Networks are generally leery of shows that are set in the past.
TV executives think younger viewers don't care about history. And they're always on the hunt for the younger demo, on the mistaken premise that millennials buy more and change brands more often than baby boomers.
Or maybe networks are operating on the same notion that drives romance and commerce: The more elusive the prize, the more it's worth.
TV honchos cling to outmoded programming traditions even as many younger Americans, gorging on a movable feast of platforms, are losing the habit of turning on the TV, and even as top talent peels off to enjoy the freedom of cable and imaginative hubs like Amazon, Hulu, YouTube and Netflix, which is crackling with "House of Cards" and a fresh season of "Arrested Development."
Networks still prefer to play it safe with likable characters, not darker ones like Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper, Nicholas Brody and zombies. Watching the uninspiring fare served up last week by the networks during their previews to woo advertisers, I was flummoxed at the lack of creativity. Rod Serling had more originality on a sick day than all the networks' talent combined.
Serling once complained that TV drama "must walk tiptoe and in agony lest if offend some cereal buyer from a given state below the Mason-Dixon." But the networks of the 21st century don't seem hungry to push the envelope, despite their ever-shrinking audiences.
So NBC, which some weeks finished last behind Univision, offers us Blair Underwood in "Ironside," a remake of its old series with Raymond Burr; Minnie Driver in "About a Boy," a redo of the movie based on Nick Hornby's novel; James Spader in "The Blacklist" as yet another variation on Hannibal Lecter; and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in "Dracula," which doesn't really count as new blood.
Judd Apatow and Kristen Wiig turned Melissa McCarthy into an outsize star in the movie "Bridesmaids," so lots of writers raced to produce pilots with plus-size women straining to be funny. Rebel Wilson, the talented, Aussie actress who played Wiig's obnoxious roommate in "Bridesmaids," will star in ABC's "Super Fun Night," about three nerdy girlfriends who aim for madcap Friday nights.
CBS proffers "Reckless," described as a sultry legal show set in Charleston, S.C., with a comely Yankee litigator clashing over a police scandal with a Southern city attorney "as they struggle to hide their intense attraction." I saw this when the attorney was a New Orleans cop and it was called "The Big Easy," starring Ellen Barkin and Dennis Quaid.
CBS has "Bad Teacher," based on the 2011 Cameron Diaz movie, and "Friends With Better Lives," the plot of which sounds just like the 2006 Nicole Holofcener movie, "Friends With Money." (CBS probably felt brave passing on a third "NCIS.") The one retread that might have been fun, "Beverly Hills Cop," with Eddie Murphy himself dropping by in guest spots, CBS passed on.
Fox has "Enlisted," a wacky comedy about three brothers in the Army in Florida, which smacks of Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and John Candy in "Stripes," even down to what sounds like the same music.
Fox's ideas are antique: a show about a Ichabod Crane called "Sleepy Hollow" and "24" with Kiefer Sutherland, squeezed into 12 episodes.
Doing a comedy turn at the ABC upfronts at Lincoln Center, Jimmy Kimmel had the most trenchant comment about the quality of the new season's pilots, slyly observing: "One of the shows previewed today was written by a third-grade class. Your challenge tonight is to figure out which one it was."
Maureen Dowd writes for The New York Times.