At ABC, 'Roseanne' 'Idol' and a last 'Scandal'
Eight episodes featuring the original cast will air next year, the network announced Tuesday.
It's official: Roseanne is headed back to ABC.
An eight-episode reboot featuring the original cast — Roseanne Barr, John Goodman, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf, Michael Fishman, and Lecy Goranson, the original Becky – will air in 2018, the network announced Tuesday. Sarah Chalke (Scrubs), who played Becky in later seasons of the show, will also take part, but in another role.
No word on how Goodman's presence will be explained: His character died at the end of the original series.
(Or did he?)
"We found out we had a whole lot more to say," Roseanne told advertisers at ABC's presentation of its 2017-18 plans on Tuesday afternoon.
It appears last week's two-season order for ABC's The Goldbergs was the network's good news for creator Adam F. Goldberg, who's already mined his 1980s childhood in Jenkintown for four seasons and will now have at least two more.
ABC already had canceled another Goldberg-produced show, Imaginary Mary, and ABC will not be going forward with a proposed spin-off of the comedy that would have involved characters from The Goldbergs in the 1990s at a school based on William Penn Charter School, from which Goldberg graduated.
The network, which canceled a number of shows last week, has picked up at least 10 new scripted series, five of them for fall, as well as the onetime Fox powerhouse American Idol, which is expected to premiere early next year.
Other highlights of ABC's plans, which were presented to advertisers in New York on Tuesday afternoon by ABC entertainment president Channing Dungey:
Katy Perry was announced as the "anchor" judge of the new American Idol.
American Housewife, created by University of Pennsylvania graduate and former City Paper columnist Sarah Dunn, won both a new season and a new time slot, following Modern Family on Wednesdays. Black-ish moves to Tuesdays.
House creator David Shore has a new medical drama, The Good Doctor, starring Freddie Highmore (Bates Motel) as a surgeon with autism and savant syndrome. (Do Bates fans really want to see Highmore pick up a scalpel so soon?)
Jimmy Kimmel and Justin Theroux (The Leftovers) will collaborate on a still-untitled show in which stars will act out classic sitcoms of the past, taped before a live audience.
Scandal, as expected, will end its run next season. The decision, Dungey said, was creator Shonda Rhimes'. "She has had a sense for a while of where she wanted the story to end," Dungey, speaking to reporters on a conference call, said of Rhimes, whose latest show, a legal drama called For the People, is expected at midseason.
Meanwhile, Dungey announced ABC was picking up a spinoff of Shimes' Grey's Anatomy, a Seattle-set show about firefighters, that will skip the pilot process and go straight to series.
Comic book series continue their conquest of television, with the returning Marvel's Agents of SHIELD set to share a network with Marvel's Inhumans, whose first two episodes will get a two-week release in IMAX theaters beginning Labor Day weekend. Afterward, the entire series, with additional content, will air on the network on Fridays, after the relocating Once Upon a Time.
NBC has the Winter Olympics, but only ABC has the The Bachelor Winter Games, in which contestants from past seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette will be brought together at a winter resort to compete in "winter-themed athletic challenges, including the toughest sport of all — love."
Besides The Good Doctor and Marvel's Inhumans, new fall shows include The Mayor, a comedy from Tony-winner Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) about a young rapper (Brandon Micheal Hall) who runs for mayor as a stunt and winds up getting elected; The Gospel of Kevin, a drama starring Jason Ritter (Parenthood) as a "cluelessly self-serving person" who's given a divine mission; and Ten Days in the Valley, starring Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) as a TV producer whose young daughter goes missing.
Household Name, the ABC pilot starring Carol Burnett, didn't get picked up but may still be in development, Dungey indicated, describing it as "still very near and dear to our hearts."
Returning shows include: America's Funniest Home Videos, American Housewife, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Black-ish, Dancing with the Stars, Designated Survivor, Fresh Off the Boat, The Goldbergs, Grey's Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, The Middle, Modern Family, Once Upon a Time, Quantico, Scandal, Shark Tank, Speechless, To Tell the Truth.
Canceled: American Crime, The Catch, Conviction, Dr. Ken, Imaginary Mary, Last Man Standing, Mistresses, Notorious, The Real O'Neals, Secrets and Lies, Time After Time.