Looks like someone slipped a drop of happy juice into the non-alcoholic cocktails (we use the phrase sarcastically) of Hollywood’s top TV execs over the holidays.
Because the top brass at US channel NBC have come back to work and immediately started commissioning new shows – or, at the very least, ordering pilots.
The biggest news is about a show that had only been in development – The Bionic Woman, which is being brought to us by David Eick, one of the big brains behind the superb Battlestar Galactica. The robo-assisted woman warrior will be given a spot of the re-imagining paint and we’re hopeful that it’ll turn out as well as Galactica. So fingers and toes crossed for that one as NBC has flashed the greenlight on a pilot.
Also sticking with TV is Denis Leary, who found success of the cable networks across the pond with cynical, dark – and often hilarious – fireman drama Rescue Me. Before that show was a twinkle in his eye, he made The Job, a similarly cutting show about cops. And he’s going back to the police force for Fort Pit, a drama with “comedic elements” about one of the worst NYPD precincts in Brooklyn where bad cops go to wind down their careers and rookies with no connections head to launch theirs.
Finally, there’s Chuck, written by Josh Schwartz, creator of The OC. He’s describing the show as “Grosse Pointe Blank with twentysomethings.” Sounds like sacrilege to us, but you never know…
