Press Tour Highlights: Fox

There were two major developments at Fox's TCA day on Monday. One was the surprise appearance of Simon Cowell, and one was Bradley Whitford's mustache. Since both of those are covered in separate posts from yesterday, there's a little less to pass along to you as far as bullet points, so let's take a broader look at how the day went.

The Fox panels were more like the CBS panels from Saturday, in many ways. Like CBS, Fox feels pretty good about its lineup right now, and the Fox execs spent the first part of their session explaining in several different ways from several different angles how well everything is going for them.

In particular, of course, Fox is very excited about The Cleveland Show, which has done startlingly good business as part of their Sunday night animation block, and about Glee, which has given them an upbeat scripted hit with massive potential for other revenue streams (like from sales of the music).

Fox used its TCA day to announce Glee's completely unsurprising second season pickup, and also to announce that it would launch a nationwide talent search for actors to play three new characters next season. So all the wonderful, oddball theater kids who love Glee for giving them people on television who remind them of themselves will undoubtedly try out, with the resulting contest shown on Fox, reality-show-style. The audience won't get to make the final decision about who's chosen, but will get to see the tryouts.

More Glee details, new shows, and more, after the jump.

 

The show is prepared to go to some lengths, we were told, to keep the winners a secret until the moment they appear on the show for the first time — which may include shooting scenes with several finalists in order to keep spoilers from leaking. The idea is that until airtime, you won't know which new actor you're going to see.

There was news on other fronts, too. In addition to Whitford's show, Code 58, Fox also presented the upcoming Human Target, an action hour starring Mark Valley — who starred on Keen Eddie, Swingtown, and enough other short-lived shows that he's almost ready to have the dreaded "showkiller" label applied to him, if he hasn't already. Human Target has a great cast, including Chi McBride (fresh off the sad cancellation of Pushing Daisies) and Jackie Earle Haley, who's been making such a well-deserved comeback many years after a career as a kid/teenage actor.

McBride addressed the fact that he had been on a lot of "critical darlings" that had been canceled prematurely, so he asked the assembled critics for a favor with regard to Human Target: "Like us, don't love us."

There's also Past Life, a drama about people discovering ... well, their past lives, with a cast including Richard Schiff (who played Toby Ziegler on The West Wing). The highlight of that panel was undoubtedly actress Kelli Giddish saying that she had, indeed, tried a past-life regression as part of her research for her role. "I found out I was a fruit-picker in, like, the old South. That was great, you know. And then I was an Alaskan boy."

Fox's big comedy presentation was for Sons Of Tucson, which stars Tyler Labine, who played the sidekick Sock on Reaper. Labine, in short, plays a guy who gets involved in an incredibly contrived situation that requires him to pretend to be a father to three mischievous boys. It sounds like an absolutely wretched premise, but the show isn't without its charms, and the panel was a lot of fun.

Among other things, Sons Of Tucson was brought to producer Todd Holland, who also worked on Malcolm In The Middle, by the production company co-run by Jason Berfield — who played brother Reese on Malcolm. Holland acknowledged that after Berfield and his business partner presented him with the script to consider, he didn't even read it at first, because he had what he described as a sort of patronizing "Uncle Todd attitude" resulting from having known Berfield since he was a kid. But he finally got around to reading the script, at which point, "suddenly, it was business."

So that was our day with Fox. Today, we're gearing up for ABC, which primarily means Lost, a couple of upcoming midseason shows, and a chat with the showrunners of the successful Wednesday comedy block. As far as we know, ABC has no great big news to break, in the spirit of the last two Leno/Cowell days, so things may be a bit more laid back.