Broadcast networks and their viewers may not always see eye-to-eye, but there's one area in which they are in total agreement. Both share similar hopes for fall: That it will provide some exciting new hit, some hilarious new sitcom or stirring new drama to enchant viewers and enhance the network's bottom line.
Happily this year, there's reason for hope. There may not be another Modern Family or Glee in the new fall arrivals — or anything to replace such vanished classics as Lostor 24. But based on what the networks showed to their gathered advertisers in New York, there's likely to be a number of new hits you may want to add to your weekly rotation.
Keep in mind that what follows are just first impressions; shows and schedules can change between now and fall, and many shows that look great in clips look worse when seen in full. Still, with the 2009 season behind us and the summer stretching ahead, it can't hurt to look forward to fall with anticipation rather than dread. So here's what, for now, looks like the best of what lies ahead.
Hold a good thought, and we'll see how it turns out in September.
ABC: Ramping up
the sitcom laughs
Whatever problems it may have on the drama front, ABC seems set to keep you laughing.
Last year, ABC didn't just have the best new sitcom, it had the three best new sitcoms (Modern Family, The Middle, Cougar Town). While it may face tough competition for that top prize this season from CBS, ABC can still celebrate the arrival of another likely winner: Better Together.
Together is a multi-couple comedy (a popular format next season) focusing on two very different sisters — one too practical, one too compulsive — and their boyfriends. Joanna Garcia and Jennifer Finnigan star as the girls, but the scene-stealer in the clip was the wonderful Debra Jo Rupp, playing a much more steely but equally funny mom than she did on That '70s Show.
ABC's hours range from the Disney Channelish fantasy No Ordinary Family to the thirtysomething-tinged My Generation. But keep your hopes pinned on Detroit 1-8-7, a cop show starring Michael Imperioli and James McDaniel that, if we're lucky, will recall another ABC hit: NYPD Blue.
And that's no laughing matter.
CBS: Talk about comedy ...
If network TV is a game, no one plays it better than CBS.
Already the home of TV's most popular comedies, Two and a Half Menand The Big Bang Theory, the network is now introducing two more that are almost certain to be the season's most talked about: Mike & Molly, a comedy about overweight lovers from the creator of Men and Bang; and $#*! My Dad Says, an Internet-inspired sitcom starring William Shatner.
As if that Dad title alone isn't enough to get people talking, CBS is teaming it with Big Bang on Thursday, challenging NBC's decades-long comedy monopoly on the night. Which is what happens when you try to maintain a monopoly with shows that on many nights only draw around 5 million viewers.
In addition to its possible sitcom successes, CBS also has what would seem to be one of the more likely hourlong survivors in Hawaii Five-0, a slick-looking remake starring a network favorite, Alex O'Loughlin. It may not be the most exciting concept on the block, but it will probably be a hit, because if there's one thing you can count on from CBS these days, it's that it knows how to make hits.
And come to think of it, that is pretty exciting.
Fox: Drama, two sitcoms helping stability
The last thing we ever expected from Fox was stability.
But that's exactly what you're getting this fall. The network has only two new hours of programming scheduled for September, one new drama (Lonestar) and two new sitcoms (Raising Hope and Running Wilde). Granted, in typical Fox eggs-counted-before-hatching fashion, that total does depend on The Good Guys surviving its summer run. Still, that's an impressive achievement for a network that, back in its dark days, used to seem to schedule by throwing show titles in the air and seeing where they landed.
As for what has landed this year, anyone who has ever loved a prime-time soap should keep fingers crossed for Lonestar, a Texas-based drama about an oil-company con man who begins to embrace his own con. The cast (which includes Jon Voight) looks fine, but in this case, pin your hopes on the producers: Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman, who gave Fox one of its best-ever dramas, Party of Five.
If they can give us another show of that caliber — and launch as many stars as they did with Five —expectations will be exceeded indeed.
NBC: 'Lost' guru J.J. Abrams adding to the drama
Welcome back to the network game, NBC.
Believe me, having NBC act like an actual broadcast network again — one that actually seems interested in developing decent scripted programming — is incredibly welcome news. As much fun as it may have been to mock NBC's multiple blunders, we are all better off as viewers when there are four strong major networks competing for our attention.
To be competitive, NBC desperately needs some viable new dramas — and it may have found one in Undercovers. TV superstar J.J. Abrams (Lost, Fringe) co-wrote and directed the pilot, which stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Boris Kodjoe as married, incredibly attractive and formerly hot spies who have cooled down a bit in retirement. That is, until a CIA boss, played by Gerald McRaney, draws them back in.
It may not be the most novel concept, but the show looks like it could be great fun. And who couldn't use a bit of fun these days?
And when it comes to NBC hours, when was the last time we had fun with the network instead of at it?
CW: Stretching its age range
How old are you?
It's true that networks generally don't prosper by getting too personal, and that many of us are spiritually younger — or older — than our chronological ages. But it's also true that, in general, if you're older than 34 (and in some cases, 14), CW doesn't have much that's going to interest you.
While that certainly would seem to hold for cheerleader teen soap Hellcats, there's a better-than-even chance the mold may break with the La Femme Nikita update Nikita. The clip was intriguing, and star Maggie Q is very appealing. And that combination may be enough to help CW widen its reach.
Even to some of us who dare to be older than 34.
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