For true TV nerds, upfront week (the week that the major television networks present their fall schedules to advertisers) is one of the best weeks of the year because we get a look at all of the presents that are going to be under our proverbial TV trees come September. Here, then, we continue a night-by-night analysis of new offerings as well as of old favorites being shifted into new slots.
Note: Click through the hyperlinks for trailers on YouTube for each new show.
Wednesdays
Undercovers (NBC, 8:00) - Our choice for Wednesday’s most promising newcomer takes us to yet another network, this time NBC (really… we’re as surprised as you are). We’ve been huge fans of JJ Abrams for years, all the way back to his Felicity days so his name being attached to any project is gonna grab our eyeballs. Undercovers is Abrams’ return to the spy genre he’d previously mined with Alias but the twist this time is that the series follows a married couple who are also CIA agents. Its trailer seemed to suggest good escapist fun that looks to be somewhat in the vein of Mr. And Mrs. Smith. Abrams is also famous for uncovering hot new female stars (Felicity’s Keri Russell, Alias’s Jennifer Garner, Lost’s Evangeline Lilly, and Fringe’s Anna Torv) and, after watching the trailer, we feel comfortable with adding the UK-born Gugu Mbatha-Raw to that list. It’ll face stiff competition in its timeslot (see our hour by hour analysis below) but this looks like a show we can get behind.
NBC cancels Law & Order to make room for... Law & Order: Los Angeles? - While it’s true that the viewership for NBC’s Law & Order has been eroding for years, it was still an institution within the television industry, spawning countless spinoffs dating back to 1999, so the announcement that NBC was launching yet another iteration, this time set in LA and creatively titled… Law & Order: Los Angeles was no big surprise. What was a little surprising, though, was NBC’s decision to cancel the mothership, just as it was one season away from breaking its tie with Gunsmoke as television’s longest running drama (both currently stand at 20 seasons). Producer Dick Wolf is reportedly shopping the original around to other networks to try to continue it as a weekly series but that NBC would axe a long running player like this in favor of a new series from the same franchise let alone the same producer is more than a little puzzling.
Hour By Hour
8:00 - In one of the bolder moves of the new season, CBS has relocated its longtime Thursday hit Survivor to Wednesdays at 8:00. No doubt this is a blow to both NBC (which probably thought that Undercovers had an easy road in its freshman season) and ABC (who had enough faith in last season's modest hit, The Middle, to entrust it with leading off the night while pairing it with the new Better Together which looks like the EXACT same show as Fox's forgettable Mixed Signals and seems wholly incompatible with The Middle) who saw this slot as wide open ground. Survivor will rule here and will set up a showdown (that we really don't care about) with American Idol in the spring. We realize that Fox has currently only slotted Idol for a half hour at midseason but anyone who thinks that Raising Hope is still going to be around to serve as its lead-in, please consult your psychologist because you're insane. Getting back to fall, though, both Fox's Lie To Me and The CW's America's Next Top Model are afterthoughts in this slot.
9:00 - ABC's Modern Family and Cougar Town were two of TV's more encouraging success stories from the 2009-10 season. Modern Family was the year's highest rated new sitcom and battled week after week with NBC's Community for the title of Best New Comedy, while Cougar Town (despite losing a decent chunk of Modern Family's audience each week) moved past its cringe-worthy initial premise (fortysomething woman cruises for young guys while acting as a single parent to a son who wasn't much younger than the guys she was banging) into a frequently laugh-out-loud ensemble comedy about a group of friends. They'll face competition from two aging police procedurals that will likely bleed into each others' audiences (NBC's Law & Order: SVU and CBS's Criminal Minds), Fox's Hell's Kitchen (which as best as I can tell simply features Gordon Ramsay yelling at people), and The CW's Hellcats (a Bring It On ripoff that, since we don't possess a vagina, we won't be watching). Fox has also announced plans to move Glee here in 2011 but Fox's best laid plans rarely ever see the light of day so we wouldn't hold our breath on that.
10:00 - This hour serves as a good spot to catch up on DVR'd shows as it's a vast wasteland of crap. ABC offers The Whole Truth, a cookie cutter procedural starring Rob Morrow (Numb3rs) and an already recast Joely Richardson (Nip/Tuck) that takes a look at court cases from both sides of the aisle. Yawn. Law & Order: Los Angeles occupies NBC's timeslot, garnering a pickup on the strength of its brand name as not only has no pilot been shot but the show hasn't even been cast yet. Finally, CBS actually greenlit a show starring Jim Belushi (According To Jim) and Jerry O'Connell (any number of failed series) as lawyers in Las Vegas called Defenders. Rattle that one around in your brain for a minute - Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell. As lawyers. In Vegas. And CBS gave the OK to this show. Your head didn't just explode, did it?
What We're Watching/TiVoing
Undercovers
The Middle
Modern Family
Cougar Town
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