ABC - Fall 2007 Previews

Last of the 4 big networks is ABC and their Fall 2007 schedule. The big returners are Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives which has lost a huge amount from its initial viewership. ABC has a whopping 8 new Fall series with 3 more mid-season shows, and the really noticeable difference here is that all 11 of these shows are scripted, with no new reality shows in sight.

• Sam I Am - Christina Applegate has retrograde amnesia, and as she starts to reconnect with family and friends she realizes that she was (is?) really not a very nice person and was estranged from her parents. This is a half-hour comedy that seems to follow a familiar formula, and the clips I've seen make the show seem pretty generic. I am a slight fan of Christina for no apparent reason but even so I think this is going to have to be a pass.
  
• Cavemen - I never really even found the GEICO commercials all that amusing, so a full sitcom based on the premise of a few less-evolved sub-homo sapiens trying to get by in present-day Atlanta just seems like it's going to be full of pain.
  
• Carpoolers - I wasn't able to glean much from the trailer except that it seems to be about 4 men of varying personalities/lives carpooling together and, uh, talking? Jerry O'Connell is one of the guys, and another one of the guys seems to be the idealistic one that all the others make fun of. They really need to come out with better commercials before this could seem even remotely interesting.
  
• Pushing Daisies - This is probably one of the more original and quirky concepts I've seen among all the previews I've been watching. The main character discovers at an early age that he has the power to bring dead things/people back to life with a touch, but the catch is that if he touches them again then they die permanently. The execution and tone are amusing and quirky in a Wonderfalls/Dead Like Me kind of way (surprise, Bryan Fuller is involved in all 3 of these shows). The guy grows up and uses this power to solve murders by bringing back the victims to ask them who killed them, but then one day he finds his childhood love murdered and brings her back, but can never touch her again...
  
• Private Practice - Okay, we all know what this is, and we've probably mostly seen the "preview" in the form of parts of episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I'm honestly not sold on this yet, it has a star-studded cast, Addison is probably one of the most likable characters of more recent GA, and I am a fan of Tim Daly, so I'll probably have to watch at least the first few, especially with GA seemingly on the decline.
  
• Dirty Sexy Money - It was hard to tell what this was really about from the available clips, but it appears to be about a super-rich family headed by Donald Sutherland who has a bunch of spoiled brats (including William Baldwin and Samaire Armstrong (Anna!)) that need to have their various antics dealt with by Peter Krause (of Six Feet Under), their straight-man lawyer. There appears to be a lot of acting spoiled and yelling/complaining, so it does not look that interesting.
  
• Big Shots - Imagine 4 high-powered women sitting around gossiping/complaining about their various personal issues: cheating spouses, new love interests, having affairs, etc... Now replace the women with men (including Dylan McDermott from The Practice and Michael Vartan from Alias) and you've got what this show seems to be about. Dylan even says himself at the end "Men... we're the new women."
  
• Women's Murder Club - Angie Harmon is back... and this time she's a police detective who teams up with 3 other women (an Assistant DA, a CSI, and a reporter) and the four of them work together to catch criminals, each using their own particular expertise. Of course, they also chat about their personal lives when meeting together to figure out how to catch killers. I originally thought this was going to be about a club of women who go around killing people, which probably would've been more interesting. Even so, this could have some promise if you're into crime-solving shows.