> 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 We’ve gotten this far without using the word “ghastly” to describe any of the busted pilots from this year’s development season, but that streak is about to end.  HELP WANTED, which was produced by Warner Bros for NBC, is unaccountably bad.  Partly that’s a function of its […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots FAMILY ALBUM was one of the more buzzed-about FOX pilots of this past development season, and although it’s not on the network’s announced schedule, Deadline reports that it’s in contention for midseason and will even shoot a second prototype episode.  So this isn’t so much a postmortem as […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots The word was that Stephen Gaghan’s pilot METRO was in serious consideration for NBC’s schedule until the very end (conventional wisdom has it that the final choice came down to Metro vs. Awake, and the latter made the cut).  That’s too bad:  the pilot is an impressive piece […]

> 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 On paper, EXIT STRATEGY looked like one of the hot FOX pilots this past season, a high-profile (Ethan Hawke’s first TV project) espionage thriller in the vein of 24 that could inherit that show’s Monday night slot and its House lead-in.  It didn’t happen:  the network chose Terra Nova […]

>   See A Word About Busted Pilots SMOTHERED, which was produced for ABC by Warner Bros Television, falls into the category of “not as bad as you’d think.”  The concept is Predictable Sitcom 101:  a young couple (Kyle Howard and Brooke D’Orsay) whose daughter is about to celebrate her first birthday, is invaded by […]

> 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!) […]