We don’t know yet what CBS’s fall schedule will look like, but by its standards the network is being aggressive with its pick-ups, with 4 new comedies and 2 dramas so far. Here’s a thumbnail of each:
COMEDIES
MOM: As close to a sure thing as pilot season offered, this is CBS comedy kingpin Chuck Lorre’s newest muluticamera sitcom, with Anna Faris as a single mother who’s just gotten through rehab and, on top of that, has to deal with her own mother (Allison Janney). Lorre co-wrote the pilot with Eddie Gorodetsky and Gemma Baker.
CRAZY ONES: A safe bet to either be great or unbearable, David E. Kelley’s return to sitcoms stars Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar as a father and daughter who work together at an ad agency.
THE MILLERS: Greg Garcia is mostly known for single camera comedy (My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope), but at CBS he’s going the multicamera route. The premise is pretty familiar–a divorced guy’s parents move in with him–but with Garcia there has to be a spin on it, and the remarkable cast includes Will Arnett, Margo Martindale, Beau Bridges, J.B. Smoove and Michael Rappaport. (Allow me a moment of sadness that this pick-up may mean we’ve seen the last of Granny on The Americans.)
WE ARE MEN: Guys bond at a post-divorce residential hotel, with Tony Shalhoub, Kal Penn and Jerry O’Connell. It’s written by longtime Friends writer/producer Rob Greenberg.
DRAMAS
HOSTAGES: This sounds more serialized than most CBS dramas, with Toni Collette as a surgeon whose family is taken hostage after she operates on the President. Political conspiracies, no doubt, abound. The cast also includes Dylan McDermott and Sandrine Holt, and it’s written by movie screenwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff, based on an Israeli format and produced through Jerry Bruckheimer’s shop.
INTELLIGENCE: Josh Holloway and Marg Helgenberger are back in the series game, in what sounds like a more serious version of Chuck, with Holloway as a government agent with a chip in his head that gives him access to all signals and data in the world. The writer is Michael Seitzman
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