NBC’s comedy rebound

NBC’s revival began with its dramas, especially “The Blacklist” and a raft of “Chicago” shows, but after going relatively comedy-less in recent years, the peacock network has started to rebound.

Smart, sophisticated “The Good Place” was a critical hit in the fall. And for midseason NBC has two winning comedies planned.

Although it has a terrible-sounding logline — cable news producer’s mother (Andrea Martin) gets a job as an intern in her office — NBC’s “Great News” (9 and 9:30 p.m. April 25), executive produced by Tina Fey (“30 Rock”), is a surprisingly winning show.

But NBC’s best comedy bet is “Trial & Error” (9:30 p.m. March 7 and 9 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday thereafter), a serialized legal comedy about a New York lawyer (Nicholas D’Agosto) who takes on the case of a poetry professor (John Lithgow) accused of killing his wife in a small Southern town. The case will wrap up in its first season and, in success, follow a different criminal case in season two in the same small town.

Executive producer Jeff Astrof said he

NBCUniversal’s Esquire Network, home to locally produced docuseries “Friday Night Tykes: Steel Country,” will shutter come spring. … NBC will revive “Will & Grace” for a 10-episode limited run in the 2017-18 TV season. … Actor James Frain will play Sarek, father of Spock, in “Star Trek: Discovery,” a role originally played by the late Mark Lenard. “Discovery” was announced to premiere this month, then