At ABC, More Drama -- and Laughs -- With a Female Slant

ABC's "Pushing Daisies" will air on Wednesday nights in the fall. (By Bob D'amico -- Abc)

NEW YORK, May 15

ABC, already the No. 1 network among young women, is really tapping into its inner chick next season with four new comedies and seven new dramas for prime time.

Consider Monday's new sitcom "Sam I Am," starring Christina Appelgate as a woman who wakes up from a coma with amnesia and hilarity ensues.

And how about Wednesday's three new dramas? "Pushing Daisies," at 8, is described as a forensic fairy tale about a guy who can bring dead people back to life simply by touching them. When he touches them again, they're dead again, this time with no do-overs. Detectives love him. He can touch victims, ask who dunnit, then touch them again for the funeral. The guy also brings back his childhood sweetheart. Naturally, he can't touch her again, which, you gotta admit, is a pretty clever way to resolve that pesky will-they-won't-they dilemma that plagues writers of all good TV romances. Viewers clamor for the guy and the chick to hook up, only once they do, the sexual tension is over and so is the show. TV almanacs are littered with the stuff.

After "Daisies," ABC will aggressively counter-program Fox's increasingly lame "American Idol" results show next season, scheduling its "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff, "Private Practice," at 9, the time slot from which ABC Entertainment chief Steve McPherson moved "Lost" to protect it from "Idol" this season.

Just two weeks ago, a two-hour "backdoor pilot" clocked more than 20 million viewers, though McPherson acknowledged the show needed some work during a morning Q&A with The Reporters Who Cover Television at ABC's Upper West Side headquarters.

At 10 p.m. Wednesday, the new "Dirty Sexy Money" is a prime-time soap starring Peter Krause of "Six Feet Under" fame as an idealistic lawyer who takes on his deceased dad's client, a family loaded with dirty sexy money, headed by Donald Sutherland.

And let's not forget "Women's Murder Club," Fridays at 9, after "Men in Trees," which is back on that night. "Murder Club" is not a trick title. It's about women -- a district attorney, detective, medical examiner and reporter -- who pool their talents to solve murder cases. It's also based on James Patterson's best-selling novels.

Surprisingly, McPherson did not give his best time slot, the post-"Grey's Anatomy" hour on Thursday, to a new drama from Chickorama Theatre. Instead it went to "Big Shots," a pseudo-Rat Pack show about four hotshot guys who crumple like damp Kleenex around the women in their lives. "Men -- we're the new women," one of the characters says, disgustedly, in the pilot. We're already over this one.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is "Cashmere Mafia," a "Sex and the City"-ish one-hour series set in Manhattan (as opposed to NBC's new "Sex and the City"-ish drama set in Manhattan, "Lipstick Jungle") from "Sex" exec producer Darren Star. ABC's series is about four hot successful women and the men who don't seem to handle it well. "Cashmere Mafia" has been promised the Tuesday 9 p.m. hour once "Dancing With the Stars" wraps its fall run.

Also in the wings: "Eli Stone," about a shark lawyer who reps corporations that stick it to the little guy, until he starts to hear George Michael music in his head and decides to find a deeper meaning to life, at which point he learns he has an inoperable brain thingummy. Like I said, total chick magnet.

Another in-the-wings series: the comedy "Miss/Guided" -- ooooh, it's from Ashton Kutcher! -- about a woman who was plagued by insecurity and orthodontia in high school, and who returns to that same school as a guidance counselor, only her high school nemesis, cheerleader Lisa, also returns as the new English teacher. In the bits screened for advertisers yesterday afternoon during ABC's dog-and-pony show at Lincoln Center, one of the students asks if he could touch her breast. It didn't get a laugh. We think the less said about this one the better.

Less about women are ABC's two new Tuesday sitcoms. They include "Cavemen," based on the Geico car insurance commercials, which McPherson says is a way to probe prejudice without offending anyone -- except cavemen -- only it's set in Atlanta and, again based on the bits shown to advertisers, seems to fall into the Southerners-are-boobs school of comedy. McPherson said Geico has agreed to pull the cavemen ads shortly before the series airs, though they will return after its launch. "Cavemen" will be followed by a comedy called "Carpoolers," about guys who get in touch with their inner feelings during the morning commute. Does anyone actually enjoy watching men get in touch with their inner feelings? A Geico car insurance ad sitcom followed by a sitcom about carpoolers -- what are the odds?

On the bright side, this means "According to Jim" is off the ABC slate and our long nightmare may finally be over because, McPherson told reporters, "Jim" is on the bubble as to whether it will be ordered for midseason.

Definitely dead are "Knights of Prosperity" and the George Lopez sitcom, causing him to complain to the Los Angeles Times: "TV just became really, really white again." Of course, if Lopez spent less time whining to the LAT about the demise of his six-season-old half-hour sitcom and more time reading the trades, he'd know that CBS will announce today that it has picked up a new one-hour drama starring Jimmy Smits as the head of a multi-generational Hispanic family.

ABC has eschewed the grimmer, super-serialized dramas that were all the rage at last May's upfront presentations. Remember ABC's "Six Degrees," "The Nine," "Day Break" and "Traveler"? And how about NBC's "Kidnapped"? Fox's "Vanished"? CBS's "Jericho"?

McPherson suggested those shows required too much of a time commitment and were not in step with our troubled times.

"Look at the news of the day," McPherson said. "Paris Hilton is going to jail."

Snap!

On the other hand, NBC's "Heroes" is the No. 1 new drama of the season. That's sci-fi, McPherson explained. Meanwhile, lighter serialized fare, such as this year's new ABC shows "Ugly Betty" and "Brothers & Sisters," survived because they were comical and sentimental, respectively, and not so heavily serialized.

This year, "closed-ended" was McPherson's word of the day.

Last year, when his lineup was heavy on those dark, super-serialized dramas, he told the media he had developed closed-ended procedural dramas but they just hadn't turned out well and did not make the cut.

This year, with viewers having rejected several of his serialized shows, the closed-ended procedurals turned out much better. A very happy coincidence.

And, speaking of "Lost," it's not on the fall schedule, but ABC had already announced it would debut in January. McPherson says he will move it back to a 9 p.m. or 8 p.m. time slot, where there is less DVR-ing than at 10; he said this season, with "Lost" at 10, ratings in some markets nearly doubled once Nielsen added into the mix viewers who had recorded the episode to watch up to seven days later.