[Movie] 2007-2008 Fall TV Schedule

This week the major networks are holding their upfronts for advertisers, unveiling which shows they’ve picked up for the fall season. I’ve tried to consolidate the information floating around on the net for the different networks into this post, so we can discuss what looks exciting and what will convince us that women have ruined television. You’re also welcome to discuss you’re angst at your favorite shows being cancelled.

ABC:

-Private Practice: From Shonda Rhimes, the Golden Globe-winning creator of "Grey's Anatomy," comes a story about new beginnings and old friends. Addison Forbes Montgomery is a renowned neonatal surgeon, respected by her friends and colleagues at Seattle Grace Hospital. Deciding she can no longer healthily co-exist with her ex-husband, McDreamy, and her ex-lover, McSteamy, Addison heads to Los Angeles for sunnier weather and happier possibilities. Reunited with her once-married, newly divorced medical school friends, Naomi and Sam, Addison joins their chic private practice. Featuring an all-star cast including Kate Walsh, Amy Brenneman, Tim Daly and Taye Diggs, "Private Practice" tells the story of a woman unafraid of change and willing to begin a new life.

-Pushing Daisies: A piemaker discovers he has the ability to make the dead briefly live again. It's a gift that he puts in good use to help a private investigator friend solve murders. However, when he uses this gift on his childhood sweetheart, he then learns something new about said gift - if he touches her again, she'll die, and stay dead.

-Dirty Sexy Money: Some people say money is the root of all evil. They may be right. Nick George's whole life has been lived in the shadow of the Darling family, but as an adult he's leading the perfect life as an idealistic lawyer, until his father's suspicious death. The absurdly wealthy Darlings of New York have asked him to take over his father's job as their personal lawyer, but the money that will allow him the freedom to be an altruistic do-gooder is only part of the picture. That same money pulls him into the dubious doings of the Darling clan. Power, privilege and family money are a volatile cocktail.

-Eli Stone: Many lawyers consider themselves prophets, but Eli Stone may be the real deal. Eli has built a successful career at a top law firm in San Francisco representing only the biggest and richest corporations that make a habit of screwing over the little guy. But after experiencing a series of odd hallucinations, Eli seeks to find a deeper meaning to life while trying not to lose his job and destroy his relationship with the bosses' daughter. When Eli discovers an aneurysm in his brain, he wonders if his condition is truly medical or if perhaps he now has a higher calling.

-Women’s Murder Club: Based on James Patterson's bestselling novels, The Women's Murder Club, four working women in San Francisco - a detective, a district attorney, a medical examiner and a reporter - use their expertise and unique talents to solve murder cases. Each woman is successful in her own field, but because of their unique friendship, they realize that pooling their resources during investigations leads to undiscovered clues and answers in both work and their personal lives.

-Cashmere Mafia: Four successful female executives, friends since college, who rely on each other as they juggle the demands of career, family, hard choices and high ambitions in New York City.

-Big Shots: This is the story of four friends at the top of their game...until the women in their lives enter the room. Lines between boardroom and bedroom blur when these competitive but dysfunctional CEOs take refuge in their friendship, discussing business, confiding secrets, seeking advice and supporting each other through life's surprising twists and turns.

-Carpoolers: Less about saving the environment than male bonding, four guys from very different backgrounds relish their daily commute as they commiserate about their lives, jobs and families in the carpool lane. There's Laird, the recently divorced playboy; Aubrey, the timid homemaker and breadwinner; the conservative and traditional Gracen; and eager newlywed Dougie. Together, between the pressures of home and work, these men find time to be themselves while driving to and from the office.

-Cavemen: Cavemen is a unique buddy comedy that offers a clever twist on stereotypes and turns race relations on their head. Inspired by the popular Geico Insurance commercials, the series looks at life through the eyes of the ultimate outsiders - three modern cavemen - as they struggle to find their place in the world. Joel, his cynical best friend, Nick, and easy-going little brother, Jamie, are contemporary cavemen who live in the suburban south and simply want to be treated like ordinary thirty-something guys. Despite their attempts at assimilation, Nick doesn't believe mainstream society will ever completely accept them, Jamie seems to take it all in stride and Joel straddles the middle, torn between his friends, his more traditional values and his loving fiance.

-Sam I Am: When a terrible accident leaves Samantha "Sam" Newly in a coma for eight days, she wakes up with no recollection of any past experiences, memories or events. Faced with amnesia, Sam must start over. To her dismay she discovers that she wasn't a particularly honest, good-hearted or loving person. In fact she was self-involved, narcissistic and devoid of real relationships - essentially a bitch. Sam must now struggle with her desire to be good and her temptation to be...not so good. Finding the line between good and evil is never easy.

-Miss/Guided: Having navigated the awkward and sometimes traumatic world of high school, Rebecca Freely returns to her alma mater as a guidance counselor, free of the insecurities and orthodontia of her school days. Amidst student behavioral problems and the persistent romantic advances of the male nurse, Gary, Rebecca is certain of one thing - she is interested in the hot auto-shop-turned-Spanish-teacher, Tim. However, much as in high school days of unexpected teenage angst, Lisa, a former cheerleader and nemesis of Rebecca's, returns as the new English teacher determined to make Rebecca relive her unpopular past, setting sights on Tim as well.

-Oprah’s Big Give: Each week contestants will face a "big twist" that will test their nerve, drive, ingenuity and passion. Big name stars will turn up throughout the series to join the "Oprah's Big Give" tour. During the eight episodes filmed in various U.S. cities, the field will be narrowed. The stakes will get higher and higher, with one person ultimately being chosen as The Biggest Giver.

NBC:

-Lipstick Jungle: Lipstick Jungle will follow three high-powered friends as they weather the ups and downs of lives lived at the top of their game: Nico O'Neilly , a editor-in-chief of a hot fashion magazine who wants to replace her boss as CEO, Wendy Healy, a movie executive who tries to balance her career and her family at the same time, and Victory Ford, a free-spirited designer who longs to make her dreams come true, and maybe find Mr. Right along the way. Armed with humor and strength, these three modern New York women support one another through the triumphs and tears that are all part of making it big in the Big Apple.

-Heroes: Origins: Heroes: Origins will introduce one new Hero per episode, and viewers will choose which Hero will join the main cast at the end of the run. The second season of Heroes and the first season of Heroes: Origins will include a total of 30 episodes.

-Journeyman: a romantic mystery-drama about Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, "Rome"), a San Francisco newspaper reporter and family man who inexplicably begins to travel through time and change people's lives. Along the way, he also must deal with the difficulties and strife at work and home brought on by his sudden disappearances.

-Chuck: A one-hour, comedic spy thriller about Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi, "Less Than Perfect") - a computer geek who is catapulted into a new career as the government's most vital secret agent. When Chuck opens an e-mail subliminally encoded with government secrets, he unwittingly downloads an entire server of sensitive data into his brain. Now, the fate of the world lies in the unlikely hands of a guy who works at Buy More.

-Bionic Woman: A re-imagining of the 1976 TV series of the same title ("The" is excluded from the title for this series). This series stars Michelle Ryan, Katee Sackhoff, Will Yun Lee and Mae Whitman, with David Eick as producer. Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica) will play a (possibly recurring) villain named Sarah Corvus, the 'original bionic woman'. Sackhoff has compared the role to Number Six.

-The Singing Bee: Combining singing in a spelling bee-style compoetition, the show will have contestants try to remember and sing the lyrics to popular songs.

-Life: Damian Lewis ("Band of Brothers") stars as complex, offbeat Detective Charlie Crews, who returns to the force after years in prison, thanks to close friend and attorney Constance Griffiths (Melissa Sagemiller, "Sleeper Cell"), after serving time for a crime he didn't commit. The cast also includes Sarah Shahi ("Rush Hour 3") as Charlie's skeptical, demanding partner, Robin Weigart (HBO's "Deadwood") as their hard-hitting lieutenant, and Adam Arkin ("Chicago Hope") as former cellmate Ted Early.

-The IT Crowd: an offbeat series, based on the critically acclaimed British comedy, that offers a humorous behind-the-scenes peek at the people who truly keep the office humming. Roy (Joel McHale, "The Soup") and Moss (Richard Ayoade, "The IT Crowd" -- U.K.) are the misunderstood masters of their high-tech domain, but they lack the people skills to befriend anyone but each other. Their company's head is Denholm (Rocky Carrol, "Chicago Hope"), who wants the IT department to stay segregated and forever banished to the basement.

-World Moves: Thousands of dance teams from around the world will audition for their shot to come to Los Angeles and compete for a global championship and an international touring contract. The live television event features young teams of five to seven members demonstrating their athleticism, creativity and innovative choreography in a presentation that highlights both the competition and the personal drama unfolding within each team. Viewers from across the globe will vote via the Internet, by text message, or by phone to eliminate one team each week.

CBS:

-The Big Bang Theory: stars Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki as brilliant theoretical physicists who meet a woman (Kaley Cuoco) who shows them how little they know about real life.

-Cane: Drama about three generations of the Duques, a powerful Latin American family in the rum business.

-Moonlight: About a private investigator (Alex O'Laughlin) who's also a vampire.

-The Power of 10: Features contestants as they try to guess the results of nationwide surveys with the finalist moving on to a bonus round in which their winnings multiply by 10 for each of its five questions - up to $10 million. Drew Carey hosts.

-Swingtown: An ensemble drama set during the 1970s about the impact of sexual liberation.

-Viva Laughlin: A musical about a family man (Lloyd Own) who dreams of opening a casino in Laughlin, Nevada.

-Kid Nation: A reality-based series in which 40 kids will have 40 days to build a new world - in a ghost town that died in the 19th Century. These kids, ages 8-15, will spend more than a month without their parents or modern comforts in Bonanza City, N.M., attempting to do what their forefathers could not - build a town that works.

Fox:

-Anchorwoman: A hybrid reality/scripted comedy about a supermodel (Amber Smith) who settles down in a southern Texas town and becomes an anchorwoman for the local news.

-Back to You: An ensemble comedy set at a local TV station that centers on an womanizing newscaster (Kelsey Grammer) who must co-anchor with his ex (Patricia Heaton).

-Canterbury's Law: Linus Roache ("Kidnapped") is set to play husband to Julianna Margulies in the drama pilot, about a rebellious female defense attorney (Margulies). His character, Matt Canterbury, is a law professor.

-Kitchen Nightmares: Hell hath no fury like an angry chef, and no chef has a sharper temper than Gordon Ramsay when things go wrong in the kitchen. The star of the highly rated culinary boot camp HELLS KITCHEN returns to FOX with another sizzling unscripted series, KITCHEN NIGHTMARES. This time, Chef Ramsay hits the road, in each episode tackling a restaurant in crisis and exposing the stressful realities of trying to run a successful food business.

-K-Ville: About cops in post-Katrina New Orleans.

-New Amsterdam: About a man (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) cursed with immortality who works as a homicide detective in New York.

-The Return of Jezebel James: About two estranged sisters who reunite after one of them agrees to carry the other's baby.

-The Rules for Starting Over: About a new divorcee (Craig Bierko) who hits the dating scene with his pals.

-The Sarah Connor Chronicles: At the end of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," Sarah vanquished the liquid metal Terminator sent from the future to kill her teenage son, John. Sarah and John now find themselves alone in a very dangerous, complicated world. Fugitives from the law, they are confronted with the reality that still more enemies from the future, and the present, could attack at any moment.

-The Search for the Next Great American Band: American Idol with bands.

-When Women Rule the World: Reality show.

CW:

-Crowned: The Mother of all Pageants: An eight-episode competition that features multiple mother-daughter teams working together as pairs to win a beauty pageant competition.

-Aliens in America: Single-camera comedy about an unpopular 16-year-old (Dan Byrd) and a 16-year-old Pakistani muslim (Adhir Kalyan) who comes to live with the boy's family in wisconsin as an exchange student.

-Reaper: Drama about a young man who essentially becomes Satan's bounty hunter, reclaiming souls that have somehow escaped from Hell.

-Wild at Heart: Drama about a New York veterinarian who moves his second wife and their two sets of children to a South African game reserve run by his father-in-law.

-CW Now: Half-hour newsmagazine which will include features on fashion, music, upcoming movies and new technology.

-Online Nation: Series which showcases user generated videos with the most popular making the cut from week to week.

-Gossip Girl: Drama based on the popular book series, about the world of privileged teenagers attending elite private schools in New York City as told through the eyes of an anonymous blogger.

I took most of the show descriptions from The Futon Critic.

How ya doing, buddy?

I might have to watch The IT Crowd on NBC. Other than that, looks like a big snoozefest everywhere else. When was the last time ABC had anything worth watching, besides college football games on Saturday afternoons?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of good things about The IT Crowd (british). A couple of the sci-fi shows sound promising (Pushing Daisies, Journeyman), depending on how they're done. I'm rather disappointed, because I'd heard that ABC was doing their own version of Life on Mars, which I've just started watching, and I was looking forward to seeing what they'd change.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Nothing jumps out at me this year. I had a hunch Heroes would be great, especially after I saw the pilot, but this new stuff looks just so-so. I'd say this is the worst year yet.

Also wondering what the CW is going to do. They must feel they have something if they are willing to not pay up for another season of Gilmore Girls and thought about dumping Veronica Mars (which looks safe now).

How ya doing, buddy?

Updated to include the rest of the networks.

So Jericho was cancelled to make room for a reality show about kids in the Old West? Way to go CBS.

Some of these shows sound so assinine from the get-go, and you have to wonder how they got the green light. A show about Satan's bounty hunter (on the CW)? You've got to be kidding me.

I was speaking idiomatically.

This sounds like one of the worst upcoming television seasons in recent memory. Ugh. Well, at least I still have Grey's Anatomy and Heroes to look forward to. Private Practice should be good if they can maintain the quality of production that they had during the "pilot".

How ya doing, buddy?

At least another season of Heroes is coming out, and it seems that Origins will add that little bit extra.

The IT Crowd is one to avoid though, it was aired over here last year and it wasn't all that great. Some little bits of it here and there made me chuckle, but for the most part it was poor.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Domino

The IT Crowd is one to avoid though, it was aired over here last year and it wasn't all that great. Some little bits of it here and there made me chuckle, but for the most part it was poor.

Really? The folks over on Outpost Gallifrey seemed to like it. Of course, they're also the ones that generally hated Hyperdrive, and I thought that was hilarious for the most part.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Mucknuggle

This sounds like one of the worst upcoming television seasons in recent memory. Ugh. Well, at least I still have Grey's Anatomy and Heroes to look forward to. Private Practice should be good if they can maintain the quality of production that they had during the "pilot".

The way they presented Private Practice really, really turned me off to it. I liked the idea of a Grey's spinoff and I like the cast but...it was so goddamn choppy. Why couldn't they have just done a full episode of Grey's followed by a full episode of Private Practice?

I'll probably tune in to see if it works as a standalone next year but, ick.

Additional Spam:
Is this Sarah Connor show supposed to be any good?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I have watched one episode of The IT Crowd, and it was very British, so I can only assume that when they rework it for the US, it will be less, well, British.

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I'm waiting for the season FOX makes a show called "Found." It would be about plane crash survivors on some island trying to stay alive until they are found. But along the way, weird shit happens. Oh wait.

Sarah Connor Chronicles? O_o

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Here's the complete press release from Fox on The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Quote:

Executive producers Josh Friedman ("War of the Worlds"), David Nutter ("Supernatural," "Smallville") and C2 Pictures ("Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines") bring to television an intense new drama based on the celebrated heroine of the "Terminator" movies: Sarah Connor. At the end of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," Sarah vanquished the liquid metal Terminator sent from the future to kill her teenage son, John. Sarah and John now find themselves alone in a very dangerous, complicated world. Fugitives from the law, they are confronted with the reality that still more enemies from the future, and the present, could attack at any moment. SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES reveals what happens when SARAH CONNOR (Lena Headey, "The Brothers Grimm," "300") stops running and goes on the offensive against an ever-evolving technological enemy bent on destroying her life, and perhaps the world. Her son, 15-year-old JOHN CONNOR (Thomas Dekker, "Heroes"), knows that he may be the future savior of mankind, but is not yet ready to take on the mantle of leadership that he's told is his destiny. John finds himself inextricably drawn to CAMERON (Summer Glau "Serenity," "The Unit"), an enigmatic and otherworldly student at his high school, who soon proves to be much more than his confidante she assumes the role of Sarah and John's fearless protector. On their trail are not only threats from the future, but an intelligent and tough FBI agent, JAMES ELLISON (Richard T. Jones, "Judging Amy"), who soon becomes a powerful ally. Directed by David Nutter and produced by Warner Bros. Television and C-2 Pictures, SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES represents an exciting reinvention of the "Terminator" franchise, in which the strong and intrepid Sarah discovers that protecting her son and stopping the rise of the machines is more difficult than she had ever imagined.

The guy who plays John Connor also played Claire's friend Zach on Heroes.

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The Heroes Origins thing is gonna be stupid: A 6 episode Mini-series spotlighting a different character each week after which there'll be a public vote to see which of the six gets to be a regular in season 3! I don't want some muppet choosing what characters I'm gonna watch on TV. The voting will probably be rigged anyway!

I was speaking idiomatically.