Next month -- by which time this site will be in its newly redesigned incarnation -- we'll roll out a fall preview feature in which all our critics can weigh in on the new broadcast slate. Meanwhile, a handful of critics, myself included, were interviewed by Broadcasting & Cable for a sneak preview. The general consensus: Fall 2010, for broadcast TV, presents a disappointingly ho-hum roster of new shows...
Marisa Guthrie, my former colleague at both Broadcasting & Cable and the New York Daily News, has gathered a critics' roundtable in years past, but this year she interviewed us individually. So until the article came out, I had no idea of my opinions meshed, for the most part, with my respected cohorts in criticism: Matt Roush of TV Guide, Robert Bianco of USA Today, Brian Lowry of Variety, Ellen Gray of the Philadelphia Daily News and Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune.
They did. The new season, on broadcast TV, provides very little about which to get excited.
Even the retreads are infuriating. How dare CBS take a new, lighthearted legal show starring Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell, shown here, and title it The Defenders? That's the name of one of the most respected and revered courtroom dramas in TV history -- the controversial 1961-65 series starring E.G. Marshall and a pre-Brady Bunch Robert Reed (seen at the top of this column).
Recycling that series' title for a tossaway piece of pap, for those of us old enough to treasure the memory of the original show, is astoundingly insulting.
Why not just take a multi-generational sitcom and call it All in the Family? Or do a comedy about newlyweds and call it The Honeymooners? Why not launch a cooking show devoted entirely to the potato and title it M*A*S*H?
And why bother to remake Hawaii Five-O, as CBS is doing (shown here) if you botch the instrumental theme with a less powerful musical version?
Aaaaarrrghhhhh!!!
But I digress.
Below is a link to the original article, where you can read our early reactions to such things as William Shatner in CBS's $#*! My Dad Says ("an abominable show," says Bianco), J.J. Abrams' new Undercovers spy series ("just didn't do it for me," says Gray), and Fox's oil-magnates drama Lone Star ("made me wonder what would happen next," says Roush).
And thanks, Marisa, for keeping me as part of the pack. Read her article HERE.