Fox’s fall is full of football and other drama
‘Last Man Standing,’ 2 new sitcoms join the lineup
Fox on Monday unveiled a revamped fall schedule loaded with returning dramas, football, the return of canceled ABC sitcom Last Man Standing and two new sitcoms.
Fox has less room for shows than its rivals: It programs only 15 hours each week (vs. 22 for other major broadcast networks), and Thursdays this fall will be devoted to NFL games, which are moving from NBC and CBS.
Yet the network renewed eight dra- mas, including Lethal Weapon, which fired co-star Clayne Crawford and replaced him with Seann William Scott. Two more, Gotham and The Orville, will be held back for midseason. Gotham’s fifth and final season will chart Bruce Wayne’s transformation into Batman.
Last Man will return on Fridays, its longtime home on ABC, which canceled the series last spring. It will be joined there by newcomer The Cool Kids, which stars Martin Mull, Leslie Jordan and David Alan Grier as retirement home pals
whose dominion is threatened by a new resident (Vicki Lawrence). Rel, the other new comedy, is based on the life of Lil Rel Howery, who stars as a Chicago dad suddenly single after his wife’s affair, and will be the only live-action series on Fox’s Sunday animation block.
Fox canceled Brooklyn Nine-Nine (it said it couldn’t find a spot on its schedule), along with other filmed comedies including Last Man on Earth and The Mick, in favor of the new laugh-track sitcoms. Also gone: Lucifer. Fox says it hasn’t decided whether to cancel Ghosted and LA to Vegas.
Among returning series, its top dramas The Resident and 9-1-1, an emergency rescue series, will return on Mondays, a new night for both. The network also won a package of Thursday NFL games formerly split among NBC and CBS and will air college football on Saturdays. Just one reality show, Hell’s Kitchen, is on its fall lineup.
In midseason, the network also plans a new season of Cosmos, a live January production of Broadway’s Rent and two new dramas: medical thriller The Passage with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Proven Innocent, a legal series about wrongful convictions.
Fox TV Group chairman Gary Newman said ABC’s cancellation of Last Man, which fans attributed to Allen’s conservative politics, was instead motivated by the network’s lack of ownership in a business that increasingly depends upon it. Fox owns the series, which ran for six seasons.