The Fox network is turning to two of television's more familiar sitcom faces and a futuristic drama inspired by the Terminator movies in a bid to fortify a prime-time lineup dominated by American Idol.
The 2007-2008 Fox schedule, which was to be officially unveiled for advertisers yesterday, consists of three new comedies and four dramas in all, one of them a sci-fi thriller called The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a spinoff from the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
The series follows the title character as she fights to protect herself and her son from a new onslaught of robotic enemies.
The Fox comedy roster includes Back to You, starring Kelsey Grammer, the fussy radio psychiatrist from the 11-year NBC hit Frasier, as a newscaster trying to rebuild his career. He co-stars with Patricia Heaton, the wife on CBS's nine-season juggernaut Everybody Loves Raymond.
Heaton's new role brings her back to series television on the same network as her one-time Raymond co-star Brad Garrett, whose rookie comedy, Til Death, Fox is renewing.
Another familiar TV face coming to Fox is Julianna Margulies, a veteran of the NBC hospital drama ER and the HBO mob saga Sopranos, who will star in a new courtroom drama, Canterbury's Law, as a rebellious attorney.
Poised to finish the current season as the leading U.S. network in the ratings race for viewers aged 18 to 49, Fox is looking to bolster a schedule that relies heavily on its smash hit American Idol.
Fox's lineup for the new season includes two new police dramas with a twist - K-Ville, set in the post-Katrina chaos of New Orleans, and New Amsterdam, centring on a New York homicide detective who happens to be immortal.
Rounding out its comedy roster are two relationship sitcoms - The Rules of Starting Over, about the dating game played by men and women of a certain age, and The Return of Jezebel James, centring on two sisters, pregnancy, and a children's book based on a one-time imaginary friend.
Small U.S. network The CW, which also held its upfront yesterday, cancelled the cult hit Veronica Mars and will try to pick up steam in its second year with series about the snobby rich, transplanted families and a bounty hunter for the devil.
The network, created out of the ashes of the former WB and UPN, had already ended the long-running family dramas 7th Heaven and Gilmore Girls. Yesterday the ax fell on Veronica Mars, which starred Kristen Bell as a wisecracking teenage private eye.
The new Gossip Girl, about a group of prep school teenagers in Manhattan, will be given the biggest push. The CW's only new comedy, Aliens in America, is about a high-school student trying to adjust to a Pakistani exchange student. Life is Wild is a drama about a New York family spending a year at a game reserve in South Africa.
In midseason, the CW will bring on a reality show, Farmer Wants a Wife, about a country guy choosing among 10 women fed up with big-city prospects.