CBS made a flurry of pilot pickups earlier than they usually do as they gave the greenlight to multi-cam sitcoms Mom and The Millers, single-cam sitcoms Crazy Ones and We are Men, and dramas Hostages and Intelligence.
Perhaps the most obvious pilot pickup of the entire season goes to Mom, the new Chuck Lorre series starring Anna Faris. With Lorre's name attached, the show was pretty much a sure thing from the beginning. Centered around Faris as a newly sober single mom in Napa Valley, the show has an all-star cast behind Faris including Allison Janney, Nate Corddry, Blake Garrett Rosenthal, Matt Jones, Spencer Daniels, Sadie Calvano, and French Stewart. This seems like a real contender for Thursday nights especially if they expand to two hours.
The Millers (formerly Untitled Greg Garcia) is another multi-cam pickup with a strong cast. The show is about a divorced man who has parents with marriage problems. The show stars Will Arnett, Margo Martindale, and Beau Bridges in the three main roles and also features JB Smoove, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, and Michael Rapaport. The show was one of a couple Garcia projects and the pilot was directed by veteran director James Burrows who has a great track record for pickups.
CBS finally got back into the single camera game for the first time since Worst Week in the 2008-09 season. It has been a priority for CBS and they finally went in that direction when they snagged Robin Williams to star in Crazy Ones. In Williams' first return to TV since Mork & Mindy, he leads another strong cast including Sarah Michelle Gellar, James Wolk, Hamish Linklater, and Amanda Setton.
They coupled the Crazy Ones pickup with another single-cam pickup We are Men (formerly Untitled Rob Greenberg). Starring Chris Smith, Tony Shalhoub, Jerry O'Connell, and Kal Penn, the show is about a young man who is friends with a group of older men. CBS is likely going to pair Crazy Ones and We are Men together but the question is where? Will they take over an hour on Monday or Thursday or open up a new block somewhere else?
Also picked up was drama Hostages as a 15 episode limited series (who knows if that means 15 episodes a year like The Following or a true limited series). The ensemble thriller is about a surgeon operating on the President of the US and thrown into a grand political conspiracy. The show stars Toni Collette, Tate Donovan, Dylan McDermott, Quinn Shephard, Sandrine Holt, Mateus Ward, Billy Brown, Rhys Coiro, and James Naughton. It sounds like CBS is planning this one for midseason and it might be smart to use it as a limited series. I think that's the way for some dramas to go on network TV.
Intelligence was also picked up. The sci-fi drama centers on an agent in the US Cyber Command with a very special microchip implanted in his brain. Starring Meghan Ory, Josh Holloway, Marg Helgenberger, Michael Rady, James Martinez, John Billingsley, and PJ Byrne, the show seems like a very different offering from CBS, as does Hostages. That might be smart as procedurals with slight twists on them like Made in Jersey, Vegas, and Golden Boy didn't work for them this year.
It is unknown if CBS is done picking up shows - they have picked up more comedies than usual but it doesn't seem like they will only pick up two dramas. I'd expect at least one more. However, we do know that CBS shockingly passed on the highly touted Beverly Hills Cop which seemed like a slam dunk. I would not be surprised at all to see that show turn up elsewhere.
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