An all-Chicago shuffle
NBC sets schedule with franchise on Wednesday
Fans of Chicago television shows should clear their Wednesday nights.
NBC announced its fall schedule on Sunday, and it includes two new dramas and a new comedy. The network has also rearranged its schedule, resulting in a trio of shows set in Chicago on Wednesdays and a two-hour comedy block on Thursdays.
Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. — all produced by Dick Wolf, the creator of Law & Order — will air every Wednesday. The decision will allow more opportunity for the shows to “overlap and cross over,” NBC Entertainment chair Bob Greenblatt told reporters.
“We’d flirted with doing it in the past. We just looked at the landscape and saw it as a chance to try them together,” Greenblatt said, adding, “We thought it was a fun way to energize Wednesday.”
The network made headlines Saturday when it picked up the critically beloved Brooklyn Nine-Nine after Fox cancelled it, which prompted an outpouring of support from disappointed fans of the show. NBC’s first season of the show won’t air until 2019, but Greenblatt said the network is “thrilled to have it,” calling it the missing piece for the network’s jigsaw puzzle of comedy.
“We think it fits into our brand of comedy in many ways better than it ever fit into the Fox brand of comedy,” he said.
Until then, comedy fans have Thursday nights — which will feature a two-hour block of sitcoms, including I Feel Bad, a new comedy from Aseem Batra that is
produced by Amy Poehler and is about a woman named Emet who is struggling to be “perfectly OK with being imperfect.”
NBC is also betting heavily on a new drama called New Amsterdam, which is scheduled for the coveted time slot after This is Us on Tuesdays. The medical drama stars Ryan Eggold and follows Dr. Max Goodwin, a doctor who wants to “to tear up the bureaucracy” at the underfunded hospital where he works, which is based on Bellevue, the New York institution.
“It was just one of those pilots that knocked us over,” Greenblatt said. “We loved it in the development stage, and it just came together beautifully.”
The network is also launching a new Lost-esque drama called Manifest, about 191 passengers of an airplane that experiences severe turbulence during a short flight. When it lands, the impossible has occurred: The world has aged five years. The drama will air on Mondays in a comfortable time slot after The Voice.