The Miami Herald Glenn Garvin Column: NBC Planning Some Mind-Bending Moves
By Glenn Garvin, The Miami Herald
Jul. 17–LOS ANGELES — NBC’s brand-new executive team unveiled some old faces, ranging from the beloved to the baneful, as it presented the network’s new programming slate at a meeting of North American TV critics Monday.
NBC programming bosses Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff, hired just last month after the network’s fall lineup was already set, did their best to put their own stamp on it with moves that range from interesting to startling to bizarre.
The network is adding to its talent roster not only legendary producer Norman Lear, but disgraced gay-bashing actor Isaiah Washington and weird 1960s psychic Uri Geller, who claims to be able to bend spoons and start stopped clocks with his mind but whose most formidable task may be convincing audiences that he’s still alive.
The other surprises include comedian Jerry Seinfeld returning to network comedy for the first time since he retired his smash-hit sitcom nine years ago, guest-starring as himself in the backstage-TV comedy 30 Rock, and the news that NBC is considering giving Jay Leno a prime-time program when he leaves The Tonight Show in 2009.
Perhaps the most welcome news — at least, that’s the way NBC hopes television viewers will see it — was the return of Lear, who remade the face of TV comedy when he convinced CBS to air All in the Family in 1971. It was the first in a long run of Lear hits built on topical and politically incorrect humor.
Absent from television since 1994, when diminishing audiences and heightened network sensibilities about ethnic and gender humor pushed him to the wings, Lear will produce an as yet untitled hourlong comedy-drama, a battle of the sexes set on Wall Street, that NBC hopes to get on the air early next year.
“Norman Lear is an idol of mine,” Silverman said, “and bringing his voice back to network television is the fulfillment of a personal dream.”
The return of Isaiah Washington to network television is more likely to seem like a nightmare to many viewers. Washington was fired from ABC’s hit drama Grey’s Anatomy last month (or “became available,” as Silverman delicately phrased it) after being accused of calling a gay member of the cast a “f—” during an altercation on the set. Washington denied it — but then used the word to reporters backstage at the Golden Globe awards.
Silverman shrugged off questions about Washington’s problems on Grey’s Anatomy: “He’s a wonderful actor and a great performer.” He will guest-star in five episodes of Bionic Woman as a shadowy and morally ambiguous representative of a mysterious scientific organization that builds robots.
Geller, too, was controversial in his day, which was back when Lyndon Johnson was president and Gunsmoke ruled the airwaves. His claims that he could rearrange matter with his brain waves got him into Life magazine and attracted a legion of debunkers.
Recently, he’s been more famous for being an unpleasant (and unauthorized, he has alleged in lawsuits) character in a Nintendo game who can give his enemies bad headaches.
NBC will team Geller and magician Criss Angel in a reality show, Phenomenon, a talent search for what Silverman called “the next great mind-blower, the next great mentalist.”
Seinfeld will play himself in the season debut of 30 Rock on Oct. 4. In a tongue-deeply-in-cheek statement released by NBC, the comedian said that “it’s going to be refreshing for me to be playing myself in a show that has nothing to do with neurotic, dysfunctional New York characters.” 30 Rock is the story of the neurotic, dysfunctional cast of a Saturday Night Live-like show that’s broadcast from New York.
The NBC executives were less definite about their plans for Leno, but confirmed they’re talking about him staying on the network after he leaves The Tonight Show.
“Prime time is a definite alternative . . . That is something that we’re talking about,” Graboff said.
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