Next season there will be fewer remakes, more doctors
‘Will & Grace’ makes limited return amid new viewer offerings
Pilot season is upon us: More than 70 prototypes for new broadcast-network series are in early stages of production, vying for slots next season in an annual rite for which winners are crowned in mid-May.
This year promises fewer remakes and big-name stars and a few more big swings, aimed at slowing defections to streaming and cable networks.
Heading into development, Fox Television Group chairman CEO Dana Walden asked, “Who’s underserved (and) where are there pockets of opportunity so you’re not just programming the same derivative types of shows and looking in the rear-view mirror and saying, ‘How do I get my
Empire? Where’s my This is Us?’ ” referring to her studio’s two biggest hits. ABC Entertainment chief Channing Dungey looked for more standalone crime series to supplement her soaps, and wants to “harken back to lighter, brighter one-hour comedies” like
Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives. Some of what’s in the hopper:
SCI-FI/FANTASY
Fox already has ordered Orville,
Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s homage to Star Trek, set in a 25th-century exploratory craft, with a crew of humans and aliens. And ABC has committed to The
Inhumans, its next Marvel series, which will get a September launch in IMAX theaters before settling on the network this fall. Hopefuls include Fox’s untitled Marvel series about a suburban couple (Stephen Moyer, Amy Acker) whose teenage kids have superpowers; and a CW adaptation of DC’s Black Lightning.
MEDICAL SHOWS
Plenty of docs in scrubs are vying for spots on network lineups, where a few stalwarts have been crowded by crime series. House creator David Shore is behind another quirky M.D. in ABC’s The
Good Doctor, starring Freddie Highmore ( Bates Motel) as a young surgeon with savant syndrome. NBC has a potential realtime drama about a Brooklyn trauma center in the throes of a catastrophic hurricane. Fox has two candidates: The Resident, starring Matt Czurchry ( The
Good Wife) as a young doctor mentored by a “brilliant senior resident” (Bruce Greenwood), and The Beast, which offers three weekly medical cases.
REMAKES AND SPINOFFS
Programmers have cooled (somewhat) on plundering their libraries, but NBC will bring back hit comedy Will & Grace for a limited run; CBS has picked up Big Bang
Theory spinoff Young Sheldon, featuring a 9-year-old version of its main character, and ABC is considering a spinoff of The Gold
bergs centered on its infrequently seen gym teacher. Other contenders: CW’s update on 1980s soap
Dynasty, Fox’s remake of film franchise Behind Enemy Lines; and NBC’s What About Barb?, a twist on 1991 Bill Murray movie What About Bob?
MILITARY MADNESS
Veterans may get a kick out of several military-themed series. Jason Biggs plays a Fort Bragg dentist in ABC comedy Charlie
Foxtrot; CBS may go for a Navy SEALs project; NBC will tap heroic stories in For God and Coun
try; and CW is weighing Valor, about helicopter pilots on an Army base. (Two more series, CBS drama Mission Control and NBC comedy Spaced Out, involve NASA).
BIG SWINGS
Aiming for relevance, Fox is piloting a drama about a student who accuses football players of sexual assault (Archie Panjabi and Anthony Edwards star). Gilmore Girls’ Lauren Graham is Linda
From HR in a Fox comedy, while Eva Longoria leads a Type A team of consultants hired to fire employees in another potential series for the network. Deception, one of several procedural pilots at ABC, offers TV’s first “consulting illusionist” to the FBI. Pretty Lit
tle Liars’ Lucy Hale stars as a woman whose terminal-cancer diagnosis proves false in CW’s
Life Sentence. And CBS’ Me, Myself and I follows one man’s life, at 14, 40 (played by Saturday Night
Live’s Bobby Moynihan) and 65.