Cryer, Braugher Head Up ABC Fall Shows
July 18, 2000 -- Reality might be the latest trend in TV programming, but ABC executives claim they’re not eager to jump on any bandwagons.
Addressing the Television Critics Association summer press tour Sunday, ABC Entertainment Television Co-chairman Lloyd Braun was quick to point out that when ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? became a surprise hit, “We were the one network not to throw a whole bunch of game shows on the air thinking that America wants to see game shows.”
Still, while Braun and Co-chairman Stu Bloomberg downplayed CBS’s successful Survivor as an indicator of TV’s future, ABC is developing its own reality-based series, The Mole, The Runner (created by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), and a still-unnamed show about journalists at an Internet start-up.
For this fall, however, ABC is launching only four new shows, all featuring regulation scripts and actors: sitcoms The Geena Davis Show, Madigan Men, and The Trouble With Normal, and an hourlong drama, Gideon’s Crossing. Five more shows will be launched throughout the season, including comedies starring Joan Cusack, Damon Wayans and Denis Leary.
Cryer Dares TV Trouble
The Trouble With Normal (Fridays, 8:30 p.m. ET), marks the small-screen return of Jon Cryer (Pretty in Pink). With more failed sitcoms under his belt than anyone in prime time, the former Duckman is something of a glutton for punishment. Discussing his rotten luck, Cryer joked, “I loved every show that I’ve … Well, OK, not every show, but I loved most of the shows I’ve done.”
His latest follows four paranoid but not-quite-certifiable neurotics in New York City and Claire (Paget Brewster), the insecure therapist who treats them. On the first episode, Zack (Cryer) and Bob (David Krumholtz — known to ER fans as Lucy Knight’s killer) are next-door neighbors who each believe the other is spying on him. (Viewers will be excused for echoing Claire’s sarcastic question: “Two paranoid people living right next door to each other — what are the odds of that?”) Eventually, Zack and Bob meet and become uneasy friends.
“The struggle of the show will be that Claire is going to want to have boundaries, and for the guys, boundaries mean nothing,” says creator and executive producer Victor Fresco.
Brewster, like Cryer, is a sitcom refugee; she starred last season in Love and Money, which CBS canceled after only three episodes before running all 13 episodes during the summer season. Trouble will avoid a similar fate, she believes, because her character is so inept: Claire is “genuinely terrified that [she’s] a lousy therapist, so, in fact, [she] may be, and it could take us a good seven to nine years to actually help these men.” Nothing like a little job security.
Homicide’s Hard-Headed Braugher Goes Humanitarian
Big news to fans of the late NBC cop series Homicide: Life on the Street is the return of Andre Braugher and executive producer Paul Attanasio. In their new drama, Gideon’s Crossing (Wednesdays, 10 p.m. ET), Braugher plays widower Benjamin Gideon, head of experimental medicine at a Boston teaching hospital. As a last resort for many terminally ill patients, Gideon practices medicine with a distinctly humanitarian bent.
There’s a “personal risk involved with getting involved in your patients’ lives, and a lot of the show is going to be about that,” Attanasio explained. While Homicide had a distinctly gritty, urban feel, Gideon’s Crossing — based on the writing of Harvard Medical School professor Jerome Groopman — is “more open-hearted, emotional, and accessible,” he continued. “The subject isn’t death every week, failure every week.”
The new series also focuses on the trials and tribulations of the hospital’s residents and interns, played by a diverse group of actors. Attanasio mentioned that the casting wasn’t done in response to the NAACP’s recent call for more diversity on television, nor was the script written with a black star in mind. In fact, ABC bought the program before Braugher — or anyone else — had been considered. Attanasio was simply trying to reflect reality, he said. “Once you get involved in the drama,” he noted, “I don’t think you notice [what race the actors are].”