In addition to revisiting the sitcom heyday of the ’80s, ABC is going even further back with its drama pilots, having just given an order to Pan Am, its 1960s-set “sexy soap” about a group of stewardesses and, presumably, one token gay steward watching the world change through the sexy, smoke-filled cabin of the iconic airliner. (Like Playboy, it’s one of the networks’ attempts to reap the spoils of Mad Men’s production design without blatantly ripping off that show.) Also picked up to pilot is Poe, a crime procedural that follows Edgar Allan Poe, "the world’s very first detective,” according to the description (even though we're pretty sure God was the world's very first detective, what with that whole apple and then the Cain and Abel thing). Anyway, if that plot sounds familiar, it’s because it’s quite similar to the plot of The Raven, which stars John Cusack as Poe out to solve a string of serial killings in 1840s Baltimore—although the show that is frustratingly not named Poe, PI will use “unconventional methods” to solve various mysteries in 1840s Boston, presumably loose cannon tactics such as sexing up his cousin and getting blind drunk.
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