Kelsey Grammer is a downsized executive in ABC's Hank.
My column in this week’s TIME, which went to press in the middle of the upfronts, looks at how TV, both broadcast and cable, is adapting its programming to the recession and otherwise fumbling towards a grip on the zeitgeist this year:
If you’ve been watching HGTV in the past few years, you may have become seduced by its lavish renovations and tales of real estate riches. You may have decided to stretch your budget to buy your own overpriced house. And you may now, like the contestants on HGTV’s newest reality show, wish you had a little cash to get out of the hole. Say, a quarter-million bucks.
HGTV’s $250,000 Challenge, debuting May 31, is set in housing-busted Sherman Oaks, Calif., where five families compete in a home-renovation contest to win the titular sum. One family sank everything into a home it bought a year and a half ago, which has since lost $150,000 in value. A single mom faces foreclosure. A laid-off father of two says, “Unless we win this, we could be the next for SALE sign on this block.”
To see the perpetually optimistic HGTV announce so frankly that homeowners are up a creek is like watching Dick Cheney go on Meet the Press to declare that waterboarding is torture. …
Recession-themed TV wasn’t the only theme to emerge out of last week’s upfront, though (and the cable upfronts for the preceding several weeks). After the jump, a few notable ones:
Cougar Alert! The most obvious example, obviously, is ABC’s Cougar Town, which puts its trend-chasing aspirations right in the title. But a number of shows are about sexy 30- and 40something women seeking boytoys (Accidentally on Purpose, Eastwick) and, more broadly, shows like The Good Wife (in which Julianna Margulies rebounds from her husband’s Spitzer-like political sex scandal) are acknowledging women viewers older than the CW’s audience, and offering up the networks’ idea of wish-fulfillment.
Cast Me a Doctor, Stat! It’s not as if medical shows ever went away from TV (Grey’s Anatomy, e.g.), but there’s a particular profusion this year (Three Rivers, Trauma, Miami Trauma). And—maybe an outgrowth of the above focus on women viewers—a number of shows about female nurses dealing with bulheaded, mostly male, doctors (Nurse Jackie, Hawthorne, Mercy). Maybe it’s coincidence, but it reminds me of 1994, when ER and Chicago Hope squared off with each other—and the country just happened to be in the middle of another big debate about national health care.
We’re All in This Together. I touched on this a bit in my column this week, but we’re also seeing a number of pilots about diverse ensembles of unrelated characters thrown together by circumstance or disaster (Flash Forward, Day One, Community—even Glee has elements of this). Part of this, especially the dramas, harks back to the trend from a few seasons ago for shows with big casts of people connected by fate, a la Lost or Crash (The Nine, Six Degrees, Heroes). But I also wonder if there isn’t an intangible element here of networks trying to tap some kind of perceived communitarian spirit in America—a la MTV’s drive to create more “inspirational” shows for the Obama era. If so… well, let’s hope the shows do better than Six Degrees and Lost did.
Not Giving Up On Monsters. It has not been easy for ABC to find a replacement for Lost, which is going into its last season. But it’s still trying: Flash Forward (which is all but named for a Lost narrative device) and “limited run” series V continue the network’s attempt to build another sci-fi success (going back to Invasion), while Eastwick tries the Supernatural angle and Happytown goes for gothic mystery. NBC casts its lot with Day One, while The CW continues its supernatural streak with The Vampire Diaries.
Surprisingly Few Blatant Mentalist Clones. What’s up with that, TV? You disappoint me with your refusal to disappoint on this one.
Actual Funny Comedies? We’ve only seen one full pilot at upfronts, but that one, ABC docu-sitcom Modern Family, was a hoot. As for the others, I can’t judge from screeners, but Community looks promising, and ABC’s Patricia Heaton comedy, The Middle, looked much better than I’d have expected from a Patricia Heaton comedy. Throw in Glee and Parks and Recreation (though I know not all of you are fans like I am) and this could be a good year for comedy—quality-wise, if not ratings-wise.
What Does a Show Have to Do to Get Canceled? For various reasons—declining overall audience, alternative revenue streams, the simple risk of starting a lot of new shows from scratch—the networks have been keeping or reviving a lot of shows that would have been canceled in previous years, as well as shows that have been canceled. Dollhouse became one of the lowest-rated (if not the lowest) big-four-network shows to win a second season, while Chuck, Better Off Ted, Castle and Scrubs, among others, avoided the axe, and CBS brought Medium back from the dead.