In the CBS featurette for its new midseason action-adventure INTELLIGENCE (it’ll take over the Monday 10PM timeslot from Hostages), the show is variously compared to Mission: impossible, Frankenstein, The Six Million Dollar Man and James Bond.  Curiously, the one they left out was Chuck, for which this show’s concept is virtually a dead ringer:  […]

  CBS–because it’s CBS–doesn’t release trailers for its new series, but instead provides 3-4 minute behind-the-scenes featurettes.  These are about as informative as the puff pieces you’d find as an “extra” on a Hollywood DVD, and they’re even less reliable as a predictor of series quality than a real trailer would be.  So take them […]

Promo Watch begins and so far ABC’s 666 Park Avenue and Nashville stand out so far (thanks to a solid assist from the NBA). With the arrival of summer, it is time for the broadcast networks to get busy rolling out their marketing campaigns for their new fall shows.  While each network employs a variety […]

  The first day of network Upfront presentations features a doubleheader, with NBC followed by FOX.  That means another stack of trailers (unlike NBC, FOX also released the materials for its midseason shows), so let’s take a look.  Reminder:  it’s patently unfair to judge a TV series based on a 3-4 minute trailer, except that […]

  FOX’s most highly-touted drama pilot the entire development season was RAKE, which is indeed on the air.  The price of scoring Greg Kinnear as a lead (much as it had been last year with Kevin Bacon) is that he would only commit to a limited number of episodes, so the show will air on […]

  We’re continuing our look through FOX’s fall trailers with SLEEPY HOLLOW, which will hold the Monday 9PM slot until The Following takes it back at midseason.  It comes from genre specialists Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci, and here’s the promo: http://youtu.be/oFOEzR9zgUo Sleepy Hollow has a bit of a second-hand feel, as though tropes from […]

  We’re continuing our look at NBC’s crop of trailers for its fall shows (apart from The Blacklist, the network doesn’t seem to be releasing pieces for its midseason series right now), and next up is the return of a TV icon (for those who were watching TV in 1967):  IRONSIDE. What becomes increasingly clear […]

  ABC rounds out its new Wednesday with BACK IN THE GAME, placed in the 8:30PM hammock slot between The Middle and Modern Family  It’s pretty clearly inspired by the Clint Eastwood movie Trouble With the Curve, with a little Bad News Bears added for flavoring, about the grumpy relationship between an ex-ballplayer (James Caan) […]