Jesse L. Martin's 'The Irrational' And Jon Cryer Comedy Land On NBC's Fall Schedule
'Quantum Leap' moves to Tuesdays, and college football coverage goes conference-wide
Even amidst the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, NBC released its fall schedule last week. It’s full of contingencies, due in part to the network renewing shows early and keeping them in production before the pencils came down.
Among the new shows are the drama The Irrational starring Jesse L. Martin and Extended Family featuring Jon Cryer and Donald Faison, a comedy that has finally revealed its title. The former is the series Martin booked that caused him to step down from The Flash as a series regular after eight seasons to recurring in its ninth and final season as Barry’s father figure and father-in-law Joe West. It gets the coveted Monday 10 PM slot following The Voice, as the Quantum Leap continuation starring Raymond Lee, Caitlin Bassett, and Ernie Hudson moves to Tuesdays at 10 PM, following the Tuesday edition of The Voice.
The Irrational is based on bestselling author Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational. It is about Alec Mercer, a leader in behavioral science renowned across the world who lends his expertise to high-stakes cases involving governments, law enforcement and big business with his own unorthodox methods of understanding human behavior. Starring with Martin are Maahra Hill, Travina Springer, Molly Kunz, and Arash DeMaxi. Arika Lisanne Mittman will write and executive produce, serving in the latter role with Mark Goffman, Samuel Baum, and David Frankel.
Tuesday is also where you’ll find Extended Family, which was ordered in September and began filming in February. It is the series that kept Cryer unavailable to return as Lex Luthor as many had apparently wanted him to on Superman & Lois. However, the show repositioning itself off of Earth-Prime and onto its own Earth as the second season finale revealed, it meant, despite there being several retroactive direct doppelgängers (including series leads Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch as Clark and Lois) there was no need for the Lex that the show’s showrunners were looking for to be played by Cryer. They would eventually cast Michael Cudlitz. Extended Family is created by created by Mike O’Malley (GUTS, Glee, Survivor’s Remorse, Heels) and also stars Faison, recently seen outside of T-Mobile commercials as Legends of Tomorrow’s only-partially realized Booster Gold, and Abigail Spencer. Cryer plays Jim, a corporate compliance officer described as “good-natured, sarcastic yet sincere” and gets along incredibly well with everyone, and is navigating divorce and co-parenting with Julia, played by Spencer, who has now been wooed by the owner of Jim’s favorite sports team. Sofia Capanna and Finn Sweeney also star as Jim and Julia’s kids. It will follow the Night Court revival in its first fall, making up the 8 PM hour.
Progressing along through the schedule, Chicago Wednesdays remain completely intact, Med, Fire, and P.D., however Law & Order Thursdays are temporarily being broken up as Organized Crime transitions showrunners with a smaller episode order and will debut in midseason. In its place is Found, which was originally supposed to premiere in February in a Sunday night slot that hasn’t been particularly strong for the network. A public relations specialist, who was once herself one of those forgotten 300,000 missing black women, and her crisis management team now make sure there is always someone there to protect the forgotten missing people. But she’s hiding a chilling secret of her own. Organized Crime will reunite with its brethren and reclaim the slot when Found's season finishes. It stars Shanola Hampton, Saved by the Bell and Pitch’s Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Kelli Williams, and Agents of SHIELD’s Brett Dalton, with Nkechi Okoro Carroll writing and executive producing. Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Sonay Hoffman, Lindsay Dunn and Leigh Redman also executive produce.
The Wall and two hours of Dateline make up Friday. As for the weekend, fall Saturdays have gotten quite the bump, instead of a repeat, Dateline and a Saturday Night Live that can tend to be not all that Vintage, Big 10 college football rights moved over from ESPN, and will easily consume weeks that aren’t Notre Dame Fighting Irish games instead. There are also pregame shows for either circumstance. The Big Ten shows are Big Ten Countdown and Big Ten Saturday Night. And as fall Sunday nights have been since 2006, it’s NFL action with Football Night In America and Sunday Night Football.
New unscripted for midseason are The Americas, a natural history series co-produced with BBC Studios Natural History Unit and narrated by Tom Hanks, and a new Deal or No Deal revival, Deal or No Deal Island, which retools it in a way that’s described as combining it with Survivor. Hidden on the island are over 100 cases with millions of dollars split between them, which teams must retrieve so that they can play a game of Deal or No Deal against the Banker. Also held are new seasons of La Brea, Lopez vs. Lopez, Magnum P.I., Password, the next seasons of Canadian import Transplant, and the next America’s Got Talent spinoff. Even still, the network still hasn’t decided on whether to renew American Auto, Grand Crew, or Young Rock nor have they on pickups of some of its pilots, including comedies Non-Evil Twin from Amber Ruffin and St. Denis Medical or dramas Wolf and the untitled pilot from Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs. However, they will do so in the next month. These could still make it in time for the 2023/24 season or be held for the 2024/25 season.
Source: Deadline