CBS pours on the comedy; NCIS’s Weatherly returns
CBS, joining ABC, is bulking up on comedy with an eight-sitcom lineup once Thursday Night Foot
ball ends its early-fall run. Sitcoms starring Kevin James, Matt LeBlanc and Joel McHale, a new take on MacGyver and a drama starring NCIS’s Michael Weatherly are highlights of the schedule, which will see fall once again start off with The Big Bang
Theory on Mondays as a launch pad for new comedies before it shifts to its usual Thursday home. James stars as retired cop in
Kevin Can Wait, and LeBlanc plays a contractor dad in Man
With a Plan, another comedy. And Weatherly will play a young version of Dr. Phil McGraw as a trial consultant in Bull, which gets toprated NCIS as a lead-in on Tuesdays. McHale won the post- Big Bang slot on Thursday with The
Great Indoors as an adventure journalist who becomes boss to a group of “eager Millennials.” And
Pure Genius is a new medical drama starring Dermot Mulroney.
Other schedule moves include the shift of Scorpion later on Mondays, a move of NCIS: Los
Angeles to Sundays, and holding back The Amazing Race from the fall schedule in favor of MacGyv
er, the 1985-92 series about an inventive problem-solver. CBS also plans a spinoff of The Good Wife starring Christine Baranski, but it will appear next year only on the network’s streaming app. On tap for midseason: Doubt, a legal dra- ma starring Katherine Heigl and Laverne Cox; the return of spinoff Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders; and Training Day.
CBS remains the top-rated network and reclaimed the young-adult crown from NBC. Among cancellations are CSI: Cyber, The Good Wife, Rush Hour,
Angel From Hell and Limitless, which CBS Studios is trying to sell to a streaming service.