CW adds ‘ Valor’ to its ‘ Dynasty’ for fall and broadens lineup
CW still has plenty of superheroes, but the youth- focused network’s new fall schedule aims to broaden its scope with a military drama and another attempt to revisit a classic soap.
Two very different new fall dramas are Valor, about an elite team of Army helicopter pilots and an investigation into a botched mission in Somalia, and a remake of 1980s Aaron Spelling soap Dynasty, with Elizabeth Gillies as Fallon Carrington, Grant Show as her father, Blake, and Nathalie Kelley as his new wife, Cristal. Though a 2009 revival of Melrose Place failed, CW chief Mark Pedowitz says “to us, it was a no- brainer … to put a new twist on a show that existed 30 years ago.” But network marketing execs say they will focus promotional efforts on younger viewers who never saw the original series on ABC, which starred Joan Collins and Linda Evans.
The network is moving several shows to new time periods, grouping Dynasty on Wednesdays with the returning Riverdale, based on the Archie Comics characters, and pairing similarly soapy Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex- Girlfriend on Fridays. Arrow also moves to Thursdays, reuniting with Supernatural. CW generates a greater proportion of viewership on other platforms and is jointly owned by CBS and Warner Bros.
For midseason, look for a new superhero show, DC’s Black Lightning, starring Cress Williams as a New Orleans school principal and sometime superhero who can harness electricity, and Life Sentence, starring Lucy Hale as a woman who thought she was dying but finds her cancer is cured, and must grapple with the effects of her carefree decisions and the secrets kept by her not- so- perfect family.
Pedowitz promises CW will air no more than four DC series at once, and says he isn’t worried about over- saturation now that superhero series are all over television. The genre will “last as long as people want to watch it.” Cancellations include Reign, The Vampire Diaries and freshman series Frequency and No Tomorrow. iZombie, The 100 and The Originals will return at midseason.