NBC Upfronts 2015-16

It’s that time of year again when the US broadcast TV networks cancel the shows they decided didn’t work last season and unveil the new shows that they believe will sweep up audiences in droves… most of which will be cancelled this time next year.And I’m going to try to write about them at least until I’m overwhelmed by despair about the new season and retreat into watching what I always watch.

As always NBC led off the upfront season although unlike in previous years they chose to introduce their new line-up on a Sunday rather than the traditional Monday. By turns the new offerings are vaguely intriguing, yawn worthy, and disappointing. First the cancellations (some of which were in the “blink and you’ve missed it” category of midseason replacements).

Cancelled
Constantine, State of Affairs, Marry Me, About A Boy, One Big Happy, A to Z, Allegiance, Bad Judge, Parenthood, Park & Recreation, Working The Engels

Renewed (not counting summer series)
Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Grimm, Hollywood Game Night, Law & Order SVU, Biggest Loser, The Blacklist, Celebrity Apprentice, The Mysteries of Laura, Undateable

New Shows
Before Christmas: Blindspot, Heartbreaker, The Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris, Heroes Reborn, The Player, People Are Talking
Midseason: Coach, Hot And Bothered, Chicago Med, Crowded, Emerald City, Game of Silence, Little Big Shots, Shades of Blue, Superstore, You And Me And The End Of The World

Fall Schedule by day


Monday
8-10 p.m. The Voice
10-11 p.m. BLINDSPOT


Tuesday
8-9 p.m. The Voice
9-10 p.m. HEARTBREAKER
10-11 p.m. THE BEST TIME EVER WITH NEIL PATRICK HARRIS (until November)
Chicago Fire (starting in November)

Wednesday
8-9 p.m. The Mysteries of Laura
9-10 p.m. Law & Order SVU
10-11 p.m. Chicago PD

Thursday
8-9 p.m. HEROES REBORN
9-10 p.m. The Blacklist
10-11 p.m. THE PLAYER


Friday
8-8:30 p.m. Undateable
8:30-9 p.m. PEOPLE ARE TALKING
9-10 p.m. Grimm
10-11 p.m. Dateline


Summaries

I’ve managed to see the trailers for most of these despite YouTube region blocking so I shall try to summarize largely without Network press releases (except for actor names).

Blindspot begins with a bag left in the middle of Time Square with a tag that says “Call FBI.” Inside is a naked woman (Jamie Alexander) covered with tattoos, all of which are new. “Jane Doe” has been stripped of her memories and has no idea who she is or why her body is covered in tattoos. One tattoo says to call FBI Agent Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) who has no idea why he’s being called in on this case or why his name is written in large letters on Jane Doe’s back, or for that matter the meaning of the tattoos. Over time several things become apparent: the tattoos on Jane’s back represent clues to crimes that they are to solve, and that Jane has considerable skills that she hasn’t forgotten that will help them solve those crimes.

Heartbreaker stars Melissa George as Dr. Alex Pantierre, one of a handful of female heart transplant surgeons in the world. She is also the head of new technologies at her hospital. As usual in medical dramas she is someone who breaks the rules if it can possibly help her patients and is more than willing to try innovative procedures when necessary. Also as usual in medical dramas (particularly medical dramas with female leads) she struggles to balance her professional life with her personal life.

NBC didn’t do a trailer for The Best Time Ever With Neil Patrick Harris, so I’ll have to go to the network press release: “Complete with stunts, skits, pranks, audience interaction, musical numbers, giveaways and unlimited surprises, this show proves that anything can happen, and it can happen to you. Based on the wildly popular British hit Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.”

There also isn’t a trailer for Heroes Reborn beyond a few teasers from the Super Bowl in February which basically announced that the show would be coming back – as a 13 episode miniseries. As I understand it, some but not all of the original cast (including Jack Coleman and Masi Oka) will be returning for the mini-series while new people with powers will be emerging, most notably Zach Levi from Chuck.

The Player starts with an interesting concept. Philip Winchester plays Alex Kane, Las Vegas’s top – and most flamboyant – security expert. Following the murder of his wife, Alex is drawn into a complex game. In a city where people will bet on anything, the ultimate game is betting on whether Alex can stop a crime from taking place, or even survive the tasks put before him. In this “game” the house consists of three people: Alex – the Player, Cassandra King (Charity Wakefield) – the Dealer, and the mysterious Mr. Johnson (Wesley Snipes) – the Pit Boss. If Alex is able to accomplish the tasks put before him, he might just be able to get revenge for the death of his wife.


Comments

One thing I’ve noticed in going over the NBC shows that have been cancelled and renewed is just how few NBC shows I watched in the past season. I watched State Of Affairs and mostly didn’t find it as laughable as I had expected given that it was Katherine Heigl as a CIA agent who advised the President on national security threats. And yet I don’t find myself mourning its passing. I watched Chicago Fire and Chicago PD for quite a while but in the past year or so I’ve basically given up on those as well. Basically the only thing I watch on NBC is The Blacklist.

The biggest thing to note is the near absence of situation comedy in the fall line-up. Not counting the Neil Patrick Harris series, which sounds like it might turn into something of a mess, the only comedies in the line-up are the returning Undateable and the new People Are Talking. It is something of a sign that the only two comedies at the start of the season are both scheduled for Friday night before Grimm. Setting aside the fact that this is the “Friday night death slot” (because after all CBS at least seems to thrive on Fridays) People are Talking at least definitely doesn’t fall into the NBC comedy tradition as exemplified by Seinfeld, Fraser, The Office, Community, and Parks And Recreation. Then again the latter two series didn’t exactly set the ratings world on fire. Moreover last season, when NBC made a major push to do sit coms, the results were pretty disastrous with most of the shows dying a quick and for the most part well-deserved death. Based on the trailer that I saw, People Are Talking seems to be playing things very safe which is far different from the edgy sort of comedy that we generally expect from NBC.

Blindspot and The Player both seem interesting although they also seem to be trying to replicate the success of NBC’s one big drama success that isn’t produced by Dick Wolf, namely The Blacklist. Blindspot is probably closest to what The Blacklist in that there’s quite obviously a massive conspiracy behind the scenes that “Jane Doe” and Agent Weller will have to unravel. The question is whether audiences will have the patience to stick with the show if it is an unrelenting in pursuing the show’s mytharc, particularly when the show is opposite the “simpler” NCIS: Los Angeles and Castle. Initially at least The Player seems likely to be more episodic and therefore easier to access for viewers. Plus it has The Blacklist as a lead in, although the ratings for that show have been slipping, probably because it is going against Scandal and CBS comedies on Thursday night.

I’m not sure what to say about Heartbreaker. The whole thing of the female lead being forced to balance her personal and professional lives is such a cliché. Take that away and I’m not sure there’s enough there for the show to engage its audience. I wonder if this is meant as a placeholder to be replaced, when it inevitably crashes and burns, with Dick Wolf’s latest opus, Chicago Medical.

Finally something needs to be said about the revival of Heroes as Heroes Reborn. I don’t know why it’s happening given how quickly and totally the show collapsed in it’s first run. The cynic in me says that executives at NBC looked at the success of the Marvel movie/TV franchises (including Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), not to mention Arrow and The Flash and even iZombie on The CW and said: “We need a superhero show. Okay so we blew it with Constantine but superheroes are still hot. Let’s take another run at doing Heroes. We’ll do it as a limited series, and if it works out maybe we’ll bring it back in 2016 as a full series.” And since I can’t think of a better reason why they revived this, I think the cynical view wins.

Final assessment of what NBC is giving us: there’s very little here that I actually find engaging. There are a couple of shows that I’ll try but I honestly don’t think much of their chances for survival. Nothing here strikes me as a genuine sustainable hit.

Prelude to Upfronts: Cancellations and Pick-ups

Before I started this blog, the whole business of “Network Upfronts” was as foreign as the Greek language to me. All I knew is that sometime in May the US networks would announce their new shows and cancel the unsuccessful ones from the previous year, and then the Canadian networks would pick them over to find the “best of the lot” for us, and conveniently forget that half of the shows that they considered the “best of the lot” were either cancelled by the end of the season.

Upfronts used to be the day when a Network President and his (and they were all men for a long time) would stand in front of the assembled masses of advertisers and the ink-stained wretches from the entertainment media and announce which shows have been cancelled and which have been picked up, and what next season’s TV schedule would look like. The advertisers would then – over the next few weeks – decide what shows they’d make their media buys on, and how much they’d be willing to pay. Meanwhile the entertainment media would, wittingly or not, promote the new shows with information even thought they’d basically only seen the few clips provided by the network at the Upfronts. The key point was that the networks announced all of their changes at their Upfront day.

In recent years things have changed. Networks announce their renewals and their cancellations before the Upfronts – days and sometimes even weeks before – and they’ve taken to announcing shows they’ve picked up in advance as well. In the past I’ve held off from reporting or commenting on these announcements, preferring to wait until a network’s upfront day. I’m not sure that that approach is practical anymore. So what I’ve decided to do is to list the cancellations and the pickups before the upfronts, and comment on the percentage of available time that the proposed new shows will be taking up on each network.

ABC
Cancellations: The Assets, Back In The Game, Killer Women, Lucky 7, Mind Games, Once Upon A Time In Wonderland, Mixology, Trophy Wife, Betrayal, The Neighbors, Super Fun Night, Suburgatory,
Status Unknown: The Taste, Black Box
Picked Up: Dramas – American Crime, The Astronauts Wives Club,The Club, Forever, How To Get Away With Murder, Marvel’s Agent Carter, Secrets & Lies, The Whispers
Comedies – Black-ish, Galavant, Manhattan Love Story, Selfie
Update: Two comedies that I missed: Cristela and Fresh Off The Boat  which were announced at the same time as the renewal of Last Man Standing.

Comments: Eight hours of Dramas, four half-hours of Comedies. I was saddened but not surprised by the cancellation of Trophy Wife. The kids, and in particular Burt, were great and it was fun to see Bradley Whitford playing straight man both to the kids and the women in his life. If this show had a better time slot – like between The Middle and Modern Family instead of after another newcomer, The Goldbergs – I think it could have worked.

CBS

Cancellations: How I Met Your Mother, We Are Men, Bad Teacher, The Crazy Ones, Friends With Better Lives, Hostages, Intelligence
Picked Up: Dramas – Battle Creek, CSI: Cyber, Madam Secretary, NCIS: New Orleans, Scorpion, Stalker
Comedies – The McCarthys, The Odd Couple

Comments: Six hours of Dramas, two half-hours of Comedies. Only two survivors of the new shows, Mom and The Millers. I think that the limited series nature of Hostages was a bad choice to go against Castle, and Intelligence was just pretty bad. Disappointed that the cut The Crazy Ones, a series with a stand-out cast that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately stand-out cast equals expensive cast, which was probably as much a cause of the show’s demise as the ratings.

FOX

Cancellations: American Dad (moving to TBS), The Cleveland Show, Raising Hope, The X-Factor, Almost Human, Dads, Enlisted, Surviving Jack, Rake
Picked Up: Dramas – Backstrom, Empire, Gotham, Hieroglyph, Red Band Society
Comedies – Last Man On Earth, Mulaney, Weird Loners

Comments: Five hours of Dramas, three half-hours of Comedies. All of the professional TV critics are mourning the loss of Enlisted but I never saw the show (because the premise sounded dumb to me) so I can’t comment. I really liked Almost Human, the “cop and robot” buddy show set in a not totally dystopian future. It wasn’t great but I liked it better than THe Following. So sue me.

NBC

Cancellations: Ironside, Sean Saves The World, Welcome To The Family, The Michael J. Fox Show, Believe, Community, Crisis, Dracula, Revolution, Growing Up Fisher
Status Unknown: Parenthood
Picked Up: Dramas – Allegiance, Constantine, Emerald City, The Mysteries of Laura, Odyssey, Shades Of Blue, State of Affairs
Comedies – A to Z, Bad Judge, Marry Me, Mission Control, Mr. Robinson, One Big Happy, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Comments: Seven hours of Dramas, seven half-hours of Comedy. It is a mark of how far NBC has fallen that I can’t think of one show that they cancelled that I am really going to miss. I know the professional critics and a devoted fan base loved Community with a love that burned like the Sun, but I never watched it, being totally turned off by the presence of Chevy Chase. BTW, there apparently hasn't been a decision on Parenthood because of negotiations over the number of episodes stars of the show will appear in. The network weasels want the leads to do nine episodes of the total of thirteen planned, and they're balking at that idea
Update: While the renewal of Parenthood has not been announced officially, the cast have apparently agreed to a deal which would see them each participate in a reduced number of episodes within a 13 episode season, thus allowing the series to have a resolution.

The CW
Cancellations: Nikita, The Carrie Diaries, The Tomorrow People, Star Crossed
Picked Up: The Flash, iZombie, Jane The Virgin, The Messengers

Comments: Four hours of new series, all Dramas. Yawn. The only show I watch on The CW is Arrow. I suppose I’m sort of surprised that a show about 16th century royalty and religious wars (Reign) got renewed, and I suppose that The 100 is the sort of show I generally like but really, I’ve got nothing.

NBC’s 2013-14 Season

NBC was the first network to announce their new schedule on Sunday, following a precedent that they had set last year (and which I completely forgot about). The network, which was once the premiere broadcast network has had significant troubles this season, and indeed in previous seasons. Based on initial impressions, while there may be some good shows in the mix here, this isn’t a line-up that is going to vault NBC back into first place… or second, or maybe even third.

Cancelled
30 Rock, Animal Practice, Do No Harm, The Office, Deception, Up All Night, 1600 Penn, Guys With Kids, Whitney, Go On, New Normal, Smash, Rock Center

Renewed
Chicago Fire, Grimm, Law & Order: SVU, The Voice, Parks And Recreation, Community,

Moved
Biggest Loser, Revolution, Parenthood 

Fate To Be Determined
Hannibal, Betty White's Off Their Rockers, Fashion Star 

New Shows
The Blacklist, Ironside, Welcome To The Family, Sean Saves The World, The Michael J. Fox Show, Dracula 

Held Until Mid-Season
The Family Guide, About A Boy, Crossbones, American Dream Builders, Believe, Crisis, Celebrity Apprentice, Chicago P.D., The Night Shift, Undateable, Food Fighters, The Million Second Quiz, Sing-Off

Complete Schedule (All times Eastern, New Shows in Capitals)

Monday
8:00-10:00 p.m.: The Voice
10:00-11:00 p.m.: THE BLACKLIST

Tuesday
8:00-9:00 p.m.: The Biggest Loser
9:00-10:00 p.m.: The Voice (results) (New Time)
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Chicago Fire (New Day & Time)

Wednesday
8:00-9:00 p.m.: Revolution (New Day & Time)
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Law & Order: SVU
10:00-11:00 p.m.: IRONSIDE

Thursday
8:00-8:30 p.m.: Parks & Recreation (New Time)
8:30-9:00 p.m.: WELCOME TO THE FAMILY
9:00-9:30 p.m.: SEAN SAVES THE WORLD
9:30-10:00 p.m.: MICHAEL J. FOX SHOW
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Parenthood

Friday
8:00-9:00 p.m.: Dateline NBC
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Grimm
10:00-11:00 p.m.: DRACULA

Sunday
7:00-8:15 p.m.: Football Night In America
8:15 p.m.-11:00 p.m.: Sunday Night Football 

At Mid-Season 

Tuesday
8:00-9:00 p.m.: The Voice (results) (New Time)
9:00-9:30 p.m.: ABOUT A BOY
9:30-10:00 p.m.: FAMILY GUIDE
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Chicago Fire (New Day & Time) 

Friday
8:00-9:00 p.m.: Dateline NBC
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Grimm
10:00-11:00 p.m.: CROSSBONES 

Sunday
7:00-8:00 p.m.: Dateline NBC
8:00-9:00 p.m.: AMERICAN DREAM BUILDERS
9:00-10:00 p.m.: BELIEVE
10:00-11:00 p.m.: CRISIS

The Blacklist doesn’t look back at the McCarthy era blacklisting in the entertainment industry. Instead it is about former Government agent Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader). For years Red has been on the FBI’s most wanted list for his shadowy dealings with criminals that has led him to be called “The Concierge of Crime.” Suddenly he surrenders to the FBI with an explosive offer: he will help the Government to capture an infamous terrorist. His only condition is that he’ll only speak to Liz Keene (Megan Boone), a profiler who has just graduated from Quantico. He has a complete blacklist of people he’s willing to help bring down, but only if he continues to work with Liz. Why is this woman, with whom he apparently has no connection, so important for Red?

NYPD detective Robert Ironside (Blair Underwood) is a fearless cop who is determined to bring the guilty to justice and isn’t going to let the fact that a bullet shattered his spine two years ago and put him in a wheelchair slow him down. Supported by his team of specialists – Virgil (Pablo Schreiber), Holly (Spencer Grammer), and Teddy (Neal Bledsoe) – as well as his former partner Gary (Brent Sexton) and boss Detective Ed Rollins (Kenneth Choi), Iroonside is determined not to let being in a wheelchair slow him down. 

Welcome To The Family explores what happens when two very different families become in-laws. Dan (Mike O’Malley) and Karina (Mary McCormack) Yoder discover that their college-bound daughter Molly (Ella Rae Peck) is pregnant, and that she plans to marry the baby’s father. He’s Junior Hernandez (Joseph Haro) from East LA, and his parents Miguel (Ricardo Chavira) and Lisette (Justina Machado) are upset by (according to the show’s press release) the prospect of having “Caucasians in the family.” Once they realise that their kids are serious about marrying the two families start to come to terms with their new circumstances. 

Sean Saves The World stars Sean Hayes as a divorced gay dad who has a lot to juggle including work, the employees who are under him, his pushy mother (Linda Lavin) and weekends with his teenaged daughter Ellie (Sami Isler). When Ellie moves in permanently with him, he is determined to be the best father ever. Unfortunately the new owners of the company where he works want Sean and his team to work longer hours destroying his carefully planned efforts with Ellie. which is actually fine with her, since he’s obviously going overboard. 

The Michael J. Fox Show stars Fox in a story that parallels his own life to a degree. Five years ago New York’s most beloved TV news anchors, Mike Henry (Fox) put his career on hold to focus on his health and spending time with his family after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Now, with the kids growing up and Mike feeling restless it might be time to get him back to work. His old boss Harris Green (Wendell Pierce) never wanted to let him go in the first place so he’ll jump to get him back. The trick is – as it always was with Mike – to make him think it was his own idea.

Set in the late 19th century Dracula features Jonathon Rhys Myers as the mysterious Dracula. Posing as an American entrepreneur who wants to bring modern science to Victorian London, Dracula is particularly interested in electricity and the promise of the electric light as a way to lighten the darkness. He has a deeper mission however; to take revenge on those who cursed him with immortality centuries before. All seems to be going according to plan, right up until he meets a woman who appears to be the reincarnation of his long dead wife. 

About A Boy is an adaptation of the movie that starred Hugh Grant. Will Freeman (David Walton) wrote a hit song which allows him to enjoy a life of “free time, free love and freedom from financial woes.” When needy single mom Fiona (Minnie Driver) and her 11 year-old son Marcus (Benjamin Stockham) move in next door it is disruptive to his lifestyle, particularly when Marcus starts dropping in unannounced. Will isn’t sure he’s too keen on being the kid’s new best friend…until he discovers that women find single fathers irresistible. The strike an arrangement where Marcus gets to chill at Will’s place in return for pretending to be his son. In time Will finds himself looking forward to those visits and looking out for the kid. 

Family Guide is a comedy about how a divorce can draw a family together. Mel Fisher (J.K. Simmons) has never let his blindness slow him down, be it chopping down trees, teaching his daughter Katie (Ava Deluca-Verley) how to drive or tossing the football around with his son Henry (Eli Baker). When Mel shows up with Elvis, his new guide dog, Henry feels displaced; he’s always been his dad’s eyes ears and wingman. That’s how he finds out that Mel and his pip-smoking wife Joyce (Parker Posey) are getting a divorce. The adult Henry (voice-over provided by series Executive Producer Jason Bateman) tells us that the split would “allow all of us to finally discover who we needed to be.”

The year is 1715 and the Bahamian island of New Providence is the location for Crossbones. New Providence is “the first functioning democracy in the New World,” The island is part shantytown, part marauders’ paradise ruled over by Edward Teach aka the pirate Blackbeard (John Malkovich).  Undercover assassin Tom Lowe is sent to take the brilliant and charismatic Blackbeard down, but the more he’s exposed to the man and the place the more he comes to admire Blackbeard’s political idealism. But Lowe is not the only threat; Blackbeard has many villainous enemies and a weakness for a passionately driven woman.

American Dream Builders is a reality competition in which America’s leading designers, builders, architects, and landscapers will be challenged to complete extreme home renovations. Each week host Nate Berkus and a panel of experts will determine which team achieved the best results. The losing team will send one member home until the final two compete. The will each design and renovate a home after which the viewing audience will vote for the winner. Two viewers will win the houses that were renovated in the final challenge.

In Believe 10 year-old orphan Bo (Johnny Sequoyah) has amazing gifts that she doesn’t understand or fully no how to control; gifts like levitation, telekinesis, the ability to control nature and the ability to predict the future. She has been protected by a group called the True Believers against those who would use her for their own gain, but as she’s aged her powers and the threat have grown stronger. The group decide that Bo needs a permanent protector and break wrongly convicted death row inmate Tate (Jake McLaughlin) out of prison to fill that role. Together Tate and Bo travel from city to city changing both the places they visit and the people they meet. Kyle MacLachlan and Delroy Lindo also star.

Crisis is sparked when a school field trip from the elite Ballard School in Washington D.C. is ambushed and the students and teachers are taken hostage by a vengeful mastermind. The teens are the children of industry CEOs, political movers and shakers, international diplomats and even the son of the President of the United States. The question arises of what you would be willing to do or to become in order to save your child’s life. The very power of the people involved results in the unthinkable scenario grows to become a national crisis. Stars include Gillian Anderson, Dermot Mulroney, Lance Gross and Rachel Taylor.


Chicago PD is a spin-off from the popular Chicago Fire and looks at the two two distinct groups within Chicago’s Police District 21; the uniformed cops who deal with day to day crimes, and the Intelligence Unit which deals with major offences including organized crime, drug dealing and high-profile murders. The Intelligence Unit is commanded by Sgt. Hank Voight, a man who is not above skirt the law in pursuit of justice. Detective Antonio Dawson (Jon Seda) has a troubled history with his demanding boss, but he harbours ambitions of commanding the unit someday so he’s prepared to persevere.

The Night Shift is a medical drama that pits the need to save lives against the economic realities of running a hospital. T.C. Callahan (Eoin Mackin) is a former military doctor who has returned from a deployment in the Middle East and is about to find that the toughest battles are the ones at home. He works the late shift at San Antonio Memorial Hospital along with his military colleagues Topher (Ken Leung) and Drew (Brendan Fehr). They are confronted with the new night shift boss Michael Ragosa (Freddy Rodriguez), a bureaucrat who is more interested in cutting costs than saving lives, and his second in command Jordan Santos, who just happens to be T.C.’s former fiancee, who has to try to keep him in line, not the easiest task around.

Undateable is the name that slacker Danny Beeman (Chris D’Elia) gives to his new roommate Justin (Brent Morin) and his romantically challenged friends. Seeing himself as “the ultimate player,” Danny decides to teach them everything he knows about “the game of love.” According to the press release for the show this is, “a refreshing comedy about the ‘dos’ ‘don’ts’ and ‘duhs’ of dating.”

The best way for me to explain The Million Second Quiz is to pull straight from the network press release: “’The Million Second Quiz’ is a state-of-the-art, electrifying new live competition where contestants test the limits of their knowledge, endurance and will to win as they battle each other in intense bouts of trivia for 12 consecutive days and nights. Live from a gigantic hourglass shaped structure in the heart of Manhattan, this setting will also serve as the living quarters of the reigning champions - the four players who have remained in the game the longest. The show will be the first fully convergent television experience, where viewers will be able to play along at home in real time and sync to the live primetime broadcast. When the million seconds draw to a close, the champions will battle it out and the ultimate winner could claim an unprecedented cash prize of up to $10 million.”

Food Fighters pits home cooks against five professional chefs. The amateur cooks will produce their signature dishes which the professionals will not only try to make but will try to improve them as judged by a dinner party made up of the American public. Each victory by the amateurs will increase the amount of the prize money.

Comments: If you were keeping track you would notice that NBC cancelled all but two of the series that they announced last year at this time. Some lingered long enough to build a bit of an audience, others died so quick that you might not have noticed, and I think at least one might never have seen the light of day. All of the comedies that the network thought would take over from low rated but critically successful shows like The Office, Parks & Recreation, 30 Rock, and Community have fallen by the wayside. Of the two shows that survived I think it can be argued that NBC squandered the success of Revolution by interrupting the series for a substantial period in the winter when Deception ran and failed to win an audience. I have to wonder if Revolution might be the next Heroes; a show that started hot but quickly fell apart.

There is nothing in the new comedy line-up that is as egregiously and obviously bad as last year’s first cancellation, Animal Practice although my enthusiasm for both Welcome To The Family and Sean Saves The World are limited. In the case of the latter it may be just because my tolerance for Sean Hayes as he was in Will & Grace is very low. Welcome to the Family reminds me of a Canadian show from the ‘70s that  I’ve mentioned here in the past Pardon My French, but that show set up the premise without going with the teen pregnancy route. And I didn’t like the line in the press release about “Caucasians in the family.” Perhaps the gem of the Fall comedies is the Michael J. Fox Show (because who doesn’t like Michael J. Fox) but much depends on what they give him to work with.Turning to the mid-season comedies, About A Boy takes the premise from a good movie so we’re going to want to see how NBC manages to screw it up (which I fully expect them to do, sadly). And I don’t know what to think about Family Guide. There are a few elements that remind me of the premise of The Wonder Years but in all honesty I just don’t have much of a feel for it.

The dramas are a really mixed bag. The two shows slated for Friday night – Dracula and Crossbones – have me shaking my head in amazement. They remind me of Pan Am and The Playboy Club (or maybe even Kings) in how far away from what American network television does they are. Shows like these might work on cable – indeed the History Channel has had some success with Vikings – but I don’t see it working here. Then again the shows are following Grimm on Friday night so they might develop a following. I think you could include Believe in that list as well except that there’s something about it that that could resonate with the public in the same way that Highway to Heaven or Touched By An Angel did years ago.

NBC has a number of procedurals on tap which might help to improve their lot over the season. The one that holds a lot of interest for me is The Blacklist. The first meeting of Reddington with Liz Keene has a strong resemblance to the first time that Clarice Starling encounters Hannibal Lecter in Silence Of The Lambs. Reviving Ironside is an interesting idea, but I don’t really know that we need a new version of the classic, particularly when they strip away one of the show’s best elements: San Francisco.Certainly Blair Underwood is no Raymond Burr. As for Chicago PD, the cynical side of me sees the show as Dick Wolf getting back to what he`s most comfortable with after briefly going off in another direction with Chicago Fire. I’ll hazard a guess and suggest that the Chicago PD cops will have no more of a life outside their precinct than the cops on Law & Order did.

I want to tackle Crisis on it’s own. The obvious question to ask about this show is, “what do they do for an encore.” Or is this a big 22 (or however many) episode mini-series masquerading as a regular series with the potential to be renewed if it catches the attention of the audience. Oh well, anything to get Gillian Anderson back on TV in North America.

Special note: This should have been out much sooner than it was. My Internet and Cable TV were down for four hours on Monday which means that I wasn’t able to get the information I needed to complete this article. To get back on track I will be holding the FOX upfront material back until after The CW presents on Thursday.

Two For One

Two for one is an offer you usually can’t pass up in a store, but when it comes to TV reviews – at least from me – it signifies that all or part of the deal is something you can pass up. You can tell because I’m not spending a lot of time on either show. On Monday night FOX and NVC debuted two summer shows. One is “original” and controversial, and one basically recycles another show that is already on the same network in a different setting. I really didn’t like one but could just about tolerate the other. Neither one is a bad as The Glass House, but that’s not saying a whole hell of a lot.

Let’s start with FOX, and it’s new show Hotel Hell. It’s the recycled one. It takes everything about Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – including Gordon Ramsay – and moves it to hotels with problems. While for most people this may have been the summer of the London Olympics, or the summer of the great heat wave, or the summer of the drought, for FOX this has been the Summer of Ramsay, since this is third Gordon Ramsay series of the summer, joining Hell’s Kitchen and Master Chef. Shows from Ramsay’s production company, One Potato Two Potato, occupy almost a third of FOX’s primetime line-up this summer.

How much of a copy of Kitchen Nightmares is Hotel Hell? Probably as close as if Xerox had done it. Honestly, I think that there are more differences between X-Factor and American Idol than there are between these two shows. In Kitchen Nightmares Ramsay goes to a restaurant, samples the substandard product, yells and swears at the usually delusional owner and frequently at the staff, and over the course of a week (condensed into an hour on TV) sets the place to rights and walks away feeling it’s a job well done. The fact that a fairly large number of the restaurants that Ramsay has worked with go broke generally isn’t mentioned unless they’ve gone out of business because they reverted to their old habits and ignored all the improvements that Gordon put in place.

Hotel Hell is pretty much the same thing except maybe spread over two hours instead of one. In the debut episode, Gordon checks into the Juniper Hill Inn in Vermont. Which isn’t actually easy because the obvious front entrance is blocked off – something to do with snow load according to the owner. When Ramsay finally does get in he finds a place stuffed with antiques and art work. He’s taken to a beautiful room…that stinks of backed up sewage, and the owner seems surprised when he asks for a different room. Ramsay then goes down for lunch, only to discover that the chef doesn’t serve lunch. But Gordon prevails and gets a lunch from the dinner menu including a macadamia encrusted rack of lamb that’s virtually raw. In fact the desert is the only thing that’s good, and that’s provided by one of the hotel’s suppliers. There are no prices on the menu except for a note that there is a $15 extra charge for the lamb. Ramsay’s total bill would come to $74 for the meal.

During the course of lunch Ramsay discovers that his server, a 70 year-old woman with a crush on Gordon, he discovers that she has had to argue with the owner to get paid regularly. A survey of most of the staff, including the chef, indicates that none of them have been paid regularly and that where wages are edging close to slave wages; the chef’s salary amounts to about $21,000 a year, and the server seems to paid around $7,000 a year, and their pays is usually days and sometimes weeks late. Where I live would be grounds for a complaint to the Labour Relations Board, but this is Vermont not Saskatchewan. The previous chef, who Ramsay interviews but absolutely refuses to set foot in the Inn even after Ramsay gets finished with it, used to buy produce using her own credit cards and then have to fight the owner to get payment. The owner and his partner (Business and Life) don’t live in the hotel but in a motor home – sorry a motor coach (the owner actually corrects Ramsay on that) – parked next to the hotel, and as a result are virtually unreachable either by staff or by customers. When the owner and his partner are reachable they come across as elitist snobs who regard their staff as beneath them.

But perhaps the biggest surprise comes from the Inn’s estate manager who take Ramsay on a tour of the places the owner probably didn’t want Ramsay to see. There’s the now unused office which looks like a tornado of trash had hit it. There’s the basement which is filled with unused chairs. And there are four storage containers stuffed with antiques and furnishings. While the Inn is being run off of the partner’s salary and savings (and now the partner has lost his job) the owner has tied his savings up in “art”; the stuff in the basement and storage containers which the estate manager estimates is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The episode ends after a disastrous dinner service in the restaurant where the owner and his partner insist on serving all of the guests at once thereby swamping the kitchen and drinks orders don’t get written down so the guests don’t all pay. It’s a disaster and Ramsay tells the owners so in his usual manner.

NBC had the controversial new reality-competition series Stars Earn Stripes, and for once a reality show featuring a member of the Palin clan (in this case Sarah’s husband Todd Palin billed here as “four time Iron Dog winner” – the Iron Dog is a 1,000 mile snowmobile race) is not controversial because a member of the Palin clan is in it. No, in this case the controversy started when Sharon Osborne announced that she was quitting as a judge on America’s Got Talent because, she claimed, NBC discriminated against her son Jack because of his recent diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Jack Osborne was on the shortlist of people who could be on the show but was rejected after his diagnosis, supposedly because of a medical exam for the show. NBC has denied discrimination. The more major controversy took the form of an open letter from nine Nobel Peace Prize recipients including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jodi Williams (the only American of the nine) which demanded that NBC not air the show because, “It is our belief that this program pays homage to no one anywhere and continues and expands on an inglorious tradition of glorifying war and armed violence. Real war is down in the dirt deadly. People — military and civilians — die in ways that are anything but entertaining.” Mind you, this was while none of them had even seen an episode of the show.

The show is the product of a collaboration between Dick Wolf (the Law & Order franchise and this fall’s Chicago Fire) and Mark Burnett, the creator of Survivor and The Apprentice (and a number of less successful reality-competition series). The show is hosted by former Dancing With The Stars host Samantha Harris, and former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark. In introducing the show Clark states, “I'm doing this series for one reason to introduce you, the American people, to the individuals that sacrifice so much for all of us.” You will excuse me for being cynical but the fact is that there are far better ways of doing that.

The show features eight celebrities (five men and three women) who are participating for a military or police related charity. They are paired up with eight special forces or law enforcement professionals, known on the show as “operatives.” The teams are:

• Actor Dean Cain with Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle
• Skier Picabo Street with Navy Seal Brent Gleason
• “Outdoorsman” Todd Palin with former Marine and current New York MTA police officer J.W. Cortes
• Singer/ Actor Nick Lachey with SWAT Commander Tom Stroup
• Former WWE ”Diva” Eve Torres with Green Beret Grady Powell
• Biggest Loser trainer Dolvett Quince with Marine Andrew McLaren
• Former Boxer Laila Ali with Navy Corpsman Talon Smith
• Action star Terry Crews with Delta Force soldier Dale Comstock

The celebrities meet up with their operatives at a training camp where they will learn about the equipment they’ll be using in a specific “mission” and learn a few techniques, like how to crawl under barbed wire or how to breach a door using a sledge hammer. Then they meet with General Clark in the “command center” to get their mission. In the first mission is called “Amphibious Landing.” The celebrities and their operatives are split into four teams of four for this mission. They have to drop from a helicopter into a lake then swim to a Zodiac inflatable boat. Once aboard the boat they are landed on the beach where they have to avoid a “minefield” and make it to some oil drums. At the oil drums the celebrities first have to use a grenade launcher to destroy a guard tower, and then use their light machine gun and rifle to hit six targets, some man shaped and others circle targets. Once those targets are hit the “operatives each have to hit three “transmitters” each (red light bulbs on top of two electrical cabinets. Once that’s done the teams have to crawl under a barbed wire entanglement and recover a box marked “Ammo” from along the beach. The box must be carried to a shed where the team have to breach the door and put the box inside along with a charge of C4 explosives. Then they are extracted by helicopter, blowing the C4 remotely once they are clear. The two celebrities on the lowest scoring team (aka the slowest team in this case) face off on a “shoot-off” with the slowest person there going home, while the remainder earn a “stripe” and money for their charity.

Or at least that was how it was supposed to go. I won’t go into detail about the competition except to mention that two of the celebrities – Dolvett Quince (teamed with Todd Palin for this mission) and Terry Crews (teamed with Picabo Street) were unable to make it to the Zodiac and had to be rescued with a jet ski. Even though their team mates were able to complete the mission (and I have to say that Todd Palin was sort of impressive carrying the “Ammo” crate along the beach, which was really a mud flat) General Clark decided that  it was only fair that Quince and Crews face each other in the elimination round.

The Elimination was a race between the two men. They first had to breach a door and shoot out six targets, some of which were moving. Quince was slightly ahead after this part of the course. They then moved on to a firing range with targets at various ranges including a large moving target at the far end of the range that blew up when hit properly. Quince finished this part of the race quickly and built up a lead while Crews seemed to be hitting the big target but nothing was happening It took him a long time to realise than instead of firing at the centre mass of the target (as police officers and soldiers are generally taught to do) he needed to go for a head shot for the target to explode. Once he figured this out he moved on to the final part of the race, a sniper test. This was the only part of the course that the “operatives” were able to help their celebrities on, serving as spotters as they shot. The target was a plastic strip which joined two pieces of cable together. At the bottom of the cable was a box that would blow up when it hit the ground. Although Quince had a big lead when he moved to the sniper test he simply could not zero in on the plastic strip. Crews settled in and (apparently) hit his strip with a single shot.Crews won his stripe while Quince was eliminated with some money for his charity, Got Your 6 an entertainment industry campaign that “will help create a new conversation in America, one where veterans and military families are perceived as both leaders and civic assets.”

The celebrities participating in Stars Earn Stripes spend a lot of the show talking about how tough the show is physically (undoubtedly) and how it gives them a idea of what the real life fighting men go through (hardly). In response to the letter from the Nobel Laureates Dean Cain has said, “This whole show is a love song to our men and women in uniform ... We're not trying to glorify war, we're glorifying service.” And while Cain may think it is true, it’s a hard idea to swallow. What the show is depicting isn’t the experience of the average soldier serving in Kandahar  Province. The celebrities aren’t undergoing the experience of an attack by a suicide bomber or an IED exploding as they are driving along a seemingly peaceful road. They don’t find themselves suddenly under attack with little warning or having to take a fortified farmhouse that may or may not be booby trapped. The show is putting the celebrities through a variety of probably simplified versions of special forces training exercises. The celebrities do find themselves under fire and are using real bullets, but whoever is shooting those bullets and setting off those explosions is making a very conscious effort to not hit anything or anyone. Not like the real lives of American servicemen in combat at all.

So there we have it; two new reality shows, one of them a competition (the form I prefer) and the one I like better….is Hotel Hell. Yes, the show is a retread of another – better – show and yes the concept doesn’t tread far from the format of the original, but there is something very reassuring about listening to Gordon Ramsay yelling at people, particularly people who absolutely deserve to be yelled at (like the owner and his partner at the Juniper Hill Inn). One could almost call it satisfying. And that one quality alone, that it satisfies a certain desire to see people who provide bad service yelled at by a person like Ramsay who makes an art-form puts Hotel Hell miles ahead of Stars Earn Stripes.

When it comes down to it, after all of the self justifying statements by the participants, including Wesley Clark’s statement at the beginning, this show isn’t about introducing “you, the American people, to the individuals that sacrifice so much for all of us.” The whole show has the quality of a video game like Call Of Duty, rather than the real life of most of the people in anybody’s military, be it American, Canadian, or British. The “missions” may be adapted from real training missions for special forces, but the way they are presented makes them feel just as real as a mission in a video game, which is to say not real at all. With all due respect to Desmond Tutu and the other Nobel Peace Prize Laureates who signed the open letter to NBC, this show doesn’t glorify war by making it a game. Nor is it a “love song” or a love letter to the men and women in uniform. It is a blatant effort to shoot off guns and blow things up for the entertainment of the viewers because of course TV viewers love to see things blow up. I’m most disappointed not with the celebrities who participated in the show or with NBC for airing it or even with Mark Burnett for producing it (although come on Mark, you could have worked harder to get another season of Expedition Impossible on the air; that was a show that I liked). No, I am most disappointed with General Clark for participating in this mess and for trying to justify it. It is beneath what I expect of him, and I can only hope that the paycheque that he got for doing the show was worth the shot to his reputation. This show stinks and my advise to you next week is to watch the combination of Hell’s Kitchen and Hotel Hell instead. Or read a book.

NBC’s 2012-13 Season

NBC broke with precedent this year and presented their new shows on Sunday afternoon rather than on Monday morning. The network which was in trouble for the past few years announced seven new comedies, five new dramas and four “alternative” programs. The network will have at least an hour of sitcoms on four of the six nights that the network programs. Thirteen shows were renewed, but only six of last season’s fourteen entertainment programs are coming back. I don’t have much hope that this year will be the start of a comeback for the one time “must see TV” network.

Cancelled: Chuck, Prime Suspect, The Playboy Club, Free Agents, Harry's Law, Are You There Chelsea?, Best Friends Forever, The Firm, Bent, Awake, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Sing-Off

Moved: Community, Up All Night, Whitney,

Renewed: Grimm, 30 Rock, Law & Order: SVU, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, The Voice, Dateline NBC, The Office, Rock Center with Brian Williams

New: Go On, The New Normal, Animal Practice, Guys With Kids, Revolution, Chicago Fire

Held until mid-season: Smash, Fashion Star, The Biggest Loser, Celebrity Apprentice, 1600 Penn, Save Me, Next Caller, Do No Harm, Infamous, Hannibal, Stars Earn Stripes, Howie Mandel’s White Elephant, Surprise With Jenny McCarthy, Ready For Love

Complete Schedule (All times Eastern, New Shows in capitals)

Monday
8:00-10:00 p.m.: The Voice
10:00-11:00 p.m.: REVOLUTION

Tuesday
8:00-9:00 p.m.: The Voice
9:00-9:30 p.m.: GO ON
9:30-10:00 p.m.: THE NEW NORMAL
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Parenthood

Wednesday
8:00-8:30 p.m.: ANIMAL PRACTICE
8:30-9:00 p.m.: GUYS WITH KIDS
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Law & Order: SVU
10:00-11:00 p.m.: CHICAGO FIRE

Thursday
8:00-8:30 p.m.: 30 Rock
8:30-9:00  p.m.: Up All Night (moved)
9:00-9:30 p.m.: The Office
9:30-10:00 p.m.: Parks & Recreation
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Rock Center with Brian Williams

Friday
8:00-8:30 p.m.: Whitney (moved)
8:30-9:00 p.m.: Community (moved)
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Grimm
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Dateline NBC

Sunday
7:00-8:15 p.m.: Football Night In America
8:15-11:00 p.m.: Sunday Night Football

Sunday (after the end of the Football season)
7:00-8:00 p.m.: Dateline NBC
8:00-9:00 p.m.: Fashion Star (moved)
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Celebrity Apprentice
10:00-11:00 p.m.: DO NO HARM


Revolution asks the question of what would happen if the lights went out – permanently. Fifteen years after all electrical power suddenly stopped  people are living what appear to be quieter and simpler lives lit by candles and lanterns. All is not what it seems though. When a young woman’s father, who seems to have had something to do with the blackout, is murdered it leads to an unlikely alliance between two young people to find answers to what happened in the past and in hopes of reclaiming the future. From producer J.J. Abrams and Eric Kripke, and starring Billy Burke, Tracy Spiridakos, Anna Lise Phillips, Zak Orth, Graham Rogers, J.D. Pardo, Giancarlo Esposito, David Lyons, Maria Howell, Tim Guinee and Andrea Roth.

Go On is a comedy starring Matthew Perry as Ryan King, a sportscaster who recently lost his wife in an auto accident. He’s ready to go back to work but his boss insists that he go to counselling. He wants to get back to work as quickly as possible and sets about disrupting his therapy group. He has no interest in healing and his irreverent attitude to “healing” might be exactly what the group needs. Also stars Laura Benanti, Julie White, Suzy Nakamura, Khary Payton, and Allison Miller.

The New Normal looks at the new American family. Brian (Andrew Rannells) and David (Justin Bartha) are a happy and committed couple. The only thing missing is a baby and it seems like that’s something that won’t happen. That is until Midwestern waitress Goldie (Georgia King) and her eight year-old daughter come into their lives. Goldie is broke but fertile and is willing to serve as a surrogate for Brian and David. Ellen Barkin also appears as Goldie’s small-minded mother.

In Animal Practice Justin Kirk stars as top New York veterinarian Dr. George Coleman. George has a way with most kinds of animals…except the human kind. George used to be involved with Dorothy Crane (no actress named for the part) who is the new manager of the Crane Animal Hospital. Dorothy is smart and ambitious but her romantic past with George and her total lack of experience with animals threaten to cramp his style, which includes playing poker with the clinic’s resident capuchin monkey. Also stars Tyler Labine, Bobby Lee and Betsy Sodaro.

They say it’s easier to become a father than to be one. Guys With Kids from Executive Producer Jimmy Fallon looks at three men in their 30s who are determined to hold onto their youth despite their new responsibilities as fathers. Chris (Jesse Bradford), Nick (Zach Cregger) and Gary (Anthony Anderson) undertake the daily challenge of taking care of their babies while maintaining a social life. Tempest Bledsoe and Jamie Lynn Sigler also star.

Chicago Fire from Law & Order producer Dick Wolf looks at the high intensity life of the firefighters at Chicago’s Firehouse 51. The men and women of the station’s Engine Squad, Rescue Team and Paramedics are under pressure to perform and make split second decisions in deadly situations. When the station loses one of their own tensions boil over between the leader of the Rescue Squad, Lt. Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) and Lt. Matthew Casey. But when a call comes in, personal rivalries are set aside to get the job done. Also stars Eamonn Walker, Charlie Barnett, David Eigenberg, Monica Raymund, Lauren German, Teri Reeves, and Merle Dandridge

NBC’s midseason comedy 1600 Penn is about an ordinary family with an extraordinary home – The White House. They have all the problems of most families – a son who moves back  with the family, kids who are smarter than their teachers, and a stepmom trying to win over the kids. The President’s eldest son (Josh Gad), code named “Meatball” by the Secret Service is the Gilchrist Administration’s greatest liability, and also the glue that holds his family together. Bill Pullman plays President Pullman while Jenna Elfman plays his wife. Also stars Martha MacIsaac, Andre Holland, Amara Miller, and Benjamin Stockham.

In Save Me Midwestern housewife Beth (Anne Heche) has a near death experience after choking on a hero sandwich. She soon discovers that this event left her with a special gift: she has a direct line to God. Her husband Tom (Michael Landes) is dismissive and his mistress (Alexandra Breckinridge) is stunned to learn that her lover’s wife is a prophet. It’s an odd choice to use a desperate housewife as God’s messenger on Earth, but they do say that He moves in mysterious ways. Also stars Heather Burns and Madison Davenport.

Next Caller pairs Dane Cook as foul-mouthed satellite radio DJ Cam Dunne who is partnered with a young, former NPR host. New co-host Stella Hoobler (Collette Wolf) is 26 and ready to take on the world. In this case that means trying to elevate “Booty Call with Cam Dunne” from the sort of locker room humour that Cam has always done. Jeffrey Tambor, Joy Osmanski, and Wolé Parks co-star.

Do No Harm is a modern take on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. Dr. Jason Cole (Steven Pasquale) is a highly respected neurosurgeon who has it all. He also has a deep dark secret that has suddenly re-emerged, an alternate personality. Every night at the same time Jason Cole changes into “Ian Price”, a seductive devious borderline sociopath. Jason has been able to keep “Ian” from reappearing for many years thanks to a powerful experimental sedative, but now the serum has stopped working. Not only is “Ian” back but he’s out for revenge…on Jason. To protect everything he holds dear, including his patients, friends, coworkers and even the woman he loves, Jason has to find a way to stop Ian once and for all. Alana De La Garza, Mousa Kraish, Michael Esper, Ruta Gedmintas, and Phylicia Rashad co-star.

In Infamous Detective Joanna Locasto (Megan Good) goes undercover to investigate the Bowers family. When Joanna’s childhood best friend Vivian Bowers dies of an apparent drug overdose, everyone accepts that it was the end result of her hard partying lifestyle. Everyone that is except FBI agent Will Moreno (Laz Alonso). He sends Joanna back to Vivian’s home where her family worked as servants. Joanna is quickly re-embraced by the Bowers family and rediscovers the allure of the family’s wealthy an luxurious lifestyle, as well as reigniting a romantic relationship. She also uncovers the family’s dark secrets, secrets which put Vivian’s life in danger. Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Katherine La Nasa, Neil Jackson and Ella Rae Peck co-star.

Hannibal takes characters from Thomas Harris’s novels and puts a new twist on them. William Graham (Hugh Dancy) is a gifted criminal profiler with the ability to empathize with anyone, including psychopaths. However when the mind of the criminal he’s pursuing is too complex for him, he turns to one of the most highly regarded psychiatric minds in the country: Dr. Hannibal Lecter. What the audience knows (and not just from our previous exposure to the character) and Graham doesn’t is that Lecter is a serial killer. The NBC press release does not name an actor for the role of Lecter. Bryan Fuller is the writer and one of the Executive Producers.

Stars Earn Stripes takes stars from various fields and exposes them to different forms of pressure. In this new reality-competition series from Dick Wolf and Mark Burnett, nine celebrities are brought together at a secret training facility where they will be challenged to execute missions inspired by real military training exercises. Money raised through the competition will be donated to various veterans charities. According to the NBC press release, “these stars will be tested physically, mentally and emotionally – and emerge in awe of the men and women who do such tasks on behalf of our country every day.”

Howie Mandel’s White Elephant is a version of the popular party game. One player will pick an unmarked box from a studio full of prizes. The next player has to decide whether or not to steal the box from the first player or pick another box and hope that  it is worth more. When the contest gets down to the final two competitors, they each face a choice of whether to share or steal. If both select “Share” they share the prizes that the have won. If one chooses “Share” and the other choses “Steal”, the one who chose “Steal” gets all of the prizes. But if both choose “Steal” they both win…nothing.

Eva Longoria is the Producer of Ready For Love, a unique approach to dating shows because every eligible woman in America is a potential participant. Longoria has personally selected three impossibly handsome “Grooms.” Three of the best Matchmakers in the world will then screen women who appear at mass auditions. Those selected by the Matchmakers will then participate in a journey that, “will combine the best elements of in-studio competition and story-based reality.” Each episode will see some of the women eliminated by the Matchmakers until the three “grooms” and the final three “brides” will decide if they’ll get engaged, get married or just live “happily ever after.” Bill and Gulianna Rancic are the hosts.

Surprise With Jenny McCarthy has McCarthy springing “the surprise of a lifetime” on ordinary people. As each episode develops, the audience gets to know the story of the people involved, making the pay-off all the more emotionally satisfying.

Comments:
NBC seems to be putting a lot of product out there, presumably hoping that at least some of it will stick, and I’m not convinced that much will stick. The network appears to be relying a lot on their comedy line-up, with comedies on four of the six nights that they are programming. This may be a mistake. NBC’s Thursday night comedies – The Office, Community, Parks & Recreation, and 30 Rock – are critical successes, but the fact the fact is that for the most part the shows have poor ratings. And of the new comedies introduced in the 2011-12 season only two – Whitney and Up All Night – have survived to get a second season. I’m not sure – based on the descriptions provided by the network (I haven’t looked at most of the clips from the shows yet) – how many of the new comedies will survive more than a few episodes. I have watched the clip of 1600 Penn and quite frankly it looks dismal.

Turning to the network’s new drama’s they seem to be a very mixed bag. Revolution is reminiscent of so many shows that we’ve seen in the not too distant past, from Jericho to Flash Forward to The Event that it’s hard to think that it will work. After the failure of Awake I’m not sure that the audience will be too accepting of the premise of Do No Harm. As for Hannibal I think the concept of a profiler working with someone that we know – and he doesn’t know – is a serial killer. The question is whether we have been exposed too much to Hannibal Lecter (and Anthony Hopkin’s portrayal of the character) to accept the TV version of the characters. They might have been better off starting with a new character without the baggage. The two dramas that interest me the most are Chicago Fire and Infamous. I think there’s a lot of potential in a series built around firefighters, and Chicago is an ideal setting , maybe partially because of the movie Backdraft. As for Infamous, it’s success may be more problematic. It’s obviously a show with a long story arc, which is always a risk. Done right it could work; done wrong it could be this year’s Ringer.

Some miscellaneous thoughts on the schedule: NBC won’t be running two cycles of Biggest Loser this year. Based on the ratings this past year it might be a good idea to reduce it to one cycle in a season just to give it a rest. They’re also reducing Celebrity Apprentice to one hour from the current two. If you’re going to have Celebrity Apprentice on the schedule cutting it to an hour – at least for as long as Do No Harm and/or Fashion Star lasts – is a great idea. At two hours the show seems terribly bloated. NBC’s decision to run the low rated Rock Center With Brian Williams in the third hour of Thursday basically abdicates the time slot to ABC and CBS. They are giving up on Thursday night after the comedies just the way they gave up on the third hour when they put Jay Leno on in primetime. Finally, I think I’m going to miss Who Do You Think You Are? which I couldn’t have imagined when the show debuted. It’s a damned sight better than the reality drek – Stars Earn Stripes, Howie Mandel’s White Elephant, Ready For Love and worst of all Surprise With Jenny McCarthy – that NBC has available instead.

On the whole I am unimpressed with this line-up.

Forgotten TV Shows - Gang Busters

I got a lot of good response from the first of these so I’ve decided to stick with it. Yes I should be reviewing some modern shows, and I think I’ll get around to it, but I have to confess that I’ve been kind of busy the past few weeks. And just maybe I’ve become a bit too set in my viewing habits. Doing these pieces is at least letting me keep my toe in until I get motivated to do more.




Title: Gangbusters
Dates: March 20, 1952 to December 25, 1952 (12 Episodes)
Starring: Philips H. Lord (Narrator) Otherwise it was an anthology show.
Surprising Fact: According to The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present it may be the highest rated TV show ever to be cancelled.
Why Forgotten?: It only ran for 12 episodes. As an anthology show it had no big name stars. It shared – quite literally – the time slot with Dragnet.

The story of Gang Busters might be described as a complicated one. The show debuted on radio in July 1935 on NBC before moving to CBS from January 1936 to June 1940. In October of that year it moved to NBC’s Blue Network until the end of December 1948. In January 1949 it returned CBS and ran until June 1955. It was heard on the Mutual Broadcasting System from October 1955 to November 1957. It was in fact one of the last two half-hour dramatic series on Mutual. In the end it assembled an impressive radio run of 22 years. Few radio shows could claim a run that long. The show also spawned a movie serial in the 1940s and a DC comic book series that ran for 67 issues between 1947 and 1958.

The radio show was controversial in its time and for the usual reason that shows and media are controversial – the supposed impact on children. Parent-Teacher groups placed the responsibility for juvenile delinquency on children and teenagers listening to the exploits of the criminals depicted on Gang Busters. In 1940 Time Magazine was able to find a parole officer in the juvenile justice system who claimed that he learned about techniques that the young criminals of his town were using by listening to the show. He also said that he learned how to respond to the slang being used by the juvenile delinquents he was dealing with. When the show temporarily left the air in June 1940 – the time when it shifted from CBS to the NBC Blue Network – the writer for Time seemed positively triumphant about the end of the show because it couldn’t sell toothpaste: “But last week Gang Busters faced a foe that got them down.Convinced that Gang Busters might be catching crooks but were not selling Cue, the liquid dentifrice, the sponsors decided not to renew their contract. Still shooting, still with their boots on, Gang Busters vacated the airwaves.” Somehow Time didn’t pay much attention to the show’s return to the air later that year, on a different network, with a different sponsor.

The television version of Gang Busters doesn’t seem to have excited that same hatred that the radio version did during the 1930s. Of course by 1952, everyone “knew” that juvenile delinquency was caused by comic books thanks to Dr. Frederic Wertham. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Gang Busters came from radio to television; according to The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present over 200 radio shows made the transition to the new medium. No, it was the circumstances of Gang Busters coming to TV that were a bit different, and it has to do with another radio show transitioning to TV, Dragnet.

Dragnet debuted on TV in January 1952 after two and a half years on radio (where it would continue until 1957). Apparently Webb had a problem delivering a complete half-hour episode to NBC every week so in March 1952 it was decided to alternate another program with Dragnet. That show was Gang Busters. One week would feature an episode of Dragnet and the next week an episode of Gang Busters. Again, while not common this was certainly not unheard of in network TV in this period. For most of his time on TV (the 1954-1960 period) Jack Benny was only on every other week, alternating first with Private Secretary (starring Anne Southern), then with Bachelor Father, and in the final year of the arrangement with The George Gobel Show.

The television version of Gang Busters jettisoned one of the main components of the radio version of the show. The radio show was hosted by a member – or former member – of a law enforcement body: Colonel H. Norman Schwartzkopf (Sr.) who had been in charge of the New Jersey State Police at the time of the Lindbergh Kidnapping in 1932 hosted Gang Busters on radio for a while. This host would interview a police official directly tied to the original case. And you could tell they were the real deal because quite frankly most of them were awful in front of a microphone. In the TV version of the series, the show host was dispensed with and the “cops” who told the story were a lot more professional in front of the microphone…mostly because they were the actors who played the real life cops in the dramatic portion of the episode. But except for this change, and the addition of a bumper at the end of the episode featuring Jack Webb telling about next week’s episode of Dragnet, the format of the series stayed pretty much the same as it had been in radio, right down to alerting viewers as to a different criminal on the loose every episode.

The team of Dragnet and Gang Busters hit television like a storm. In the 1951-52 season ratings which ran from October 1951 to April 1952, Gang Busters aGangctually had a higher rating than Dragnet – 38.7 for Gang Busters to 36.3 for Dragnet. Of course, since Gang Busters only began in March 1952, just a few weeks before the end of the rating period while Dragnet debuted in January 1952, this isn’t an entirely fair comparison. The 1952-53 ratings are more significant. Dragnet finished fourth with a rating of 46.8, which made it the highest rated NBC show for the season. Gang Busters finished in eighth place with a rating of 42.4. What you must remember too is that until 1960 the ratings represented the percentage of all homes that had TV sets that were watching a particular show. In other words, 42.4% of all homes with TVs were watching Gang Busters. The other 57.8% of homes with TVs were either tuned to one of the other three networks – ABC, CBS and Dumont – or they weren’t turned on. The situation was such that Dumont, CBS and ABC aired public affairs programs in the time slot until after the Presidential elections in November and then what must be described as “sacrificial lamb shows” for the rest of the year.

And yet Gang Busters was cancelled in January 1952, and the authors of The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present suggest that the cancellation might all have been according to plan. They write, “The reason for the cancellation appears to be that Gangbusters was never intended to be a full-time TV series , but merely a stopgap provided by the sponsor to fill in the weeks when Dragnet wasn’t on. Jack Webb even appeared at the end of each telecast to plug the next week’s Dragnet episode. Webb could not at first provide a new Dragnet film every week, but when he could, Dragnet (which was even more popular than Gangbusters) went weekly and Gangbusters had to make way.” It is nearly impossible to think of a modern network executive (particularly one at NBC) willingly dropping a show with this degree of popularity. They would find a spot for the show, possibly even have tried to find a way to have it follow Dragnet. In short it would be a property too valuable to waste. Which leads me to wonder what other influences were at play around this decision both at NBC and at whatever advertiser was the direct sponsor of the series.

In the end, Dragnet is highly regarded as one of the landmarks of 1950s television and in some ways as the predecessor of the procedural series that fill the airwaves today. Meanwhile Gang Busters is a little known series with a small cult of fans. The one and only reviewer that the series had at IMDB wrote: “Yet, what worked so well on radio just didn't jell on the small screen. Despite series creator Phillips H. Lord's total involvement in the production, it all looked so disjointed and cheap, judging from the four episodes I have on DVD. NBC obviously knew this as well, for despite very high ratings, they regarded this show as a stop gap filler for the equally successful "Dragnet" during its early years as a bi-weekly show. When Jack Webb filmed enough episodes for a weekly slot, "Gang Busters", one of the highest rated series of the 1952 season, had to go. So, what could have been a potential landmark in television history, as it was on radio, was merely a low-budget bench-hitter during the early days of TV.” I think it may be a rather poor and inaccurate assessment of the show. Based on some early episodes of Dragnet that I’ve seen on DVD it could seem “low-budget” and “disjointed and cheap” itself at times. Moreover, as I’ve said both the network and the advertisers should have jumped at the chance to have a show that drew as high a percentage of homes with TVs as Gang Busters did on the air, selling their products. Some episodes are apparently available on DVD but be aware that the image that they show on the IMDB page for the show is actually of the DVD for the 1942 Gang Busters serial not the TV series. I’ve only seen the first episode of the series in its entirety (I’m including it below) but except for the hokiness of the Hugh Sanders’s speech at the end of the dramatic part of the episode, I can honestly say that I’ve seen worse, and of far more recent vintage. Judge for yourself.

And We Have Winner….Er Loser

The first show and the first drama to be cancelled this season is…

The Playboy Club

The show was cancelled after three episodes, so it is possible that  another show from this fall season will be cancelled in two. Nothing currently airing really screams out for a two episode cancellation however. In terms of the poll, four of you got it right, saying that The Playboy Club would be the show cancelled earliest. However it was tied with Charlie’s Angels (and anecdotally, it seems to me that most of the votes for Charlie’s Angels came after the show started airing), a show which could tie with The Playboy Club. Five other shows each got one vote: Revenge, Unforgettable, Prime Suspect, Grimm, and Hart Of Dixie.

The Playboy Club, which was the first series picked up by NBC Entertainment President Bob Greenblatt for the 2011-12 season will be replaced temporarily by reruns of NBC’s Thursday series Prime Suspect (which is also not setting the ratings on fire) until October 31st when NBC new newsmagazine Rock Center With Brian Williams on October 31st. Since the original plan was to replace The Playboy Club with the new musical based series Smash in the winter, it is likely that Rock Center’s time in the Monday third hour time slot will itself be temporary.

Show Debuts - September 12-18

The summer is finally over. For most of us Labour (Labor) Day marks the end of summer and the beginning of Fall – although based on the weather around here last week you couldn’t tell; we had the hottest days of the year last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. For TV the beginning of the Fall season is supposed to be right after the Emmy Awards on Spetember 18th. However, some shows will be debuting from four of the five US networks. The only one not to debut new shows is FOX (although ABC’s debut is a bit of a cheat; 20/20).

So here is what’s coming this week (all times are Eastern):

Tuesday, September 13th

8-9 p.m.: Season Debut of 90210 on The CW
9-10 p.m.: Series Debut of Ringers on The CW
10-11 p.m.: Season Debut of Parenthood on NBC

Wednesday, September 14th

8-9:30 p.m.: Season Debut of Survivor on CBS (originally scheduled for one hour but extended to 90 minutes)
8-9 p.m.: Series Debut of H8R on The CW
9-10 p.m.: Season Debut of America’s Next Top Model on The CW
10-10:30 p.m.: Series Debut of Up All Night on NBC
10:30-11 p.m.: Series Debut of Free Agents on NBC

Thursday, September 15th

8-9 p.m.: Season Debut of The Vampire Diaries on The CW
9-10 p.m.: Series Debut of The Secret Circle on The CW

Friday, September 16th

10-11 p.m.: Season Debut of 20/20 on ABC

New series synopses:

Ringers is the much anticipated return of Sarah Michelle Gellar to network TV. She plays estranged twin sisters, Bridget and Siobhan. Bridget a recovering addict who is a key witness in a murder trial goes to visit her estranged twin sister Siobhan. Siobhan is married and wealthy, but her perfect life isn’t perfect, as Bridget discovers when she assumes her sister’s identity after Siobhan apparently dies at sea.

H8R is a new reality series from The CW hosted by Mario Lopez in which celebrities confront their biggest haters and try to make them realize that their animosity is misguided. featured celebrities include Snooki, Kim Kardashian and Jake Pavelka, while others booked for the series include Kat Von D, Eva Longoria, and Barry Bonds.

Up All Night from NBC stars Christina Applegate and Will Arnett in a comedy about a couple trying to cope with parenthood in the modern world. In this case that means a career woman mom with a vulnerable and needy boss played my Maya Rudolph, and a stay at home dad.

Free Agents is NBC’s remake of a British comedy. This version stars Hank Azaria as Alex, a newly divorced man and Kathryn Hahn as a woman whose fiance recently died. They have a drunken one night stand and the series deals with the awkwardness between the two of them which is magnified since they work together at an advertising agency run by Stephen (played by Anthony Stewart Head, the only hold-over from the original British cast).

The Secret Circle follows The Vampire Diaries on The CW, which is only fitting since both are based on the novels of L.J. Smith. The story focuses on Cassie Blake, who moves to live with her grandmother in Chance Harbor Washington. There she discovers that not only is she the latest in a long line of witches, but she’s the last member needed to complete a coven of teenaged witches known as “The Secret Circle.”

The PTC Hates The Playboy Club - Big Surprise, Right?

My summer has been filled with unfulfilled promise. I promised to recap Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – unfulfilled. I bought a small notebook to take notes when I had thoughts on stuff to write when I’m not near the computer – unfulfilled. I haven’t had any real thoughts that desperately needed to record. But then the PTC came out with their latest campaign and suddenly I have something to sink my teeth into. You see, the PTC has – sight unseen of course, except for some promo clips – demanded that NBC affiliates follow the lead of KSL in Salt Lake City and refuse to air NBC’s new series The Playboy Club. Given the organizations’ attitude to anyone even peripherally associated with Playboy the magazine or Playboy the Corporation, this is about as surprising as the sun rising in the east. Of course this could have been a little bit more timely and would have been had it not been for my recent illness and the subsequent necessity to catch up with other things that I had let slip during that period.

The PTC’s letter to affiliates is a long and meandering one filled with the PTC’s usual mixture of hyperbole and not well veiled threats. Just to add to the mix they have statements from Shelley Lubben’s faith based Pink Cross Foundation, an organization dedicated to “helping victims of the pornography industry.” The statements have a particularly weird disconnect when you remember that the series is about the Playboy Club in Chicago in the 1960s and not Playboy Magazine in the 2010, or indeed in any era.

The letter begins with a number of statistics about the damage that porn addiction – defined as watching more than 11 hours or pornography per week – does to the addict and to society in general. While I won’t go into the actual percentages, I will say that the total number of “porn addicts” is less than two tenths of the American population. Which may explain why the rest of the paragraph refers to percentages rather than actual numbers. But the next paragraph is firmly tied to those figures.

I call these statistics to your attention because I assume you must be unaware of how damaging the pornography industry is to our society, to our families, and to individuals. Otherwise, how on earth could you, in good conscience, agree to broadcast in your community a program that glorifies and glamorizes this insidious industry?
I am referring, of course, to NBC's plans to air "The Playboy Club" this fall and am writing to urge you, on behalf of the Parents Television Council's 1.3 million members, to preempt the program in your community.

The PTC has received correspondence from NBC affiliates that describe the series is “a sophisticated series about the transitional times of the early 1960s and the complex lives of a group of working-class women.” These are dismissed as “canned responses,” which is laughable coming from an organization that provides its members with form letters to send to the FCC over every real or imagined violation of what it thinks is the broadcasting law. Nevertheless the PTC carries on with its assumption that The Playboy Club is about the pornography industry.

Putting a veneer of sophistication on an industry that exploits women and destroys families is not laudable, it is disgraceful. In what manner does such the airing of such material reconcile with your public interest obligations as a broadcast licensee? Whatever positive spin you may wish to put on the series, it is undeniably a betrayal of the trust you have built over the years with America 's families - the owners of the broadcast airwaves that you will be using to force this content into the living rooms of every family in your community.

Where the PTC letter really got “good” (in a strange definition of good it must be admitted) was when they introduced the statement from Shelley Lubben of the Pink Cross Foundation, an organization “dedicated to helping the victims of the pornography industry” (they don’t happen to mention that the organization is a “faith based initiative”). Lubben, a former actress in pornography stated:

"What's shown in The Playboy Club is not real...The series looks like it's all cute, taking place back in the old days. It seems harmless, but then they show a quick clip of three people going at it in the bathroom. NBC is breaking the law with this show. They're not meeting FCC standards."

Strong words, and they’re coming for someone who not only doesn’t understand the very basics about the show that she’s complaining about but also seems to have only such understanding of FCC standards as she has been fed by organizations like the PTC.

Much of the rest of the PTC letter is the same old stuff that the organization peddles. They promise that the organization will be “carefully reviewing every episode, and will urge its members to file complaints with the Federal Communications Commission about any content that may be in violation of broadcast decency laws.” Then they add this little threat to affiliates:

Please be mindful that it is the affiliate, not the network, that will ultimately bear the financial burden of an FCC fine should any of the content be found to violate broadcast decency laws.

First of all let’s address the specific claim of “three people going at it in the bathroom.” I actually found this scene in the promo clip provided by NBC (which I’m including below) – it happens around 1:58 – and beyond the fact that it is apparent that Ms. Lubben needs glasses (I see a man and a woman and a reflection in a mirror, not three people), it is also clear that this scene is little more than something that you could see in a soap opera most days…when there were soap operas. There is nothing here that the FCC could possibly object to: no bare breasts, no exposed excretory organs, no visible genitalia. The scene is benign, and shows far less than what can be seen on TV in most countries of the world, including Canada. Now that by no means guarantees that the PTC would not rise in righteous indignation over this scene, but there’s no there there.

Here’s the real issue. The PTC has had – dare I say it – a hard-on about anything even peripherally connected to the Playboy organization. When they were attacking the show My Name Is Earl, they inevitably mentioned the presence of Jamie Pressly (who played Earl’s ex-wife Joy), but every time they mentioned her, they took pains to mention that she had appeared nude in Playboy –I seem to recall that they referred to her as a Playmate, though she never was. What they rarely if ever mentioned was her work as an actress. It was a strategy designed to diminish and denigrate her as an actress and by extension the show, creating the impression that the only reason she was hired was because she had appeared in Playboy and was only on the show to titillate younger viewers.

Now here are the facts about The Playboy Club; not the tales that the PTC and its fellow travellers want you to believe about the show and not the salacious impressions that Shelley Lubben wants to see that aren’t really there. The show deals with the Playboy Club in Chicago in the early 1960s. It does not appear to deal with the magazine except peripherally (in the preview clip one Bunny says she’s going to be the first “chocolate” Playmate), or with photos of some Playmates from the 1950s that often didn’t show actual nudity. While there is more than a little criticism about the Clubs from a feminist point of view – notably the Gloria Steinhem article when she went undercover as a Bunny – the fact is that the aspects that the PTC claims will be seen on the show were never a part of what happened at the Playboy Clubs. There was no nudity at the clubs, and the rules about contact in the clubs between clients and Bunnies were quite explicit. Indeed a certain amount of what is shown in the clip – the two people making out in a bathroom, and the clients groping one of the Bunnies – would never have happened in the actual Playboy Club. The truth is that the real Playboy Clubs were high class private night clubs (the private nature being assured by the $25.00 annual membership fee – apparently only about 21% of the people who had memberships actually visited one of the clubs), that offered some of the biggest names in jazz and other entertainment.

Were the Bunnies sex objects? Undoubtedly, even if they were chaste “look but don’t touch” sex objects. Was it demeaning? Certainly Steinhem thought so. The question that Steinhem didn’t address was whether she would have found working another night club that didn’t bear the name Playboy equally demeaning. Was the association with the name “Playboy” the reason why she wrote her critical article? I have to think that the fact that the link with Playboy Magazine was a motivator in her decision to go undercover as a Bunny. She might well have found conditions at other nightclubs of the period equally demeaning (if not more so in many cases), but without the name recognition that the Playboy Clubs had.

And this of course is equally the point in the current situation in which the PTC is threatening NBC affiliates to try to get them to drop the TV show The Playboy Club from their stations. If the show was called something else and was about waitresses in a different nightclub, but maintained the storylines and the scenes shown in the preview clip, would the PTC be as outraged as it is by the show? The most likely answer is, no they would not. They might regard it as salacious after they saw an episode but I sincerely doubt that they had the same “pre-debut” fixation on the show. In this particular case, “a Rose by any other name” would not get nearly the attention, either from the PTC or for the PTC

I have no idea of whether or not The Playboy Club is a good show or not. I’m not privy to any more information than most of you are, and in fact because I’m Canadian it might even be less information, depending on whether or not NBC will allow Canadians to view clips of the show. I fully expect it to be a poor knock-off of Mad Men, lacking the qualities that make Mad Men first rate TV, like good writing, compelling characters and a vision that is more than just skin deep (an expression that undoubtedly fits in more than the obvious way). However I am willing to give the show a chance to at least present itself before I judge it, and I refuse to pass judgement based entirely on the name, and then look for proof wherever I can find it… or manufacture it. This is more than the PTC, with its vendetta against anything that is associated – even at second or third hand – with the word “Playboy” is able to say.