Damian Lewis) has been turned by
al-Qaeda. The show premiered Sunday, October 2, 2011, at 10/9 central. It has been met with major critical acclaim and maintained a steady viewership rating throughout its first season. Showtime premiered its fourth season on October 5, 2014. In 2012, he won the
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for writing the "
Pilot" of
Homeland and the series itself won the
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series.
Awake In 2011, Gordon signed on to
NBC's new Kyle Killen
fantasy pilot
Awake as an executive producer. When NBC picked the project up to series status, Gordon added writer and showrunner to his occupational duties on the show. The series only ran from March 1 to May 24, 2012, before it was cancelled.
Second Chance In 2015, Gordon was executive producer on the horror-drama series
Second Chance for
Fox Television Network. The pilot for
Second Chance is based on a script written by
Rand Ravich, who also worked as an executive producer on the series.
Accused In May 2021,
Fox ordered an American adaptation of
Accused, the International Emmy-winning British series and it was announced that Gordon would act as executive producer and show-runner. It will be co-produced between
Sony Pictures Television,
All3Media America and
Fox Entertainment and scheduled to premiere in the 2022–23 television season.
Alex Gansa and
David Shore will serve as co-executive producers. It premiered on January 22, 2023. ==Novels==