> See A Word About Busted Pilots  A MANN’S WORLD isn’t the usual run of busted pilot.  Produced by Warner Bros for consideration by NBC, it’s quite skillfully written and directed by Michael Patrick King, and it has a dramatic vision that sets it apart from mere failed genre efforts.  It also has a very […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots If it’s a procedural, this must be CBS.  HAIL MARY was one of the pilots that had initial buzz around town, and it boasted a casting coup with Minnie Driver in the lead (her first network show after doing The Riches for FX), but it’s not hard to […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots IDENTITY is so clearly a Jerry-Bruckheimer-for-CBS procedural that it comes as a shock to realize that it was neither produced by Bruckheimer nor developed for CBS.  In fact, Mark Gordon’s company produced the show for ABC Studios and the ABC network, which must have remembered at some point […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots We round out our survey of some of the more notable busted pilots of the season with the distinctive POE, produced by Warner Bros Television for ABC and written by Chris Hollier (a former writer for Kyle XY).  Unfortunately, this pilot stands for the proposition that “distinctive” doesn’t […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots  Deadline reported today that ABC Studios has signed Jesse Martin to a talent hold deal that, although it could end up with him being cast in a different ABCS project, is largely in place so he’ll be available for a redeveloped version of Marc Cherry’s HALLELUJAH pilot, for […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots Not even the presence of Michael Chiklis and Elizabeth Perkins could make VINCE UNCENSORED endurable.   Deservedly consigned by CBS to its trash-bin, this isn’t one of those pilots you’ll be likely to hear about again.  The storyline of Vince Uncensored uses a contrivance to get to an […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots For those who like Six Degrees of Separation-ish linkages:  the protagonist of ABC’s busted pilot GRACE is Michael Grace, an aging, womanizing choreographer who bears some resemblance to Bob Fosse–or at least to Joe Gideon, the center of Fosse’s semiautographical All That Jazz.  The actor playing Grace is […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots The pilot for HOMEGROWN, produced for CBS by Warner Bros Television, seems determined to hit as many dysfunctional-but-loving-family cliches as it can.  We have one grouchy alpha male in a household of women (here played by Gerald McRaney), the multiple generations living in one sitcom (huge living room!) […]