TV pilot season puts diversity on its radar
More diverse casting. Fewer dark crime shows. Comedies that focus on families rather than romantic couplings. And familiar TV faces, from Rob Lowe to Craig Ferguson, may be back, along with new projects from Jennifer Lopez and Eva Longoria.
Those are the highlights of the spring rite of passage known as pilot season, when broadcast networks cast, produce and screen dozens of pilots for potential series. This year it's taken on a more urgent feel. NBC and Fox are down sharply, and intense competition from cable and streaming services, offering shorter commitments, has made it tougher for networks to land top stars, putting some projects at risk.
About 80 pilots are in contention on the five major broadcast networks, down from 100 last year. More are gambling on shorter-run series, foregoing pilots entirely. And while Fox's Empire, the season's biggest new hit, came too late to influence pitches for new shows, which began last fall, it has been a factor in casting them, along with ABC's Black-ish.
"Certainly there's been an incredible interest from all of the networks in diverse casts," says Fox Television Group president Dana Walden. "Everyone asks every year, 'What will it take for diversity to be a big priority, and you know what it takes? A giant hit. It has added a lot of excitement to the development marketplace. Our shows need to reflect our audiences."
Fox, aiming for a comeback, is looking for companion pieces for Gotham and Empire, and cast Rob Lowe as a former TV lawyer who might join his family's real law firm in comedy The Grinder. NBC, coming off a weak year for new series, is casting a wide net (Wesley Snipes plays a Las Vegas security expert in House of Crime, while Mark Burnett and Roma Downey (Touched by an Angel) are producing Unveiled, about "flawed guardian angels"). ABC is eyeing more family comedies and unique dramas such as Smoke and Mirrors, Shonda Rhimes' latest, which stars Mireille Enos (The Killing) as a fraud investigator who's conned by her fiancee. And CBS is heavying up on medical, law and detective dramas, along with DC Comics' Supergirl.
"We're going to have every branch of government covered," jokes Carolyn Finger, senior VP at Variety Insights, which tracks program-development trends. But "we haven't had a big medical-drama hit for a long time."
Only a fraction will land spots on network schedules, signaling a need for promotable uniqueness. Says Walden: "It's really hard for the shows that don't have something that really pops out to resonate."
Broadcast networks spend tens of millions on prototypes for new series, most of which will never air. Sorting through the 80-odd pilots yields trends both old and new.
Spinoffs and remakes
Adaptations of familiar feature-film titles remain popular: CBS has potential new series based on the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker franchise Rush Hour and 2011 Bradley Cooper film Limitless (Cooper reprises his role in the pilot), Fox is retooling Steven Spielberg's 2002 film Minority Report; NBC has designs on 1990 family comedy Problem Child and ABC is remaking 1989 John Candy vehicle Uncle Buck, with a black cast.
On the spinoff front, CBS will try
Criminal Minds Beyond Borders,
photo a second spinoff of
Criminal Minds
, this time about Americans in trouble abroad, starring Gary Sinise (
CSI: NY
), with characters introduced in the April 8 episode of the original series. And NBC will try a similar tactic for
Chicago Med
, a proposed spinoff with medical-worker characters (S. Epatha Merkerson, Oliver Platt) to be introduced on the April 7 episode of
Chicago Fire
.
Lawyers and doctors
Aside from CBS's The Good Wife, legal dramas have been scarce on network TV lately. ABC hopes to change that with The Adversaries, photo about a lawyer facing his own trial, starring Terry O'Quinn (Lost) and Christine Lahti. CBS has Doubt, about a defense lawyer (KaDee Strickland) romantically linked to a potentially guilty client.
Doctors, and not just those who sleep together on Grey's Anatomy, are also on call. NBC's Heart Matters would starMelissa George as a transplant surgeon. CBS will consider Code Black, an ER drama starring Marcia Gay Harden, and a second series about New York City medical residents.
Guarantees
While most pilots will never air, a handful of projects have been already given go-aheads, usually as limited series with short, closed-ended seasons. Fox plans a six-episode update of 1990s sci-fi hit The X Files, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, and its Scream Queens, from producer Ryan Murphy, is a comedy-horror series, whose first season focuses on a murder spree at a college campus. Emma Roberts and Lea Michele are among cast members. NBC is still planning Heroes Reborn, an update with a (mostly) new cast; Shades of Blue, starring Jennifer Lopez as an undercover New York detective; and Telenovela, a comedy starring Eva Longoria as a Latin soap star.
Families, not couples
After a season that saw half a dozen romantic-comedy failures (Marry Me, anyone?), networks are veering into family comedies this pilot season. Fox's The Grinder stars Rob Lowe as a former TV lawyer who returns to his family of small-town ... lawyers. In ABC's Chev and Bev, Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo (National Lampoon's Vacation) reteam to raise their TV grandchildren, while on Fox, John Stamos discovers he's a grandfather. Though not in CBS's family, former late-night host Craig Ferguson returns to prime time as an agoraphobic recluse in ABC's The King of 7B.
Diversity rules
The success of new series Empire, How to Get Away With Murder and Black-ish have emboldened networks to cast more diverse leads in proposed new series. Morris Chestnut heads an untitled Fox series as a Miami pathologist, and Wesley Snipes leads NBC's House of Crime as a Las Vegas security expert. Ken Jeong (Community) heads Dr. Ken, an ABC comedy. America Ferrera (Ugly Betty) may return in NBC comedy Superstore. And ABC has competing comedies Family Fortune, (produced by Tina Fey) about a gym teacher; and The Real O'Neals, about the youngest son in a family, as both come out of the closet.