Now that the great bloodletting of 2016 has passed, and so many shows have drawn their last breaths, it’s time for sighs of relief over what didn’t hit the chopping block. And that’s…not a whole lot of stuff at the moment, though next week’s upfronts presentations should remedy that situation. CBS released Supergirl into the CW wild yesterday and retired an entire franchise with the cancellation of CSI: Cyber, presumably to make room for its Training Day adaptation and that MacGyver prequel, both of which it’s just ordered to series. We can now officially look forward to seeing X-Men’s Lucas Till as a pre-mullet MacGyver (because that’s the kind of thing you have to earn/grow), and Bill Paxton as a cop on a moral decline.
But the eye network’s lineup won’t just see a lot of rehashing of old premises. CBS also gave series orders to Bull, which is a prequel to Phil McGraw’s Oprah and Dr. Phil days. Joel McHale’s new workplace comedy The Great Indoors, which will see him play an once-intrepid reporter who ends up slumming it with millennials, will also see the light of the fall season. Additionally, Matt Leblanc will set aside his racing duties as to play the Man With A Plan. This family satire will star Leblanc as a dad who suddenly finds himself parenting his children when his wife goes back to work. It was originally titled I’m Not Your Friend, presumably so viewers wouldn’t assume it was another spin-off of his claim to fame.
CBS also braced itself for the deluge of Dermot Mulroney/Dylan McDermott jokes by ordering Pure Genius, previously known as Bunker Hill, to series. That show will feature Mulroney as a veteran surgeon whose next career stage lands him at a high-tech hospital. We’d hope that all hospitals would be invested in keeping up with technology, what with all the tests and procedures performed, but maybe what’s so revolutionary about this one is that it has a holographic doctor on rounds.