After an eventful couple of upfronts weeks, the five broadcast networks have put forth their fall 2018 schedules. There are some ingenious moves; there are some confounding moves. There are new shows hoping to be sampled and become the next big thing; there are relocated veterans hoping to improve their time slots and leg out a few more seasons. We won’t know whether each network put forth the right combination of shows until the fall, but that isn’t going to stop KSiteTV’s Craig Byrne and Shilo Adams from giving their annual first impressions on all five of the fall schedules.
First up is NBC, which is fielding two new dramas in Manifest and New Amsterdam and a new comedy in I Feel Bad, in addition to relocating summer 2017 drama Midnight, Texas to the fall. The network also has an all-Chicago Wednesday in the pipeline, as well as a midseason bench that includes a 22-episode Blacklist season and Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s first NBC season, among others.
But before you dig into what Craig and Shilo thought about each schedule, you can review their fantasy schedules below and rewatch the trailers for each of NBC’s three new fall shows.
2018-2019 Scheduling Predictions: NBC | FOX | ABC | CBS | The CW
2018-2019 Scheduling Analysis: FOX | ABC | CBS | The CW
Trailers: Manifest | New Amsterdam | I Feel Bad
MONDAY
CRAIG: 8:00 The Voice; 10:00 L.A.’s Finest
SHILO: 8:00 The Voice; 10:00 L.A.’s Finest
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: 8:00 The Voice; 10:00 Manifest
CRAIG: One of the biggest surprises of this year’s development season was NBC’s choice not to pick up the Bad Boys spinoff L.A.’s Finest which seemed to be a shoe-in for a series order, with big names and a diverse cast that seemed to have the perfect mix for a weekly series. Unfortunately, the ownership situation surely got in the way at this point, though it’s interesting to note that the series that did get the spot – Manifest – comes from Warner Bros. Television.
Manifest looks and sounds like it could easily be another mixture of shows that have come before – LOST, The 4400, and Resurrection come to mind – but I will say that of the pilot trailers presented so far from NBC, Manifest is the one I will most likely be at the very least curious to check out. That, and I really like Josh Dallas. So, of the series pickups for this season, I’m more than okay for this to be the one to get the post-Voice slot.
SHILO: Yeah, one of the biggest upfronts surprises for me was that L.A.’s Finest got passed over. It seemed like something that would be an easy sell with its big-named actresses and connections to a successful film franchise, plus it fit NBC’s brand and was tonally something that was different from The Good Doctor. Though it was an exciting curve ball when you realized that the Monday post-Voice slot was going to something unexpected, I’m not that enthused about what NBC decided to put there in L.A.’s Finest’s wake.
Obvious tonal issues aside (how do you seamlessly mesh a harder-edged conspiracy/mystery with the emotional family drama?), Manifest just seems like most mystery-based genre shows the broadcast networks have put forth since Lost, in that it’ll have a big premiere thanks to solid marketing and a concept that stands out against a procedural-heavy drama slate before shedding viewership as its storytelling gets more muddled. This isn’t the type of show whose creative I trust over the long haul and where NBC isn’t exactly a haven for genre shows with no procedural element, and where this isn’t a concept built for more than 10-13 episodes at a time, I don’t expect a whole lot from Manifest.
