Networks give new life to cancelled shows
Major television networks have announced new programming for the summer and fall season, with several new shows coming up and others getting the axe.
At Fox, a network that made its bones more than 30 years ago by putting on bold, edgy programs that targeted a young audience, the face of the “new Fox” is 64year-old TV and movie star Tim Allen.
The network’s schedule, announced Monday, is its first since parent company 21st Century Fox announced that it would sell its TV and movie production assets to the Walt Disney Co. If the deal goes through, the Fox network will be more dependent on sports, news and live-event programming.
Allen’s last sitcom, Last Man Standing, which ran for six seasons on ABC but was dropped last year, is returning on Fox this fall, a head-turning choice in the 2018-19 TV schedule. The series is owned by 21st Century Fox’s TV studio, which has successfully sold the show to broadcast and cable channels.
But the multi-camera family comedy series is a break from the quirkier single-camera comedies and daring animated fare the Fox network has been known to favour over the years.
When Allen’s program, in which he plays a sporting-goods retail executive and father of three daughters who sneers at political correctness, was cancelled last year, conservative pundits claimed it was done in by Hollywood liberals who disagreed with star’s own right-leaning political views.
Last Man Standing was actually dropped by ABC because the network was losing money on the show. The network was unable to sell ads on the program at a high enough rate to cover the cost of the licence fee paid to Fox’s TV studio.
Last Man Standing will be followed on Fridays by a new comedy, The Cool Kids, which stars comedy veterans Martin Mull, David Allen Grier, Vicki Lawrence and Leslie Jordan as residents of a retirement community. The series is executive produced by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Charlie Day.
As for the rest of the Fox lineup, medical drama The Resident returns Monday at 8 p.m., followed by 9-1-1 at 9.
The Gifted is back on Tuesday at 8 p.m., with Lethal Weapon, returning at 9. The buddy cop drama will have a new costar in Seann William Scott, who is replacing the fired Clayne Crawford.
For midseason, Fox has ordered The Passage, a drama about a 10-year-old girl who is a test subject at a secret government facility experimenting with a virus that could be a cure for all disease or doom the human race. John-Paul Gosselaar plays the federal agent who looks out for her. The series is based on a series of books by Justin Cronin.
Fox has also ordered a new drama series, Proven Innocent, which stars Rachelle Lefevre as a lawyer who leads an underdog criminal defence firm.
And the network has picked up a fifth season of the Batman prequel drama Gotham and a new edition of Cosmos, its science exploration series hosted by astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Shows cancelled by Fox are The Last Man on Earth, New Girl, The Mick, Lucifer and The Exorcist. The sitcom Brooklyn NineNine is moving to NBC.
NBC’s upcoming fall schedule will feature a mix of the new and the familiar.
The network announced several new series, including a drama from Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis. NBC will also rely on established hits, including The Voice, This Is Us and its stable of dramas produced by Dick Wolf.
One of those familiar elements that the network will count on is a comedy from a rival network. NBC is picking up Brooklyn NineNine, the police comedy starring Andy Samberg that was cancelled last week by Fox after five seasons. The ouster of the series, produced by NBC’s corporate sibling Universal Television, sparked a social media uproar from fans, sparking speculation that the show had enough momentum for life on another network.
“Ever since we sold this show to Fox, I’ve regretted letting it get away,” said NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt in a statement released Saturday. He elaborated Sunday in a conference call on the decision to pick up the show, describing the series as a “missing piece of the puzzle” for the network’s comedy lineup.
Scheduled for midseason with a return date to be determined, Brooklyn Nine-Nine will be the third series on the NBC slate from producer Michael Schur. He is executive producer of The Good Place, which returns for its third season on Thursday nights, and the new series Abby’s, a midseason sitcom starring Natalie Morales that centres on an unlicensed backyard bar.
The network will use its returning singing competition The Voice as a Monday lead-in for Manifest, a Zemeckis-produced mystery-drama that focuses on a passenger flight that disappears and returns five years later. The Voice will also return on Tuesday nights, leading into the hit drama This Is Us and a new medical drama, New Amsterdam, starring Ryan Eggold (The Blacklist).
A new comedy, I Feel Bad, from executive producer Amy Poehler, will join the Thursday comedy lineup headed by the fourth season of Superstore and the second season of the rebooted Will & Grace.
Other midseason shows include a spin-off of its reality show America’s Got Talent called America’s Got Talent: The Champions.
Shows not returning include the military drama The Brave, the small-screen adaptation of the action franchise Taken, Rise, The Night Shift and the Tina Fey-produced comedy Great News, which was cancelled after two seasons.
CBS has renewed four series and cancelled three more.
Criminal Minds, Elementary, Man With a Plan, Life in Pieces and Instinct, a midseason drama starring Alan Cumming, were all given greenlights for new seasons.
The network also added several new series, including a remake of Magnum, P.I.
But Kevin Can Wait, which marked King of Queens star Kevin James’s return to the network, won’t return for a third season. Neither will Superior Donuts, the sitcom that stars Judd Hirsch as a coffee-shop owner. And procedural drama Scorpion was stung by cancellation after four seasons.
Following the earlier foregone exits of Wisdom of the Crowd, 9JKL, Living Biblically and early fall casualty Me, Myself and I, that leaves only medical drama Code Black “on the bubble” between renewal and cancellation.
Executives not authorized to speak publicly said the fate of Code Black, which started its third season April 25, remains up in the air given its late return.
Kevin had the most ignominious exit. It opened strongly in the fall of 2016, but at the end of its first season the show killed off the wife of James’s lead character, played by Erinn Hayes, in an offscreen car accident, sparking outrage among fans. It then added Leah Remini, James’s Queens costar, as a series regular and lost much of its ratings lustre.
ABC releases its schedule later this week.