Entertainment

Fall Season To Offer Few New Shows

Writers Strike Gives Network Execs Fewer Options For New Season

NEW YORK (CBS) ― CBS is reportedly offering up four new dramas and two comedies for next TV season, with a focus on exceptional smarts or paranormal abilities. Half of the series are based on ideas that have been successful overseas.

CBS will make its schedule presentation to advertisers on Wednesday, but a Hollywood executive who is familiar with CBS' planning spilled some of the details on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the announcement.

The CBS romantic comedy "The Ex List," is based on a show from Israel about a woman who contacts all of her former boyfriends after a prophet tells her she has already met the man she's going to marry.

Another new series, "The Mentalist," is about a former "celebrity psychic" who admits the psychic claim was a fraud but now uses his observational skills to work as a contractor with law enforcement. Simon Baker, formerly of "The Guardian," stars in the new show.

The drama "Eleventh Hour" comes from Jerry Bruckheimer, the prolific producer behind the "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" franchise, "Cold Case" and "Without a Trace," all current CBS hits.

"Eleventh Hour," based on a British miniseries, focuses on a science professor who advises a government agency, helping to track down evildoers.

The fourth one-hour show set to land on CBS (part of CBS Corp.) is "Harper's Island," a murder mystery set among old friends who meet for a wedding on an island off Seattle.

One of the two comedies, "Worst Week of My Life," is also based on a British series and was originally developed by Fox, which took a pass. CBS decided to go ahead with the show based upon a young couple's frantic week before their wedding.

The second comedy doesn't have a title and features comic Ed Yeager. The premise is a recently divorced man coping with his new life.

CBS hasn't said which of these shows will be on the air in the fall, and which will be held back for sometime later.

ABC will introduce only two new series in the fall, one of them scripted, in a schedule the network admits was severely affected by the 100-day TV writers strike.

The new David E. Kelley-produced drama on ABC, "Life on Mars," is about a police detective transported back to 1973. ABC gave it a plum Thursday time slot following "Grey's Anatomy."

The second new series, "Opportunity Knocks," is a game where producers show up at a home with a truckload of prizes and quiz family members on what they know about each other.

ABC is also picking up the NBC comedy "Scrubs" for midseason. ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson, who has feuded with his NBC counterpart Ben Silverman, noted Tuesday that the comedy had 17 different time slots at NBC and received little promotion.

McPherson has been bold in the past in bringing forward new shows: ABC had eight last fall. But the strike impaired development. ABC has 17 series in development for midseason or beyond, but McPherson said he wasn't comfortable committing to new series unless pilots had been filmed.

"If you needed a ton of development for the fall schedule, the strike would have been a really bad bet," he said. "You'd have to rush it or put stuff on before you knew what it was."

The result is another chance for series that in normal years may not have gotten one, such as "Eli Stone," "Pushing Daisies" or "Dirty Sexy Money." Some longer-running shows considered on the bubble, "Boston Legal" and "According to Jim," were kept in production.

"Lost" will be back in midseason next year.

It was a good day for Ashton Kutcher, too. His production company is behind "Opportunity Knocks" and an untitled beauty pageant picked up for midseason. ABC also gave a midseason go-ahead to a Mike Judge animated series, "The Goode Family," about people obsessed with doing the right thing.

"Notes From the Underbelly," "October Road" and "Women's Murder Club" were left off ABC's schedule.

News programming was absent from the ABC schedule, with the exception of the occasional "Primetime" series that sets up social situations and tests how people react.

Broadcast networks will need to make a special effort this fall to counter lingering effects of the strike, he said. ABC plans to devote more promotional time than it normally does to returning shows instead of new series, he said.

"We certainly saw the affect of the strike," McPherson said. "People found other things to do."

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