First look at fall TV: A summer press tour preview
"Fringe"
As I prepare for my annual journey to L.A. for the fall TV previews, I notice my desk is not exactly piled high with DVD screeners.
It's been months since the Hollywood studios and the people who write their scripts and screenplays kissed and made up. As you may know from reading this column, the 14-week work stoppage did more than make possible a special winter edition of “Big Brother.” It also short-circuited development season, the annual rite of pitching, script-reading, green-lighting and pilot-shooting that keeps the endless supply of network hits (and duds) coming.
The strike ended in February, so you would think that would be plenty of time for the networks to get at least a few pilots in front of critics. But if that were the case, I wouldn't be able to see the top of my desk. Actually, I rarely see the top of my desk, but you get my drift.
Not that I expect press tour to be lacking for action. A lot of network shows had their seasons prematurely end because of the strike, so they will be paraded before critics to help jog our memories. The conveyor belt delivering new cable programs never stopped, because cable relies so much on unscripted shows that don't need writers.
The cable stable
ABC's Bob Woodruff hasn't been seen much since he was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq. He's back now, with a newscast (weekly, not nightly) for Discovery's new Planet Green channel on digital cable, called “Focus Earth.”
Spike Lee will join Rachel Robinson, Jackie's regal widow, to discuss Lee's upcoming film project for ESPN. Elvis Costello will be on hand to talk about his Sundance Channel interview series that sounds an awful lot like HBO's “On the Record.”
Speaking of HBO, it is bringing out its dream team to press tour: Ricky Gervais of “Extras,” promoting a comedy special; David Simon and Ed Burns of “The Wire,” for their new Iraq miniseries “Generation Kill”; Rory Kennedy, documentarian extraordinaire, with her film about White House fixture Helen Thomas; and Alan “Six Feet Under” Ball, to answer the question of how you follow up a show about a family that lives in a mortuary. (Answer: with a show about vampires.)
Starz is making a TV show based on the Oscar-winning “Crash,” starring Don Cheadle. TNT has hired “NYPD Blue” producer Steven Bochco to make a show about, here's a shocker, the law -- though this time it's set in the courtroom and stars Malcolm's mom (Jane Kaczmarek).
FX will have Shawn Ryan and the gang from “The Shield” out to promote the show's final season.
The networks
CBS was the only responsible adult in the bunch, getting five new shows on its fall schedule and pilots for four of those into critics' hands, including Jay Mohr's new Monday Wednesday-night comedy “Project Gary” and yet another forensic crime drama, this one starring Simon “The Guardian” Baker as “The Mentalist.”
Fox produced a pilot of “Fringe” in time for tour, but didn't send it to critics, some of whom (cough) used Illegal File Sharing to sneak a peek. “Lost” creator J.J. Abrams will be on hand to promote that. Hopefully, Joss Whedon of “Buffy” fame and writers Sarah Fain and Liz Craft, of Pembroke Hill fame, will show up with tape of their buzzed-about Fox show, “Dollhouse.”
ABC plans to concentrate its time with critics on returning series: “Private Practice,” “Pushing Daisies,” “Eli Stone,” “Dirty Sexy Money” and former NBC show “Scrubs.”
I was on a panel of TV critics in New York the other week, and to my relief discovered I wasn't the only one who has no clue what NBC had planned for this fall. Press tour should offer some clues.
CW, which CBS owns, will be on hand to show off its 42 shows aimed at teenage girls who dream of being fabulously wealthy and popular, including a revival of Fox's “90210” and the reality show “Stylista.”
Finally, PBS is gonna bring us the power. It's reviving a 1970s schoolkid favorite, “The Electric Company.” Only this time it's called “The Electric Company: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.” No, just kidding.
