Fall TV is a ‘Scream’
Fox unveils sorority sisters, competing brothers and one young grandfather
Fox talked about turning somethings old into somethings new Thursday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. A crossover of current series, new series starring old TV favorites, an X-Files update due in January and a possible revival of Prison Break were among the topics.
Here are highlights:
u Queens pageant. There’s blood and violence in Fox’s
Scream Queens, but co-creator Ryan Murphy sees it as different from his FX series, American Horror Story.
“Scream Queens is a much more satirical, cartoonish quality (to the violence) than American
Horror Story ... which is much more sexualized and darker at times,” he told writers.
Queens (Sept. 22) is about a college sorority with a murder mystery in its past and a campus with a killer clad in devil clothing in its present.
When the writers were asked about the sometimes offensive comments made by sorority leader Chanel (Emma Roberts), Jamie Lee Curtis, the Halloween star who plays a dean, pointed to the show’s satirical focus.
“It is a social satire and actually we say what people think. We live in a bubble where (people are) all trying to behave and look a certain way. This flays imagined behaviors of human beings,” she said. “Everyone is wearing a mask, and this show peels off that mask each week.”
— Bill Keveney
u John Stamos is Grandfa
thered. Stamos plays a rich restaurateur who finds out that he’s not only a father but a grandfather in the comedy due Sept. 29.
“I couldn’t be more grateful for this particular show,” he said.
So how does the soon-to-be 52year-old feel about being cast as a grandfather while still looking like John Stamos? It was a bit of a shock at first, he says, but it’s not like he’s the only 50-something who still looks good. “I remember watching TV as a kid and a 50-year-old guy was Abe Vigoda. … I think everybody with a healthy attitude is looking great these days.”—
Robert Bianco
The Grinder is set. Rob Lowe and The Wonder Years’ Fred Savage are brothers in new comedy The Grinder, due Sept. 29.
Lowe plays Dean Sanderson, a fake lawyer whose TV show, also called The Grinder, ends its run as the series opens. He returns home to Boise with the idea he can be a real one, to the joy of his dad (William Devane), who dotes on him, and the chagrin of his brother Stewart (Fred Savage), who’s preparing to take over his family’s law firm.
At its core, “it’s this sibling rivalry show,” Lowe says.
“We want what the other has,” Savage says.
For executive producer Jake Kasdan, “it’s the most perfect application of his kind of sense of humor. I don’t think we could do this show without Rob Lowe.”
— Gary Levin
u More from Empire build
er. Lee Daniels, who created last season’s biggest new hit in Fox’s
Empire, is working on another music-based soap pilot for the network, this time about a new girl-group formed in Atlanta.
The series would focus on three women and would combine the same elements that made
Empire a hit with audiences, averaging 26 million viewers when 30-day viewing is counted.
— Levin
u Bones intersects Sleepy
Hollow. Bones and Sleepy Hollow will have a crossover event of back-to-back episodes on Oct. 29. In the Bones episode, the discovery of a headless corpse sets Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) on a search that leads them to Sleepy’s Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) and Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie).
In the Hollow episode, Ichabod and Abbie turn to Brennan and Booth for 21st-century forensic help to solve an 18th-century mystery. — Keveney
u Prison Break return? Fox has ordered a script and expects to order a 10-episode sequel to the hit (2005-09), which starred Dominic Purcell as a prisoner and Wentworth Miller as his brother, who broke into the prison to bust him out. The show, popular on Netflix, “picks up the characters several years after we left them” in the fourth season, and ignores a straight-to-video film in which Michael (Miller) died, says network CEO Dana Walden. “The brothers will be back, and it addresses questions set up at the end of the series.”
— Levin