What a difference from a year ago – networks are announcing pilot pickups left, right and centre, whereas last February everyone was still recovering from the writers’ strike.
While ABC was hesitant to pick up new shows last season, relying instead on sophomore renewals of shows like Pushing Daisies, Private Practice and Dirty Sexy Money, this year they’re front-runners with pilot pickups.
Leading the pack is Cougar Town a pilot comedy starring ex-Dirt and Friends star Courteney Cox as a 40-something-year-old mom with a teenage son. The letter network also green-lit five more projects, including an untitled project written by Everybody Loves Raymond scribe Tucker Cawley and starring Kelsey Grammer as a humbled Wall Street employee seeking penitence with his family.
Cedric the Entertainer’s pilot (a show about reserve LAPD officers) was also announced as a go as were three more: Canned, a multi-camera laffer about a group of friends who get fired on the same day; an untitled parenting comedy starring Anita Renfro; and Slummy Mummy, a pilot based around an accident-prone lady raising three kids.
The Eye Network is also getting an early start – CBS has given the go-ahead to three projects: Confessions of a Contractor, a look at life in Los Angeles for a real-time contractor; I Witness, a physiological procedural from the minds of CSI: NY; and an unnamed medical drama centred on a family of doctors.
Fox is throwing its hat in the ring with Cop House, a single-camera pilot focusing on a halfway house for “troubled cops.”
Meanwhile, E! is keeping with its campy theme and has ordered a project called Hot Girls in Scary Places – a reality series that throws cheerleaders into an abandoned, haunted hospital for a night when they compete for a $10,000 prize.
Thoughts? amber@tvguide.ca