Details of Fox’s fall line-up have been released. Fox is in an odd spot. They zoom from worst among the big four networks to first (at least in the all important key youth demographics) based almost entirely on American Idol. Aside from that, House is pretty consistently in the top three programs every week, and a genuine hit. (And, oddly, a really good show.) Still, obviously they’d like to add more popular programs for that rainy day when people suddenly stop caring about Idol, which is how I imagine it will go. One season viewership will just collapse.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about a weird fall season (see previous blog entries on ABC, NBC and CBS’ fall line-ups) is that Fox has one of the most promising prestige shows, and that moreover it’s a sitcom, a type of program that’s in one of its recurring moribund periods.
Even so, Back to You brings back two classic sitcom vets, Kelsey Grammer from Cheers/Frasier and Patricia Heaton from Everyone Loves Raymond, playing two anchors at a Pittsburgh news show who have great on-air chemistry but actually hate each other.
Of course, great stars are but part of the package. For a terrific sitcom, you also need, and most of all, great writing, followed closely by a strong ensemble cast. However, neither Grammer nor Heaton are dopes, and I assume they wouldn’t have signed up for the show if there wasn’t more to it than their names attached. Still, can Fox do a classy, adult sitcom? By which I mean, one in which EVERY SINGLE BLOODY JOKE isn’t a smutty, and worse, lame, sex gag?
Take for example, ‘Til Death, the sitcom starring Heaton’s former Raymond co-star Brad Garrett, which will be renewed and teamed up with Back to You. Hopefully Back to You will be as good as it might be, and maybe raise ‘Til Death ‘s game a bit.
Aside from Back to You, Fox offers two other new comedies this fall.
They again go for a comparatively arty tone with The Return of Jezebel James, about an infertile book editor who asks her estranged younger sister to be a surrogate mom. Parker Posey stars and it’s from the creator of Gilmore Girls. I can’t imagine that lasting very long, but who knows?
After that, it’s back to normal on the sitcom front. The Rules for Starting Over, from the Farrelly brothers, is about divorced buddies diving back into the dating pool. In other words, expect a show in which EVERY SINGLE BLOODY JOKE is a smutty, and worse, lame, sex gag.
Like everyone else, Fox is hoping for another Heroes, and of their four new dramas, two of them are outré.
New Amsterdam is about a homicide detective who is secretly immortal, and uses his centuries of experience to help solve crimes. Maybe he’ll team-up with the vampire private eye from CBS’ Moonlight.
Highly touted, although I don’t have much hopes for it, is The Sarah Connor Chronicles. That’s right, Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies.
Look, Cameron is known for his strong female heroines, but the reason Terminator III kind of sucked is because, at a very real level, Sarah Connor is a supporting character for the rise of her son John. Remember how kick-ass Sarah was in escaping from that maximum security loony-bin in T2, using only a paper clip?
Well, John is supposed to be like ten times greater than that. Yet in T3, John gets locked in a dog cage and can’t get out despite having a giant honking multi-tool on him. Instead, Claire Danes (a veterinarian!) was brought in as a surrogate Sarah to do the ass-kicking for a nearly helpless adult John. Blech.
Wow, that was before looking at the description: “has her fighting attackers from the future in today’s Los Angeles.” OK, that’s completely out of continuity, and dumb and self-limiting as well.
Look, if you really want to do a series about Sarah Connor, it’s going to have to follow what we saw of her from T2, and be as bleak as hell, at least as grim as, say, the new Battlestar Galactica.
This Sarah is a full-out fanatic, and she’s not interested in ‘protecting’ her son per se, much less seeing that he’s happy. Her purpose is to forge him into a tool, to literally program him to be humanity’s earthy savior. She has to whore herself out to skeezy survivalists and suchlike types to learn and then pass on the skills John will need during the war. Basically, Sarah would have to be a character that we’d often hate.
There’s a truly great show to be made around Sarah Connor (until she dies and the program becomes The John Connor Chronicle), but whoever makes it would have to be hard-hearted in the extreme. This will not be that show.
The other new dramas are Canterbury’s Law, with Julia Margolis as “an edgy defense lawyer” (wow, that’s fresh) and K-Ville, about cops patrolling the post-Katrina New Orleans. I guess they were among the 50% of the department that didn’t take off running, after a spot of looting and illegally seizing guns from law-abiding citizens, during that whole mess.
On the reality front, The Next Great American Band is an American Idol for bands. Meanwhile, 24 has been re-upped for two more seasons, and the ghastly sitcom The War at Home has finally been ashcanned.
