At CBS, Boreanaz is both star and 'SEAL Team' player
“He’s got the great look. He’s a talented guy. And the minute you see him up there [onscreen], you’re not thinking it’s David Boreanaz. You’re seeing a Navy SEAL,” said one network executive of the Philadelphia-raised actor.
NEW YORK — CBS will be leading with David Boreanaz's jaw this fall, as the former Bones star headlines its new Wednesday night drama, SEAL Team.
The show is about the "best of the best," said Kelly Kahl, the network's senior executive vice president of prime time, as he and CBS CEO Leslie Moonves unveiled their 2017-18 schedule for reporters over breakfast Wednesday morning. "These are the guys who got [Osama] bin Laden. These are the guys who found Saddam Hussein."
And Boreanaz, who before Bones starred in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff Angel, is an actor who's "worked in every show he's ever done on TV," Kahl said of the Malvern Prep grad, the son of retired 6ABC weather forecaster Dave Roberts.
Boreanaz was a last-minute substitute in the pilot for original SEAL Team star Jim Caviezel (Person of Interest), but Kahl, speaking afterward, didn't make him sound like anyone's second choice.
"A, he's a TV star. He's had two hit shows — that's rarefied air to begin with. But I think just in this role, you see a guy who projects gravitas, humanity, as a Navy SEAL. He's got the square jaw, he's got the great look. He's a talented guy. And the minute you see him up there [on screen], you're not thinking it's David Boreanaz. You're seeing a Navy SEAL," Kahl said
Other highlights of CBS's plans, which were presented to advertisers Wednesday afternoon at Carnegie Hall (with Boreanaz onstage to introduce SEAL Team):
Young Sheldon, the previously announced prequel to The Big Bang Theory, will get a special Monday premiere Sept. 25 after the season premiere of BBT, then return on Nov. 2, after Thursday Night Football ends, where it will also follow the hit show about adult Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and his Pasadena companions. Iain Armitage plays 9-year-old Sheldon Cooper as he's starting high school in East Texas. It's a single-camera comedy, with a somewhat different tone, Kahl said, and takes place in 1989, long before Sheldon ended up at Caltech. "It's not Muppet Babies." Parsons narrates, and the trailer, at least, is charming.
The fall schedule includes two other new comedies. 9JKL stars Mark Feuerstein in a situation inspired by his real life when he was shooting Royal Pains in New York — his character is living in an apartment between his parents and his brother. Me, Myself & I stars Bobby Moynihan and John Larroquette and is about the same man in three periods: as a 14-year-old (Jack Dylan Grazer), as a 40-year-old in present day (Moynihan), and as a 65-year-old in 2042 (Larroquette). (Think This Is Us meets The Goldbergs.)
Besides SEAL Team, which will air on Wednesdays between Survivor and Criminal Minds, fall dramas include Sunday's Wisdom of the Crowd, starring Jeremy Piven as a tech guy who creates a crowd-sourcing app he hopes will help solve his daughter's murder; and S.W.A.T., an adaptation of the TV series and film, produced by Shawn Ryan (The Shield, Timeless) that stars Shemar Moore (Criminal Minds) and will air Thursdays.
The network is bringing back 23 series, though some, like Man with a Plan, won't be on until later in the season.
Canceled shows include 2 Broke Girls, American Gothic, BrainDead, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, Doubt, The Great Indoors, The Odd Couple, Pure Genius, and Training Day.
60 Minutes will enter its 50th year on the air (it premiered in September 1968), and as previously announced, Oprah Winfrey will be joining the news magazine as a contributor.