57
BLESS THE
HARTS
Creator Emily
Spivey has
described her
Fox cartoon as
“a King of the
Hill–type show,
but set in
North Carolina
with female
leads.” Sold.STUMPTOWN
ABC adapts a
beloved indie comic
built around the
compellingly flawed
female PI Dex
Parios—and has the
good sense to cast
Cobie Smulders,
Michael Ealy (left)
and Jake Johnson.accidental incest as traumatic or darkly
funny. (To be fair, Murphy doesn’t al-
ways nail it, either.)the sad state of network TV may not
be surprising anymore, but it remains
disappointing, like a high school stu-
dent with potential who squeaks by with
D’s. As cable and streaming expand the
possibilities of television as art with
ambitious new creators and series—like
Russian Doll, Fleabag and Atlanta—it’s
frustrating to see broadcasters squander
their theoretical reach on the same doc-
tor and lawyer shows. Could this truly be
what networks think people want? And
if not, shouldn’t they be trying harder to
save themselves? Aren’t they worried to
see Netflix crash premiere season with
buzzy debuts like Unbelievable, Mur-
phy’s The Politician and Rhythm + Flow,
a hip-hop competition judged by
Cardi B, Chance the Rapper and T.I.?
Or do they feel stymied by cautious
advertisers—a headache streaming ser-
vices and premium cable don’t have? Is
this really the best the Big 5 can do?
Their attention appears to be else-
where. By all appearances, the conglom-
erates behind the networks have shifted
their efforts to building a post broadcast
future. ABC parent Disney recently
acquired cable maverick FX and plans to
launch its Disney+ streaming service in
November. CBS has been saving its best
properties (Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone,
The Good Fight) for CBS All Access. And
WarnerMedia is giving the shows it pro-
duces for the CW (which it co-owns with
CBS) a new streaming home on its very
own HBO Max hub, set to launch in 2020.
Broadcast TV may not be in danger
of disappearing overnight. It’s still the
home of sports, talk shows and news-
rooms that anchor multi platform jour-
nalism operations. We still get a new
breakout hit, like This Is Us or The
Masked Singer, every year or two. But
as ratings keep declining, audiences
keep aging and risk-averse execs keep
greenlighting formulaic shows, network
prime time seems caught in a long slow
death spiral. Flipping from NBC to ABC
to CBS to Fox to the CW on a weeknight
can feel a bit like wandering through
a ghost mall. The physical structure of
a once vital marketplace remains, but
there’s just so little left to buy. City Law laments, “values like fairness
and decency are vanishing before our
very eyes”—without alienating anyone.
After last year’s surprise standout God
Friended Me, super natural procedurals
are still in (see: Evil, a goofy CBS drama
about a psychologist and a priest who
investigate crimes, from Good Wife cre-
ators Robert and Michelle
King). Networks are cast-
ing diverse ensembles, but
actors of color mostly take a
back seat to white leads.
Yet what unites network
schedules this fall, more
than anything, is a dearth
of original concepts. Every
single new drama concerns
either crime or medicine. A
charismatic queer protago-
nist (Ruby Rose) fails to
liberate Batwoman, which joins Super-
girl on the CW, from superhero boiler-
plate. The CBS judge show All Rise is the
bland female- empowerment narrative
you get when you try to make a Shonda
show without Shonda.
Meanwhile, a few apparent attempts
to keep up with high-concept cable and
streaming fare come across as weak
mimicry. Allison Tolman is great in
ABC’s mysterious sci-fi drama Emer-
gence, but she’s playing essentially the
same good-cop character she played on
FX’s Fargo. The controversial Almost
Family seems to be aiming for Ryan Mur-
phy’s signature mix of glib humor and
sincere warmth; in the pilot, Katims and
Weisman can’t decide whether to frameAs TV grows
more creative
and diverse in
the aggregate,
the networks
that built the
medium look
more like
anachronismsMichaela Watkins and Rob Corddry. (In
another telling network gaffe, CBS failed
to realize —or didn’t care—that unicorn
was already Tinder slang for a queer per-
son who dates couples.)
Inevitably, there are catastrophes. A
Pitch Perfect rip-off down to the pres-
ence of Anna Camp, NBC’s Perfect Har-
mony casts Bradley Whit-
ford as a gloomy music
professor who leads a rural
church choir after his wife
dies and he gets canned
from Princeton. Bob Hearts
Abishola, on CBS, finds time
between fart jokes to mar-
vel at the apparent unlikeli-
ness of a folksy white socks
mogul (Billy Gardell) fall-
ing for his Nigerian nurse
( Folake Olowofoyeku). Also
from CBS, Carol’s Second Act has Patri-
cia Heaton showing up stock coddled-
millennial characters as the oldest doc-
tor in her intern cohort. As a Hannibal
fan, I can’t abide Fox’s Prodigal Son—
another show, this one all expository
dialogue, about the bond between a
bookish serial killer and a fragile pro-
filer. This time, they’re father and son.It’s not shockIng that many of these
shows center on bad dads or disgraced
male authority figures. Along with a
heightened interest in immigrant stories,
this microtrend feels like a way of com-
menting on current events in America —
where, as a character on the aggres-
PH sively generic NBC legal drama Bluff