"MDs" are two pseudo-macho buddy-boy doctors who bravely battle the establishment at Mission General Hospital in San Francisco. With able Andy Dick as The Office Cut-Up Who Might Be Gay.
Rue rings true, whether jousting with snobs - creepy Kipp and lanky Lydia - or palling around with her friends from steerage. "Less Than Perfect" is a snappy, happy exercise in Frank Capra-style populist comedy, with a potential breakout star, Sara Rue, promoted from a menial fourth-floor job to a 22nd-floor position as assistant to a local anchorman (the miscast Eric Roberts). David Alan Grier is wasted in the insultingly subservient role of her producer. Her latest vehicle, an awkward combination of scripted comedy and ad libs, has her playing a woman who seems to be bombing as a mom at home and as the host of her own local talk show in Chicago, which is where the ad libs come in. "Life With Bonnie." Comic actor Bonnie Hunt is an acquired taste that the viewing nation keeps refusing to acquire. With Katey Sagal as his wife, Ritter plays the father not as the usual sitcom dolt but as an empathetically stressed, trying-his-best dad.
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New ABC Series "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" brings John Ritter back to television in encouragingly good form as the father of two daughters - one gorgeous, the other studious - and one relatively low-maintenance little boy. The new fall season is mere hours away or, if you keep reading, only a couple of blinks. So now it's time to cue the cuties, harness the hunks, call the (fake) cops and search out the doctors in the house. Sound familiar? It should, after so many "new" seasons of retread shows. Otherwise, innovation is not the byword of the season familiarity is. The best new show of the season is easy to spot: NBC's "Boomtown," whose producers have truly found an innovative way to tell a crime story. There'll be no shortage, no sirree.Īs for the shows that dare to interrupt those commercials every now and then, the new slate depends mainly on comedy and crime, with the medical - especially forensic medicine - show also coming on strong. The bottom line, which is every network's obsession, is that you'll be seeing more commercials, not fewer. Advertising revenues are on the way up again. It also appears that for the networks at least, if not for you and me (or maybe just me), the recession is virtually over. Also, many of the shows with which basic cable lures viewers are reruns of programs that originally aired, and were developed by ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the others. seven of the broadcast kind (including Pax) measured by CAB. Of course, there are more than 45 cable networks vs. 2-8, basic cable delivered an average of 33 million households, a combined rating of 30.9 and a share of 53.2, the "highest-ever" for prime time - while that same week, even though it included the high-rated finale of Fox's summer hit "American Idol," the broadcast network audience was down 5 percent from a year ago, reaching an average of 24 million homes. More recently, CAB reported that for the week of Sept.
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More than half the people watching TV were not watching broadcast networks. In April, according to the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, basic cable for the first time during a regular season surpassed a 50 percent share of the prime-time viewing audience. Not only do they have such pay-cable hits as HBO's record-breaking "The Sopranos" to worry about, but basic, or "ad-supported," cable continues to make menacing gains. Meanwhile, the networks have a little less to celebrate each season, this one included. Perhaps significantly, two new shows have virtually identical premises about rewinding time in order to change bad things that already happened. In such sitcoms as ABC's "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter," and in such dramas as NBC's sentimental "American Dreams" and the WB's folksy "Everwood," one can sense a yearning for the pre-9/11 world. There does seem to be in the new programming an attempt to return to more traditional values and less emphasis on the almighty cutting edge. Contestants on some "reality" shows will reportedly include relatives of people who perished in the attacks.īut the influence can be seen in subtler ways. Some of this season's shows, both new and returning, will include references to the tragedy, direct or oblique, in their story lines. Reeling and traumatized, people had many more important things to worry about than new TV shows. Last year's schedule was, of course, already locked in when the terrorist attacks took place. The new fall TV season that begins officially, by Nielsen's ratings count, tomorrow night is really the first season of the post-9/11 world.
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