SitcomsOnline.com News Blog

Happy Endings - Fall TBD on ABC

Forget who gets to keep the ring - when a couple splits, the real question is, who gets to keep the friends? In this modern comedy, a couple's break-up will complicate all of their friends' lives and make everyone question their choices. When life throws you for a curve, hold on tight to the people you love. Every circle of friends has someone who's the gravitational center. For years, perfect couple Dave and Alex drew their friends in and held them together. Now that they've split, does this group have the stuff to stay together? Or do Max, Brad, Jane and Penny have to choose sides? Suddenly every event is a negotiation... like, who gets to go on the annual ski trip? There are a lot of big questions to be answered, but this group has been together so long, somehow, little by little, they'll figure out how to hold on, even though their center is split up. It helps that Dave and Alex have agreed to stay friends. But there will definitely be other complications down the road - like Penny's long-suppressed feelings for Dave. What is the waiting period for dating a friend's ex? This show isn't afraid to ask the embarrassing personal questions that inevitably arise in every long-term, close-knit group of friends.

Happy Endings stars Elisha Cuthbert (24) as Alex, Eliza Coupe as Jane, Zachary Knighton as Dave, Adam Pally as Max, Damon Wayans, Jr. as Brad and Casey Wilson as Penny.

From executive producers Jamie Tarses, Jonathan Groff, Anthony & Joe Russo, and co-executive producer David Caspe, “Happy Endings” examines the complex network of long-term friendships. The pilot was written by David Caspe and directed by Anthony & Joe Russo. The series is from Sony Pictures Television and ABC Studios.

Single-Camera

Cast:
Elisha Cuthbert as Alex
Eliza Coupe as Jane
Zachary Knighton as Dave
Adam Pally as Max
Damon Wayans, Jr. as Brad
Casey Wilson as Penny

Preview:

Links:

ABC.com Official Site

Mr. Sunshine - Fall TBD on ABC

Matthew Perry stars as Ben Donovan, the self-involved manager of a second-rate San Diego sports arena who begins to re-evaluate his life on his 40th birthday. Working alongside him is his boss and arena owner, Crystal -- attractive, powerful and highly erratic; Alice -- the cute, tomboyish marketing director and Ben's friend with benefits; Alonzo -- a former basketball player, handsome and unbelievably happy; Ben's assistant, Heather -- pretty, sweet, but terrifying because she once lit a boyfriend on fire; Crystal's son, Roman -- sweet-faced, clueless and Ben's newest employee; and a hapless operations crew whom Ben refers to collectively as the “Steves.”

Mr. Sunshine stars Matthew Perry (Friends) as Ben, Allison Janney (The West Wing) as Crystal, Andrea Anders as Alice, James Lesure as Alonzo, Nate Torrence as Roman and Portia Doubleday as Heather.

Matthew Perry, Alex Barnow, Marc Firek, Jamie Tarses and Thomas Schlamme are executive producers. The Pilot was written by Matthew Perry and Alex Barnow & Marc Firek and directed by Thomas Schlamme. “Mr. Sunshine” is a Matthew Perry Production, Shoe Money Production, Barnow and Firek Production and FanFare Production, in association with Sony Pictures Television.

Single-Camera

Cast:
Matthew Perry as Ben
Allison Janney as Crystal
Andrea Anders as Alice
James Lesure as Alonzo
Nate Torrence as Roman
Portia Doubleday as Heather

Preview:

Links:

ABC.com Official Site

1-2 more sitcoms are likely to be picked-up by ABC for mid-season.

CBS

New Fall: Mike & Molly, $#*! My Dad Says
New Mid-Season: Mad Love
Returning: How I Met Your Mother, Rules of Engagement, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory

Mike & Molly - Mondays at 9:30PM EST/PST on CBS

MIKE & MOLLY is a comedy from Chuck Lorre (Two and a Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory) about a working class Chicago couple who find love at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Officer Mike Biggs (Billy Gardell) is a good-hearted cop who sincerely wants to lose weight. Mike's partner, Officer Carl McMillan (Reno Wilson), is a thin, fast-talking wise-guy, who despite his teasing encourages Mike on his road to slimness and romance. While speaking at an O.A. meeting, Mike meets Molly Flynn (Melissa McCarthy), an instantly likeable fourth-grade teacher with a healthy sense of humor about her curves. For Molly, focusing on smart choices isn't easy because she lives with her sexy older sister, Victoria (Katy Mixon), and their mother, Joyce (Swoosie Kurtz), both of whom flaunt their healthy appetites and slender figures. Mike also faces temptation at the diner he and Carl frequent, where they've become friends with the Senegalese waiter, Samuel (Nyambi Nyambi), who finds trying to eat less a foreign concept. For Mike and Molly, thanks to their mutual love of pie and the desire to resist it, finding each other may have been worth the "weight." Chuck Lorre and Mark Roberts are executive producers for Chuck Lorre Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television.

Multi-Camera

Cast:
Billy Gardell as Mike Biggs
Melissa McCarthy as Molly Flynn
Katy Mixon as Victoria Flynn
Reno Wilson as Carl McMillian
Nyambi Nyambi as Samuel
Swoosie Kurtz as Joyce

Preview:

Links:

CBS.com Official Site

$#*! My Dad Says - Thursdays at 8:30PM EST/PST on CBS

$#*! My Dad Says, based on the popular Twitter feed by Justin Halpern, stars Emmy Award winner William Shatner as Ed Goodson, a forthright and opinionated dad who relishes expressing his unsolicited and often wildly politically incorrect observations to anyone within earshot. Nobody is immune from Ed's rants, including his sons, Henry, a struggling writer-turned-unpaid blogger; and Vince (Will Sasso), the meek half of his husband/wife real estate duo with domineering Kathleen (Nicole Sullivan). When Henry finds he can no longer afford to pay rent to his pretty roommate -- and secret admirer -- Sam (Stephanie Lemelin), Ed reveals a soft spot and invites Henry to move in with him. Henry agrees, knowing that the verbal assault will not abate and now there will be no escape. Describing their father/son relationship is tricky - but Ed will easily come up with a few choice words. Emmy Award winners David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are executive producers for Warner Bros. Television. Emmy Award winner James Burrows directed.

Multi-Camera

Cast:
William Shatner as Ed Goodson
Will Sasso as Vince
Nicole Sullivan as Kathleen
Stephanie Lemelin as Sam
Ryan Devlin as Henry (Pilot Only)

Preview:

Links:

CBS.com Official Site

Mad Love - Mid-Season on CBS

The comedy focuses on four friends in New York and follows what happens when two of them fall for each other.

Mad Love comes from Executive Producer Jamie Tarses and Writer/Executive Producer Matt Tarses, and stars Sarah Chalke, Ashley Austin Morris, Hal Williams, Jason Biggs, Tyler Labine and Sarah Wright. Pamela Fryman directed the pilot.

Multi-Camera

Cast:
Jason Biggs
Sarah Chalke
Ashley Austin Morris
Hal Williams
Tyler Labine
Sarah Wright

NBC

New Fall: Outsourced
New Mid-Season: Perfect Couples, Friends with Benefits, Paul Reiser Show
Returning: Community, 30 Rock, The Office, Parks and Recreation

Outsourced - Thursdays at 9:30PM EST/PST on NBC

Outsourced is a comedy where the Midwest meets the exotic East in a hilarious culture clash. The series centers on the all-American company Mid America Novelties that sells whoopee cushions, foam fingers and wallets made of bacon -- and whose call center has suddenly been outsourced to India. Todd Dempsy (Ben Rappaport, off-Broadway's "The Gingerbread House") is the new company's manager who learns that he's being transferred to India to run the operation.

Overwhelmed, Todd discovers that his new staff needs a crash course in all things American if they are to understand the U.S. product line and ramp up sales from halfway around the world. But as strange as America seems to his eclectic sales team, Todd soon realizes that figuring out India will be more than a full-time job. Rizwan Manji (Privileged), Sacha Dhawan (BBC's Five Days II), Rebecca Hazlewood (BBC's Doctors), Parvesh Cheena (Help Me Help You), and Anisha Nagarajan (Broadway's Bombay Dreams) also star as members of Dempsy's off-shore team; Diedrich Bader (The Drew Carey Show) and Jessica Gower (Network Ten's The Secret Life of Us) additionally star.

Outsourced is produced by Universal Media Studios. Robert Borden (The Drew Carey Show and George Lopez) is executive producer/writer. Ken Kwapis (The Office) developed the project through his company, In Cahoots, and serves as executive producer/director. Alex Beattie serves as co-executive producer.

Single-Camera

Cast:
Ben Rappaport as Todd Dempsy
Rizwan Manji as Rajiiv Gidwani
Sacha Dhawan as Manmeet
Parvesh Cheena as Gupta
Rebecca Hazlewood as Asha
Anisha Nagarajan as Madhuri
Diedrich Bader as Charlie Davies
Jessica Gower as Tonya

Preview:

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Perfect Couples - Mid-Season on NBC

Perfect Couples depicts the misadventures of three engaging couples as they struggle to find out what makes the ideal relationship -- and how to maintain it through humorous trial-and-error. The series explores their heroic journey in search of the perfect relationship without destroying each other in the process.

Dave (Kyle Howard, My Boys) and Julia (Christine Woods, FlashForward) are the relatable, normal couple, but Julia's hope of remaining the cool, low-maintenance chick is tested by Dave's attempts to keep both his wife and his needy best friend Vance (Dave Walton, NBC's 100 Questions) equally happy. Vance, along with the neurotic Amy (Mary Elizabeth Ellis, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), are the high-passion, high-drama couple who bring out the best and worst in each other.

The third duo features Rex (Hayes MacArthur, She's Out of My League), a reformed party guy, and, and his wife, Leigh (Olivia Munn, Attack of the Show), who considers herself as the group's mother hen. Believing that they are relationship experts, Rex and Leigh have attended every class and seminar on relationships -- and regard themselves as the "perfect couple."

Jon Pollack (30 Rock) and Scott Silveri (Friends) are the executive producers while Andy Ackerman (Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine) is the director. The series is produced by Universal Media Studios.

Single-Camera

Cast:
Kyle Howard as Dave
Christine Woods as Julia
David Walton as Vance
Mary Elizabeth Ellis as Amy
Hayes MacArthur as Rex
Olivia Munn as Leigh

Preview:

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Friends with Benefits - Mid-Season on NBC

From Oscar and Emmy winner Brian Grazer (A Beautiful Mind, Arrested Development), Friends with Benefits is a half-hour comedy revolving around a group of twenty-something singles as they navigate the difficult, and often confusing, world of dating. Ben Weymouth (Ryan Hansen, Party Down) is on the hunt for the perfect woman who meets his unique set of standards, while his best friend, Sara Maxwell (Danneel Harris, One Tree Hill), is just looking for a man to settle down with and raise a family. Ben and Sara have fallen into the habit of turning to each other for moral and physical support as they wait for Mr. and Ms. Right to arrive. Their friend Aaron (Fran Kranz, Dollhouse), a romantic at heart, doesn't approve of Ben and Sara's complicated friendship, but he, along with womanizer Hoon (Ian Reed Kesler) and straight shooter Riley (Jessica Lucas, Cloverfield), are all distracted with their own dating trials and tribulations.

David Nevins (Lie to Me, Arrested Development) joins Grazer as executive producer for Imagine Television. Also serving as executive producers are David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers), who directs the pilot, writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber ((500) Days of Summer), and Jeff Kleeman. "Friends With Benefits" is a production of 20th Century Fox Television, Imagine Television and Big Kid Pictures.

Single-Camera

Cast:
Ryan Hansen as Ben Harrison
Danneel Harris as Sara Welker
Fran Kranz as Aaron Greenway
Jessica Lucas as Riley Kuleck
Ian Reed Kesler as Hoon

Preview:

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The Paul Reiser Show - Mid-Season on NBC

The Paul Reiser Show is a new single camera comedy from Emmy and Golden Globe nominated comedian-author-producer-actor Paul Reiser (Mad About You) and writer-producer Jonathan Shapiro (Life). The show stars Paul Reiser as…Paul Reiser. It's been a few years since Paul's hit TV series went off the air. Since then, he's been enjoying the quiet life at home with his lovely wife and kids and generally minding his own business. Lately, however, Paul has been thinking that it's time he did something new, something meaningful. As to what that next thing might be, he has no idea. In his quest to figure it out, Paul is helped and hindered by his new "friends." Like most men his age, Paul didn't choose these friends. They're the husbands of his wife's friends, the dads of kids that his boys go to school with. Thrown together by circumstance, Paul and his friends form an unlikely comradeship -- and a horrible basketball team. In addition to Reiser, Ben Shenkman (Angels in America) stars as Jonathan, Omid Djalili (The Infidel) as Habib, Duane Martin (All of Us) as Fernando, Andrew Daly (MADtv) as Brad, Amy Landecker (A Serious Man) as Claire, Brock Waidmann as Zeke and Koby Rouviere (Greenberg) as Gabe. The pilot is executive produced and written by Reiser and Shapiro, produced by Craig Knizek (Mad About You), Merri Howard (Cold Case) and Peter Safran (Heist), and directed by Bryan Gordon (Curb Your Enthusiasm). The Paul Reiser Show is a production of Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Nuance Productions and Warner Bros. Television.

Single-Camera

Cast:
Paul Reiser as Himself
Ben Shenkman as Jonathan
Andrew Daly as Brad
Amy Landecker as Claire
Omid Djalili as Habib
Duane Martin as Fernando
Koby Rouviere as Gabe
Brock Waidmann as Zeke

Preview:

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Fox

New Fall: Raising Hope, Running Wilde
New January/Spring 2011: Bob's Burgers, Mixed Signals
Returning: The Simpsons, The Cleveland Show, Family Guy, American Dad!

Raising Hope - Tuesdays at 9:00PM EST/PST on Fox

Raising Hope is a new single-camera family comedy from Emmy Award winner Greg Garcia (My Name Is Earl) that follows the Chance family as they find themselves adding an unexpected new member into their already terribly flawed household. At 23 years old, JIMMY CHANCE (Lucas Neff, The Beast) is going nowhere in life. He skims pools for a living, parties every night and still lives at home with his family, including his MAW MAW (guest star Academy Award and Emmy Award winner Cloris Leachman); his mother, VIRGINIA (Martha Plimpton, How to Make It in America); his father, BURT (Garret Dillahunt, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Damages); and his cousin, MIKE (Skyler Stone, The Mentalist, Dollhouse). Jimmy's life takes a drastic turn when a chance romantic encounter with LUCY (guest star Bijou Phillips, Choke, Almost Famous) goes awry once he discovers she is a wanted felon. Months later, when Jimmy pays a visit to the local prison, he discovers Lucy gave birth to their baby, who he is now charged with raising. At home with his new daughter, Jimmy's family is less than enthusiastic about a new addition to the household. His parents, who had him when they were 15, never knew anything about raising a child and have no interest in trying again. If Jimmy can work up the nerve to ask her out on a date, he might get some help from SABRINA (Shannon Woodward, The Riches, ER), a sardonic checkout clerk he met at the supermarket. Cousin Mike is only concerned about how the baby is going to affect their social life, and out-of-touch Maw Maw is no help either. But Jimmy is determined to take care of his baby - whom Virginia thinks they should name HOPE. With very few useful skills but their hearts in the right place, will the Chance family be successful when they step into the unpredictable and immensely challenging world of parenting?

Single-Camera

Cast:
Garret Dillahunt as Burt Chance
Lucas Neff as Jimmy
Martha Plimpton as Virginia
Skyler Stone as Mike
Shannon Woodward as Sabrina
Cloris Leachman as Maw Maw
Bijou Phillips as Lucy

Preview:

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Running Wilde - Tuesdays at 9:30PM EST/PST on Fox

From the Emmy Award-winning creator and the star of the critically acclaimed FOX series Arrested Development comes Running Wilde, a romantic comedy starring Will Arnett (Arrested Development, 30 Rock) as STEVE WILDE, a filthy-rich, immature playboy trying desperately to win (or buy) the heart of his childhood sweetheart, EMMY KADUBIC (Keri Russell, Waitress, Felicity), the über-liberal humanitarian who got away - all told through the perspective of a 12-year-old girl. Steve Wilde has never performed a selfless act. But why should he - he's rich! The son of an oil tycoon, Steve hasn't had to work a day in his life and has always gotten everything he's wanted - with one exception: the love of Emmy. The daughter of a former Wilde housekeeper, Emmy is an earnest do-gooder who has spent her adult life trying to save the world. And though Emmy is content living with an indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest, her 12-year-old daughter, PUDDLE (Stefania Owen, The Lovely Bones), just wants to be a normal kid experiencing her adolescence in a normal place. And she would speak up except for the fact that she hasn't spoken in years. When Wilde Oil's expansion in the rainforest threatens her adopted tribe, Emmy decides to attend Steve's self-thrown “Humanitarian of the Year” award ceremony in hopes of convincing him to help her cause…and also maybe because she still has a thing for Steve. But same-old Steve is unwilling to help because fighting Wilde Oil (a/k/a Dad) means putting his meal ticket in jeopardy. Rather than run the risk of letting Emmy slip away again, Steve pulls out all the stops to win her heart. To do so, he enlists the only other people in his life who can help: MIGO SALAZAR (Joe Nuñez, Superbad, Prison Break), Steve's employee/sidekick/errand-boy, and GERTIE STELLVERTRETTER (Jayne Houdyshell, Law & Order), Steve's nanny-turned-head-of-security as well as the biggest protector of Steve…and her own job. Despite having everything he ever wanted, Steve knows he can't buy love and happiness, which falls in sharp contrast to Emmy, who has nothing but love and happiness. So with Emmy committed to doing good for nothing, and Steve being a good for nothing, will this hopelessly mismatched pair ever be able to reconcile their differences?

Single-Camera

Cast:
Will Arnett as Steve Wilde
Keri Russell as Emmy Kadubic
Stefania Owen as Puddle Kadubic
Joe Nunez as Migo Salazar
Jayne Houdyshell as Gertie Stellvertretter

Preview:

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Bob's Burgers - January/Spring 2011 - Sundays at 8:30PM EST/PST on Fox

Joining the Sunday ANIMATION DOMINATION lineup in midseason is Bob's Burgers, a new animated comedy series from creator Loren Bouchard (Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist) about a man, his family and their floundering burger joint. Despite the greasy counters, lousy location and occasionally spotty service, Bob and his lovable and quirky family are convinced their burgers are their ticket to success.

Animated

Voice Cast:
H. Jon Benjamin as Bob Belcher
John Roberts as Linda Belcher
Kristen Schaal as Louise Belcher
Eugene Mirman as Gene Belcher
Dan Mintz as Tina Belcher

Preview:

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Mixed Signals - Spring 2011 - Tuesdays at 9:30PM EST/PST on Fox

Mixed Signals, scheduled for a spring premiere, is a new relationship comedy created by Bob Fisher (Wedding Crashers) about three longtime friends and their attempts to balance their committed relationships with their desire for freedom. The ensemble comedy stars Nelson Franklin (I Love You, Man), David Denman (The Office), Kris Marshall (HUMAN TARGET), Liza Lapira (Dexter) and Alexandra Breckenridge (FAMILY GUY) and reveals how friendships and romances enhance - and further complicate - the lives of men and the women who love them.

Cast:
Alexandra Breckenridge as Callie
David Denman as Mike
Nelson Franklin as Adam
Liza Lapira as Lisa
Kris Marshall as Ethan

Preview:

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