It's Pilot Time Again

Ah, winter: the time when a network's fancy turns to what they're going to put on the tube next year in the hopes that people will watch it. The Hollywood Reporter has helpfully put all the networks' pilot pickups so far in one place, where you can get the first look at the return of some of your favorite stars (Victor Garber on ABC's Eli Stone) and see how many pilots are based on British series (four). It's ambitious of them, given the track record of British remakes: for every hit (The Office) there are at least two spectacular failures (Men Behaving Badly; Coupling) (I link to them in case you've forgotten all about them, which is understandable). Life on Mars, one of the Brit remakes for next season, sounds good, and the Brit version has been highly recommended to me, but the description reminds me enough of Day Break (time travel, girlfriend in peril) that I'm pessimistic about its chances on American TV.

And because Heroes became such a huge hit this season, now everyone is scrambling to find the next great fantasy show. Popular topics for next season: death/resurrection (Reaper, Babylon Fields, Pushing Daisies), immortal private eyes/cops (Twilight, New Amsterdam), remakes (The Bionic Woman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles), time travel (Life on Mars, Journeyman), and aliens (Them).

So take a look through. It's hard to tell from the pilot blurbs what's going to be good and what's not, especially because a lot of high concepts fall flat (Six Degrees) and shows with the least promising descriptions (30 Rock, with its "another show set behind the scenes of a fictional SNL!" premise) turn out to be the most entertaining.

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