The final bit of Upfronts material released by CW is a brief clip from its midseason series STAR-CROSSED, about an alien and a human in love. A group of nervous, ostracized teens (presumably the aliens) are bused into a high school, and guy alien locks eyes with girl human, and the whole world changes, […]

  NBC’s trailers for its fall series continue.  Next up:  the sitcom WELCOME TO THE FAMILY, featuring Mike O’Malley and Mary McCormick as a couple whose teen daughter falls in love with (and gets pregnant by) the valedictorian son of a Latino family, forcing them to all get to know each other. NBC’s journey down […]

  The CBS featurette for its new Monday 8:30PM comedy WE ARE MEN is at great pains to suggest that the cast–Chris Smith, Tony Shalhoub, Jerry O’Connell and Kal Penn, as divorcees who live in the same residential hotel–has as much fun together behind the camera as in front of it.  The bigger question is […]

  THE GOLDBERGS, as it will be described in roughly 10 billion places between now and September, is The Wonder Years set in the 1980s, based on the childhood of series creator Adam F. Goldberg, with Jeff Garlin as gruff but loving dad, Wendi McLendon-Covey as mom, and George Segal as grandpa, who’s losing it […]

  BETRAYAL will be the latest inhabitant of ABC’s Sunday 10PM soap hour, trying to outdo such recent occupants as GCB, Red Widow, 666 Park Avenue and Pan Am.  It stars Hannah Ware as the wife of a prosecutor who discovers too late that the man she’s having an affair with is the defense attorney […]

  Another TBD for ABC’s midseason:  the high-concept comedy MIXOLOGY.  The entire season takes place in a single night, at a bar where 10 single people are looking for love (or a close substitute), which–if things don’t go well–has the potential of feeling like one long night.  Think of it as a sitcom 24, but […]

  Hollywood didn’t have a particularly strong presence in this year’s Super Bowl (won, for those living in a very well insulated cave, by Baltimore, which held off San Francisco 34-31), despite the fact that the abrupt 35-minute semi-blackout just after halftime felt like it could have been the first act of a Die Hard […]

  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 […]