CW - The new network

Hard to get excited about the new CW network which merges the WB and UPN and will now host shows like Smallville, Supernatural, One Tree Hill, Veronica Mars, Everybody Hates Chris and the past its sell by date Gilmore Girls.

There are two notable new shows - Runaway, stars Donnie Wahlberg and 24's Leslie Hope. Wahlberg plays a family man who is framed for murder and takes his family on the run in what sounds like a family size version of The Fugitive.

The big news is that Dawson Creek creator Kevin Williamson returns to television in mid-season. Hidden Palms, is about a troubled youth moving to Palm Springs with his mother and stars two former NYPD Blue alumni Gail O'Grady and Sharon Lawrence as well as Kevin Kilner.

CBS Ins and Outs

CBS have returned a record number of series for next season, but Out of Practice starring Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler is a goner ahead of its run on Channel 5 and Living. How I Met Your Mother, now on BBC2 and BBC3 will return, as will Channel 4 and Paramounts King of Queens.

New dramas include Smith with Ray Liotta as a criminal mastermind who heads a crew, plots and executes high-stakes heists, all while being married and leading a nice life with wife Virginia Madsen also stars playing Liotta's wife. Jericho follows the residents of a small Kansas town are thrown into chaos when a nuclear bomb explodes leaving them to think they might be the only people left alive. This Lost copy stars Skeet Ulrich and Gerald McRaney.

Joe Pantilano who has already flopped twice on CBS returns on Waterfront whilethe great Stanley Tucci will show up mid-season in 3lbs.

The big money will be on James Woods as Shark, an lawyer who decides to become a good guy working for the L.A. District Attorney's High Profile Crime Unit. Also back is all the CSI nonsense, Two and a Half Men, The Unit, Criminal Minds, The New Adventures of Old Christine (still without a UK home), Ghost Whisperer, Close to Home, NCIS, Num3ers, and Without a Trace

And now the losers

ABC has cancelled Invasion. The Channel 4 show is the first notable casualty ahead of this weeks upfront presentations. Hope and Faith, which screens on ABC1, has also gone . NBC meanwhile has killed the recent Dick Wolf show Conviction and the US version of Teachers. E-Ring, soon to screen here on FX has gone and Surface, currently on ITV, Joey and Four Kings, which is coming to Living are all expected to follow rapidly. The fate of Scrubs is still unknown.

NBC has given the new Andy Richter comedy, Andy Barker PI a six episode commitment,

More new ABC

ABC have picked up Brothers & Sisters and for their fall schedule. Its a return to network television for Calista Flockhart, who stars alongside Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under) and three Alias alumni Ron Rifkin, Balthazar Getty and Patricia Wettig. The latters husband and thirtysomthing co-star Ken Olin produced and directed the pilot.

Other additions, Ugly Betty, produced by Selma Hayek, Men in Trees which stars Anne Heche as a Manhattan shrink who flees big city life for Alaska and Traveler, a conspiracy thriller about three Ivy Leaguers who get caught up in a national security emergency.

CBS New Shows

New CBS comedies for the fall are thought to include The Big Bang Theory starring Amanda Walsh, Inseparable with Christine Baranski as a woman with a very large extended family that includes Ed O Neill and Rules of Engagement, produced by Adam Sandler. Additionally there is The Class, a new comedy from former Friends co-creator David Crane about a group of third-grade friends who are reunited as adults. Sounds like....er...Friends. Expect these to be confirmed next week

NBC New Shows

NBC have picked up several new shows, although there is little that looks like shoring up their ratings crisis. The best of the bunch seems to be the new sitcom Twenty Long Years and thats only because it stars John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor.
While NBC are banking on Studio 60 on Sunset Strip, the Matthew Perry/Bradley Whitford drama, most of the other dramas don't inspire. Heroes stars Milo Ventimiglia, Ali Larter and Adrian Pasdar and examines what happens when ordinary people find out they have superpowers. Friday Night Lights is based on the recent feature film while Raines has Jeff Goldblum solving crimes by talking to dead people. I think he'll find Patricia Arquette is doing that already - and on the same network. The one bright spot there is Shawshank Redempton director Frank Darabont is at the helm.

ABC New Shows

A week ahead of announcing their new fall schedule, ABC have given the green light to a bunch of shows. Among them are The Nine, a new drama from Without A Trace creator Hank Steinberg. Among the cast - Scott Wolf (Party of Five), Chi McBride Tim Daly and Kim Raver, who presumably then won't be back in 24 next year.

There is a new JJ Abrams show Six Degrees which features Campbell Scott and Hope Davis (who starred in the fab movie Secret Lives of Dentists together), Bridget Moynahan and Erika Christensen. The Taye Diggs drama Daybreak has also been picked up. There are three new comedies on the schedule, In Case of Emergency with David Arquette, Help Me Out with Ted Danson and Notes from the Underbelly which has Barry Sonnenfeld behind it.

Doing the show shuffle

The American networks will present their fall schedules next week and the scramble among British broadcasters will begin. Already its leaking out that some top shows face demotions in the schedules.

NBC are set to send ER packing. No long dominant on Thursday nights, the medical drama will move away from Thursday and is likely to be replaced by the new Matthew Perry/Bradley Whitford drama "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip". (Look for Channel Four to acquire that sharpish). ER has lost viewers to Without A Trace on Thursdays on CBS but may also be on the move, over to Sundays.

ABC are set to move Desperate Housewives away from the prime Sunday slot where it has underperformed in its second season, over to Mondays where it could face off with 24 at 9.

King of Queens may be over at CBS, while the network will renew the fledgling David Mamet drama The Unit and the new Julia Louis Dreyfuss show The New Adventures of Old Christine.
CBS are also set to commit to a vehicle for James Woods called Shark.

Alias fans will be pleased to hear that Victor Garber will be back next season, FOX have picked up the Jerry Bruckheimer legal series American Crime.

Commander In Chief mismanaged to death

It started the US television season as the highest rated new show. It ends the campaign, cancelled. Helmed by Rod Lurie, taken over by Steven Bochco, mismanaged by ABC, Commander-In-Chief has shuddered to a halt four episodes short of its commissioned 22. In the future it will be referenced as how not to run a network show. It means also Geena Davis now has two one-season-wonder shows under her belt.

Ironic that no British network wanted to pick the show up despite its early success. ABC1 are currently screening it here and More4 have now taken it also, a move they are probably regretting. They are expected to show it once the West Wing is done.

Meanwhile ABC has renewed Boston Legal for a third season. The David E Kelley show, which stars Williams Shatner and James Spader, currently airs on Living.

NBC return faves and get lost in Jungle

NBC have picked up all three Law and Order series for next fall. The orginal returns although there will be cast changes. Special Victims Unit returns with Connie Nielsen coming in for Mariska Hargitay who is having a baby. Criminal Intent returns, presumably with Chris Noth continuing his return as Detective Logan in every other episode.
NBC have also picked up new seasons of Las Vegas (Sky), Crossing Jordan (ITV) and the under-rated Medium which screens here on BBC1 and Sci-Fi.
No such luck for Lipstick Jungle, the new show based on Candace Bushnell's book. Gina Gershon and Melissa George remain on board, but the third lead is yet to be cast, the network hated the script, and the show won't now make the fall schedule.