ABC's now joined NBC in providing us all with clips from their forthcoming Fall shows. Unlike NBC, however, they haven't done the decent thing and put them on YouTube as well, so you'll have to brave the ABC web site - and its geo-filter - to have a look at what's coming up. Again, I don't know if they're going to work in the UK, so if someone wants to experiment, now's your chance.
Of most interest for genre fans is Pushing Daisies, starring Lee Pace as a private investigator who can bring people back from the dead for a minute. it also stars Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth and Jim Dale (as the narrator) and is written by Bryan Fuller of Heroes, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me fame. Might be a little too whimsical for the viewing public, but you never know.
Most of the new shows, however, seem to focus on really rich people.
We have Big Shots, starring Michael Vartan, Dylan McDermott, Christopher Titus and Josh Malina as dysfunctional CEOs; Cashmere Mafia, starring Lucy Liu and Francis O'Connor, about four high-flying women who have been friends since business school and who 'naturally' have all sorts of problems with men and backstabbing female colleagues; and Dirty Sexy Money, starring Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland and William Baldwin, which is billed as a cross between Dallas and Dynasty, but looks twice as boring.
Eli Stone is also about a really rich person, a lawyer played by Jonny Lee Miller. The twist is he starts to hallucinate things, such as George Michael, so becomes spiritual - which in the world of TV is a lawyer who works pro bono. Sounds a bit Sharkish, but with the possibility that Miller is a prophet. Also stars Victor Garber and Natasha Henstridge.
The only cop show on display is Women's Murder Club, which sounds like Charlie's Angels but with a female Charlie: “to circumvent the Justice Department boy's club, San Francisco Detective Lindsay Boxer assembles a secret all-female team of experts” to solve crimes. Sounds marvellous.
Rounding off the stragglers is the Grey's Anatomy spin-off, Private Practice; Sam I Am, a comedy about a women with amnesia trying to find out what sort of person she was before she forgot, only to discover she was somewhat evil (good cast: Christina Applegate, Jennifer Esposito, Tim Russ and Jean Smart); Carpoolers, about four regular guys who share a car to go to work (I hope there's more to it than that), with only Jerry O'Connell of obvious note; and Miss-Guided, about a high school counsellor who runs into her teenage nemesis again.
Oh yes. And then there's Cavemen:
Looking forward to it?
May 16, 2007 | Reply
I'm in the UK and it worked for me.
I heard about Pushing Daisies a few months back when they were shooting the pilot and the clip looks good enough. Plus Bryan Fuller is possibly one of the best writer/producers on TV right now. He knows how to create a good show and set things in motion for the series(Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me I'm thinking of...)
Cavemen however looks, erm, well... were you REALLY expected anything good?
May 17, 2007 | Reply
His shows tend to fall apart after a promising start, though.
No one expects Cavemen to be good, but then Rules of Engagement got renewed and that's like having your ears syringed with molten lead.