New Shows on NBC Coming in January

For pretty much all of the television networks, January isn’t just the start of the new year. More importantly it’s the time to bring more new shows to the viewers.

Most executives are excited about the new shows, but how they feel and what their mindset is really depends on how well their fall TV season went.


All too often the new shows that looked promising didn’t fair too well and this can make the new shows coming on in January all the more important for the executive’s job security and, more importantly, their network’s ratings.


So what shows on NBC aren’t returning?


A couple of the shows such as Will and Grace and The Good Place are ending on their own. New shows Bluff City Law and Sunnyside have been cancelled.

Blindspot had been cancelled, but the network agreed to a final fifth season with only 13 episodes to basically wrap things up. 

At the end of the fourth season, Jane/Remi/Alice saw the cabin that held her teammates blow up due to a drone strike ordered by their own government and viewers can’t be left hanging not knowing what became of the gang. 


Viewers also need to see the evil Madeline get what she has coming to her.


Maybe Rich Dot Com and Patterson will finally hook up and everyone can stop yelling at their TV’s to ‘Get a room!’

So, with only two of its new shows cancelled, it appears NBC has had a pretty good fall season.

In January of 2020, some of their regular shows will have their season premiere and they are:


January 6, 2020: 

America’s Got Talent: The Champions

                        Manifest

January 7, 2020:

                        Ellen’s Game of Games (2-hour season premiere)

As of this date, NBC only has two shows making their series premieres and both of them are scripted TV shows.


January 7, 2020:

                        Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist

Fast facts:


Genre: Musical/Comedy/Drama


Created by: Austin Winsberg


Cast: Jane Levy as Zoey (Shameless, Suburgatory, Twin Peaks, Castle Rock); Skylar Astin as Max (Pitch Perfect 1 & 2, Ground Floor, Graves, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend); Peter Gallagher as Mitch (Sex, Lies & Videotape, The Player, Malice, The O.C., Togetherness, Covert Affairs, Law & Order: SVU, Grace & Frankie, The Gifted); Alex Newell as Mo (The Glee Project, Glee, Empire); Lauren Graham as Joan (The Pacifier, Bad Santa, Because I Said So, Caroline in the City, Gilmore Girls, Parenthood, NewsRadio); Mary Steenburgen as Maggie (Time After Time, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Philadelphia, Nixon, Elf, Four Christmases, Book Club, Back to the Future, Ink, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Justified); John Clarence Stewart as Simon (Luke Cage); Andrew Leeds (Bones, Cristela).

Premise: Zoey develops psychic abilities after an MRI malfunction that enables her to learn the inner thoughts of people through pop songs.


The Boob Toober review: Let’s face it, scripted musical TV shows haven’t exactly done well. 


Anyone remember Cop Rock? 

However, this show looks to be fun and with everything going on in the world, this may be a good way to release the stress; to be able to relax a little and maybe even sing along to the songs. 


It also has a cast with several members having experience in musical theatre like Steenburgen, Gallagher, Stewart and Newell.

January 10, 2020:

Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector 

Fast Facts:


Genre: Crime/Thriller


Created by: Jeffrey Deaver author of The Bone Collector (the first in a 13 book series featuring Lincoln Rhyme)

Cast: Russell Hornsby as Lincoln Rhyme (Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Big Fat Liar, Creed II, Gideon’s Crossing, Lincoln Heights, Grimm); Arielle Kebbel as Amelia (Soul Plane, American Pie Presents: Band Camp, Think Like a Man, Gilmore Girls, 90210, The Vampire Diaries, Ballers, Midnight, Texas); Michael Imperioli as Rick Sellitto (Sopranos, The Watchmen, Good Fellas, Dead Presidents, Law & Order, Detroit 1-8-7, Mad Dogs, Hawaii 5-0, Jungle Fever, Lean on Me); Ramses Jimenez as Eric Ortiz (Fear the Walking Dead, The Dark Night); Brooke Lyons as Kate (2 Broke Girls, The Affair, iZombie, The American Mall); Tate Ellington as Felix (Red, Straight Outta Compton, Quantico, The Brave, Shameless).

Premise: Lincoln Rhyme, an NYPD officer who became a paraplegic after being injured on the job, along with rookie NYPD officer Amelia Sachs works to solve cases.

The Boob Toober review: Yes, another cop/crime television show. Although this one is a little different. 


Think an ultra-modern Ironside with more of a bite; more attitude, but in a good way.

They rebooted Ironside in 2013 and even brought in Blair Underwood to play the role of Ironside, but that didn’t seem to make a difference.

There were a lot of problems with the new version, but replacing an iconic actor Raymond Burr wasn’t a good idea. 


Burr also made it totally believable that he was confined to a wheelchair and Underwood didn’t manage to do that.


Reboots today work for the most part because the studios try to bring back the original characters.


Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector is based on a collection of popular books and there was a movie as well in 1999 which starred Denzel Washington as Lincoln Rhyme and Angelina Jolie as Amelia Donaghy.

In both the book collection and the series Amelia’s last name is Sachs. In the movie it was Donaghy. 


Also in the book his caregiver is a man and in the series it’s a woman.


In the book Rhyme is a quadriplegic and in the series he’s a paraplegic.


Although it is unknown whether these changes will have any effect on the series, it may have an effect with the book’s fans.


Viewers also shouldn’t have a problem with someone new playing the lead role as Washington never reprised the character and the movie wasn’t even thought to be Washington’s best work.


As is the case with most TV shows, it’s the characters and their storylines that make the show, but with cop/crime shows it’s also about how riveting the cases are which is what made shows like Law & Order and Criminal Minds so good. 

On shows like Hill Street Blues, Adam-12, and NYPD Blue people were more drawn into the characters because that's how they were written; to be more character-driven than storyline-driven.

It will also be interesting to see how watered-down the cases will be since it is on network television as opposed to the graphic cases that were in the book series.

New CBS Shows Coming in January 2020

New CBS Shows Coming in January 2020

With most of the TV shows either showing reruns or on hiatus after airing their fall finales, it’s a great time to look forward to all the new shows that premiere in 2020.

There are a lot of them too and viewers can find themselves a bit overwhelmed.

It’s also important to note that viewers may become emotionally invested in a show only to have their network cancel them suddenly. It can be a little frustrating.

So lets just take it one step at a time and look at the new shows coming on the CBS network.

What’s coming on in 2020? We’re glad you asked.

Here’s what’s to look forward to you are still in the throws of holiday overload:



FBI: Most Wanted

January 7, 2020

·       Created by: René Balcer

·       Starring: Julian McMahon as Jess LaCroix  (Red, Home & Away, The Profiler, Charmed, Nip & Tuck); Keisha Castle-Hughes as Hana Gibson (Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, The Walking Dead, The Almighty Johnsons, Game of Thrones); Kellan Lutz as Ken Crosby (The Twilight Saga: New Moon, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 Parts 1 & 2, The Expendables 3, 90210); Roxy Sternberg as Sheryll Barnes (Emerald City); Nathaniel Arcand as Clinton Skye (Black Summer, Heartland, Smallville, Blackstone).

Premises: A spin-off of CBS’ hit show, FBI, the show features FBI agents of the Fugitive Task Force who are charged with tracking and capturing the nation’s most notorious criminals.

The Boob Tuber review: When the cast appeared on an FBI episode last season, nothing special about them really stood out.

The episode was flat and the plot was uninspiring.

Where the show FBI got started with an exhilarating sprint, FBI: Most Wanted took off with a stroll.

It was thought that CBS may have jumped the shark by giving a show that was still in its infancy stage a spin-off.

The challenges that lie ahead for this show are not being compared to Criminal Minds, the CSI franchise or the NCIS franchise.

Hopefully the showrunners will be able to separate themselves from the pack of the nine crime/law enforcement dramas that they already have.



Tommy

·       February 6, 2020

·       Created by: Paul Attanasio

·       Starring: Edie Falco as Abigail "Tommy" Thomas (Oz, The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Law & Order, 30 Rock); Michael Chernus as Ken (Men in Black 3, Captain Phillips, Mercy, Orange is the New Black, Manhattan, Patriot); Russell G. Jones as Cooper (Motherless Brooklyn, Detroit, Godless, Last O.G., Law & Order, The Americans); Olivia Lucy Phillip as Kate (Bull); Adelaide Clemens as Blake (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Rectify); Joseph Lyle Taylor as Dudik (Summer of Sam, The Dark Knight Rises, Justified, House, Dexter, Lie to Me); Thomas Sadoski as Buddy (John Wick, John Wick Chapter 2, As the World Turns, Law & Order: SVU, The News Room, Life in Pieces)

Premises: Tommy is a former high-ranking detective of the NYPD who then takes the job as the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles.

As a native New Yorker she also brings with her a personality that has become stereo-typical for TV characters (Danny Reagan-Blue Bloods, Mike Logan-Law & Order, Mary Beth Lacey-Cagney & Lacey, Captain Frank “Pizzaman” Furillo-Hill Street Blues, and Tony Baretta-Baretta); one that is unapologetically honest, with uncompromising tactics and a lack of politically correct subtlety. 

She uses these tools to deal with the myriad of issues that come with the job such as political and social that affects law enforcement in Los Angeles.

The Boob Tuber review: Does this premise sound familiar? It should. Remember The Closer which starred Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Leigh Johnson a driven, hard-nosed law enforcement officer from the South?

Even the description of the show sounds oddly familiar if you read the premises of The Closer (which also took place in Los Angeles and centers around the LAPD).

The creator, Paul Attanasio, comes with a TV pedigree full of successes (Homicide: Life on the Streets, Bull and House) which were successful as well as cutting edge, so the show has that going for them. However, the female characters on all three of his shows are typical of Hollywood: one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs while the male characters are multifaceted.

Casting Edie Falco in the lead role was genius. She has a proven track record of performances on long running series and has the Emmys (four of them) to prove it. Besides women like her and see themselves in her.

Whether Tommy can step out of the shadows of characters like Lieutenant Anita Van Buren (Law & Order), Brenda Leigh Johnson (The Closer) or Jenny Shepherd (NCIS) remains to be seen.

If the show runners can do this Tommy may have a long run on CBS.



Star Trek: Picard

·       January 26,2020

·       CBS: All Access

·       Created by: Alex Kurtzman

·       Starring: Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard (Dune, L.A, Story, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Star Trek Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, X-Men, X2, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis, X-Men Origins: Wolverine,  X-Men: The Last Stand, Ted, Ted:2, Star Trek Next Generation, Family Guy, American Dad); Isa Briones as Dahj (Blind Date, American Crime Story/Versace Assassination), Alison Pill as Agnes Jurati (The Newsroom, The Family, American Horror Story: Cult); Santiago Cabrera as Cristobal Rios (Empire, Heroes, Merlin, Anna Karenina, The Musketeers, Big Little Lies); Michelle Hurd as Raffi Musiker (Another World, New York Undercover, Malcolm & Eddie, Law & Order: SVU, ER, Gossip Girl, Hawaii 5-0, Blindspot); Harry Treadaway as Narek (Penny Dreadful, Mr. Mercedes).

·       Recurring cast: Brent Spiner as Data, Jonathan Frakes as William Riker, Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi.

Premises: The show picks up 20 years after the end of the destruction of the planet Romulus which was seen in Star Trek: Nemesis and centers on former captain, Jean-Luc Picard who has been deeply affected by what happened to Romulus and the death of Data who sacrificed himself in order to save Picard and the crew of the Enterprise.

To fully understand what has happened and how it has affected Picard, The Boob Tuber suggests that you watch Star Trek: Nemesis prior to the show’s debut.


The movie is available through Amazon Prime Video or iTunes to either rent or buy. On December 10 and 11, the cable channel IFC is airing the movie.

The Boob Tuber Review: This is the eighth installment of the Star Trek franchise and, with possibly the exception of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, they have all been pretty successful.

This is almost entirely due to their devout fan following and the Science Fiction genre.

It is this franchise that opened the doors for shows/movies such as Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, Alien, Buck Rogers in the 25 Century and Stargate SG-1.

The good news is that the show is bringing back a favorite in the form of Jean-Luc Picard so the probability of it being around for awhile is a good one.

The bad news is that it won’t be shown on CBS, but on CBS: All Access which means including the absorbent amount you’re already paying for cable, you’ll have to shell out more money to see the show.

For die hard Star Trek fans, the $59.99 per year is worth it.