In true Steve Jobs style, there’s one last thing:E!’s The Royals.
No, really, it’s a thing. E! – best known for fawning/stalkery celebrity content – is actually venturing into scripted programming for the first time. And for its first project, it’s lined up The Royals. An hour-long drama from One Tree Hill‘s Mark Schwahn, it follows a fictional British royal family led by Queen Helena (Elizabeth Hurley), a hard-drinking, table-dancing, fancy hat-wearing modern matriarch who will do anything to protect her family’s reputation.
Can’t wait – can you? Unfortunately, it’s not airing until 2015. That’ll give you time to prepare.
Last up of all the networks this week is USA, which has three new shows on its roster, most of which it’s already been promoting for a while now and are all set to air pretty soon anyway.
Still, for completeness’ sake, after the jump, you can look at trailers for Rush, with Miranda‘s Tom Ellis (yes, BBC1’s Miranda) as a private doctor who absolutely, definitely isn’t Hank from USA’s Royal Pains because the show’s set on the West Coast; Complications, which has Jason “I was the voice of Batman. Once” O’Mara starring as… a doctor called Ellis; and Satisfaction, which isn’t about doctors at all, but does explore Maslow’s hierarchy of needs instead, looking at exactly what is enough for happiness, if money ain’t it.
Unfortunately, if you’re not in the US, you won’t be able to watch the Complications trailer without ‘help’. Don’t blame me.
After that big slab of new shows that NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS, TNT, TBS and even to a lesser extent The CW are putting out in the Fall, SyFy’s upfront presentation of a mere two shows looks a bit rubbish. Even more rubbish is that Dominion is due out in June, Ascension in November. And most rubbish of all are the shows themselves – at least, judging by the trailers.
Dominion, which stars Anthony Head doing his best American accent (cf Jonathan Creek, Free Agents), is a spin-off from dreadful Paul Bettany starrer Legion. The show carries that on in a transformed post-apocalyptic future, 25 years after an army of lower angels, assembled by the archangel Gabriel, waged a war of possession against mankind. If you enjoy this, you are probably a very unique and special snowflake of a person.
Ascension, which stars Tricia Helfer, who’d almost certainly rather be on ABC in a second season of Killer Women rather than back on SyFy, imagines that while Kennedy was busy exhorting America to aim for the moon back in ’63, he was also sending off a covert colonising spaceship full of families on a 100-year long voyage. Seems plausible, doesn’t it?
As always, bringing up the rear in the US’s upfronts week is The CW (and assorted cable channels). The CW has traditionally been associated with – and indeed has specifically targeted – young women with its shows, but thanks to the success of the likes of Supernatural and Arrow and the lack of success of The Carrie Diaries et al (as well as a little pressure from the affiliates), it is looking to get some more men watching
“As you might have noticed, it’s a very different CW,” CW Chief Mark Pedowitz says, explaining that when he started with CW in 2011, “we were the Gossip Girl network…We wanted to bring more men to the network – and to add more original programing throughout the year.”
The means to achieve this? More superheroes. Well, The Flash, anyway. And angels and zombies. But the channel isn’t going to forget its core, so it’s also lined up Jane The Virgin. Yes, in The CW world, men like superheroes, women like programmes about women and babies. Sigh.
Anyway, here are the trailers for the Fall line-up, but we’ll have to wait to see glimpses of mid-season shows iZombie and Messengers.
The Flash(Tuesdays, 8/7c) Produced Bonanza Productions in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros TV based upon characters published by DC Entertainment. From writer/executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg, director/executive producer David Nutter and executive producer Sarah Schechter.
Jane the Virgin (Mondays, 9/8c) Produced by CBS Television Studios. From writer/executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman, director/executive producer Brad Silberling and executive producers Ben Silverman, Gary Pearl and Jorge Granier.
