Daily Herald.com - 2007 Fall TV Preview

Sunday

The week gets off to a slow start with new shows, as the networks mainly stick with what works: "Desperate Housewives" on ABC, "The Simpsons" and cartoons on Fox and football on NBC. But CBS takes the first risk by placing Hugh Jackman's Las Vegas musical drama "Viva Laughlin" at 7, right after "60 Minutes," in what looks to be the most wrongheaded scheduling move of the season. The CW responds at 7 with "Life Is Wild," which is sort of "Everwood" transplanted from the Rockies to South Africa. It has "kid appeal" written all over it.

Monday

CBS plugs nerds into its male comedy lineup with "The Big Bang Theory" at 7:30, but it would have been better served sticking with "The New Adventures of Old Christine" from the get-go instead of holding it for midseason. Much better is the CW's "Aliens in America," about a Wisconsin dweeb who gets an exchange student in a desperate attempt to attain popularity -- only to have a Pakistani Muslim step off the plane. It's nevertheless sweet and disarming in a way reminiscent of "Maybe It's Me" (a flop, so look out).

Christina Applegate is an amnesiac who has to decide whether she's good or bad in ABC's comedy "Samantha Who?" at 8:30. (My verdict: bad.) Fox sets a cop show in New Orleans in "K-Ville," which looks like a suitable follow-up to "Prison Break" at 8. And a guy gets tossed back in forth in time to do good deeds in NBC's "Journeyman." It looks as if CBS and Fox will split the night between comedy and drama, with the CW trying to siphon off younger viewers with "Everybody Hates Chris" and "Aliens."

Tuesday

"Reaper" is the best new show of the fall, as Kevin Smith directs a whimsical slacker fable about a nerd who finds out on his 21st birthday that his parents have sold his soul to the devil (played by the delightfully evil "wow Bob wow" killer Ray Wise of "Twin Peaks"). Satan, however, simply assigns him the task of returning escapees to hell, which turns out to be pretty cool, given the gizmos he has access to and the burnout buddy who helps out. It could do for the CW what "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" did for the WB -- give it a hip identity -- but it will have to get past its "Beauty and the Geek" lead-in and confront tough competition at 8, including "House," "The Unit" and NBC's new "Chuck," a less-successful series about a nerd who has U.S. government secrets downloaded into his brain.

ABC tries to launch a comedy block at 7, but gets the order wrong. "Cavemen," about the Geico ad guys, is a dreary racial allegory, while "Carpoolers," about four disparate (and desperate) guys sharing a daily commute, turns out to be slapstick funny in a way reminiscent of "The Knights of Prosperity" (also a flop, so look out there, too). CBS tries to chisel out room between "Law & Order: SVU" and "Boston Legal" at 9 with the edgy drama "Cane," starring Jimmy Smits as the head of a Cuban-American family. It's good, but not as good as "The Sopranos," no matter how much it mimics the same tone.

Wednesday

The buzz reaches a crescendo midweek. From the get-go at 7 it's a fight between three new shows: Fox's aforementioned "Back to You," CBS' "Kid Nation" about kids set on their own in a Wild West ghost town, and ABC's "Pushing Daisies," created by Bryan Fuller of "Heroes" and "Wonderfalls" and directed with real style by Sonnenfeld. Yet even something as daring as this series can't resist the formula TV romantic tease, as a guy who can bring the dead back to life and kill them again with another touch brings his childhood sweetheart back but can't touch her again.

Sex takes over later, as Kate Walsh launches the even-raunchier "Grey's Anatomy" spin-off "Private Practice" at 8, up against the CW's equally horny (and teenage) "Gossip Girl" and NBC's troubled, but buzzworthy "Bionic Woman." Peter Krause is a good attorney seduced by the dark side in ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money" at 9, up against "CSI: NY" and NBC's new "Life," a derivative, "Monk"-ish series about a squirrelly, Zen-inspired detective freed after spending 12 years unjustly imprisoned.

Thursday

The networks are mostly sticking with what got them here on this competitive night, although CBS is replacing "Shark" with "Without a Trace" in an attempt to finish off "ER" once and for all. ABC makes the curious scheduling decision of following the female-friendly "Ugly Betty" and "Anatomy" with the loutish male "Big Shots." Talk about generating buzz for buzz's sake, it's being promoted with the tag line "How long can they keep it up?" Answer: Probably not beyond October.

Friday

On this night of light viewership, ABC tries to makes gains by moving Anne Heche's appealing "Men in Trees" to 7, then following it with Angie Harmon's new "Women's Murder Club," sort of a Justice League of real-life female crime-fighters. CBS responds by following Jennifer Love Hewitt's "Ghost Whisperer" with the new vampire drama "Moonlight," which figures to make viewers howl for "Angel." NBC makes the common sense move of shifting "Friday Night Lights" to Friday at 8. Fox pumps up the double-barreled musical reality series "The Next Great American Band" ("American Idol" for groups) and "Nashville" (songwriters try to make it in the country capital).

Saturday

On Saturday, the networks continue to surrender their audiences to their feature-film sibling studios by offering nothing of substance, thus encouraging people to head out to the movies. That's another reason why media consolidation is a bad thing, but enough of that anti-capitalist buzz.

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Voice for suburban Latinos

By Ted Cox | Daily Herald Radio/TV critic

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Hear that noise? It might have been the summer of the 17-year locusts here in the Chicago area, but that's nothing compared to the buzz coming from the major TV networks this fall.

Facing persistent audience erosion to cable, the broadcast networks have been desperate for years to find new ways to attract and retain viewers.

But never before like this.

Cable just produced the best TV summer ever with the likes of "The Closer," "Saving Grace," "Mad Men," "Damages," "The Kill Point" and "Flight of the Conchords." The five major networks combined drew just a quarter of the TV audience in the prized 18-49 age demographic. So now they have to try to lure those viewers back for the lucrative winter months with their annual fall TV premieres -- a task that seems increasingly difficult, like herding cats.

Like so much of the mass media, the major networks don't seem certain about what works in the Internet age. The few TV hits of the last few years have ranged from "Heroes" and "Prison Break" to "Grey's Anatomy," "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost." Where's the identifiable trend there? What they do know, however, is those shows all generated a notable "buzz" -- especially on the Internet. So all summer long they've been trying to produce buzz -- any kind of buzz.

That has sometimes backfired. Plagued by tinkering, cast changes and defections from the writing staff, NBC's "Bionic Woman" has seen vastly different versions of its pilot hit the Internet. CBS boldly said it was courting both good and bad publicity for its new shows, including the ultra-randy midseason drama "Swingtown," then ran into a public-relations nightmare over the use and abuse of children in the reality show "Kid Nation."

What does this all mean for viewers? It means there are a bunch of new programs coming that look intriguing, but that also give off an air of desperation with high-concept premises and manic storytelling. Even Fox's fairly straightforward workplace sitcom "Back to You," starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as news anchors with a long-simmering conflict relationship, made itself needlessly complicated at the end of its pilot earlier this week when it suddenly revealed that they shared a child from a one-night stand a decade before.

Nerds and the Internet are hot, as in "The Big Bang Theory," "Chuck" and "Aliens in America." So are "Heroes"-style series about sci-fi warriors and the paranormal, as in "Bionic Woman," "Journeyman" and "Moonlight." But the networks themselves don't seem confident they know what will strike a chord with viewers.

There are a few shows that look like completed works, fully realized, such as Kevin Smith's "Reaper" and Barry Sonnenfeld's "Pushing Daisies," but even they run the risk of alienating viewers by being just too hip to be cool.

So let's take a spin around the TV week, trying to pin down what looks worthwhile and what can be dismissed out of hand. And in the meantime be careful of the advice you heed. What you read on the Internet could be from an idealistic blogger -- or a network executive with a self-interest in a show's success or failure.