It’s uncommon when a broadcast community launches a wholly new night time of authentic programming, as NBC is making an attempt on Sunday nights, in order that alone is trigger for applause, although we’ll save the true ovation for when one thing extra authentic comes alongside.
Even the dazzling new nature sequence The Americas (premieres Sunday with back-to-back episodes at 7/6c and eight/7c) performs to system, with folksy narrator Tom Hanks serving up vignettes of telegenic wildlife on land, sky, and sea. There’s little doubt that nature followers will deservedly eat it up. (A complete sequence might be made about these resilient raccoons residing in Central Park on the outskirts of a metropolis.)
An animal of an much more acquainted selection — species: spinoff — anchors NBC’s new lineup, with the closely promoted premiere of Fits LA, which owes its existence to the unique USA Community sequence’ sudden renaissance on Netflix (with the added zing of a solid member marrying right into a sure royal household). The tailor-made wardrobe is as spiffy as ever within the “blue sky” setting of Los Angeles and the company towers of Century Metropolis, the place leisure legal professionals and different slick attorneys ply their commerce. It’s the storytelling that feels a bit threadbare and second-hand.
Stephen Amell (Arrow) makes his overdue major-network leading-man debut, swaggering in fashion as Ted Black, a former New York federal prosecutor who left below a cloud of tragedy and has spent the final 15 years constructing a profitable enterprise together with his boutique Black Lane agency, repping (so we’re instructed) high-profile Hollywood varieties. He woos a potential shopper described as Warner Bros. latest motion star by boasting, “I took on the worst mobs in New York. I beat all of them, I did it with out batting an eye fixed.” He goes on to declare, “I can stroll away from any deal at any time — which is the place the ability on this world comes from.”
Feels like somebody who must be taken down a peg or three, no? Which is precisely what occurs in a pilot episode crammed with betrayals and back-stabbings, all of which could have had extra affect if we had a greater concept of the individuals inhabiting these designer duds. (Flashbacks, which rapidly develop into a staple of the sequence, assist flesh out Ted’s and others’ backstories, which are usually extra compelling than the present-day intrigue.)
As his greatest pal/prison lawyer Stuart and earnest protégé Rick, The Strolling Useless‘s Josh McDermitt and One Tree Hill alum Bryan Greenberg are sidelined too quickly by a significant plot twist that turns Ted from L.A.’s prime canine to underdog. Lex Scott Davis embodies the least enviable function, as Erica, Rick’s competitors for head of the agency’s leisure division, regardless of the absurd undeniable fact that she has no obvious grasp of movie or TV historical past. It’s revealed she is even clueless about Cheers. On an NBC sequence? For disgrace.
Missing the fake-lawyer hook that made the unique Fits stand out, Fits LA tries to conjure drama by depicting Ted making a reluctant pivot to a kind of legislation he despises, with Kevin Weisman (Alias) his exasperatingly sketchy shopper. Efficient cameos by real-life celebs, together with the late John Amos (in a poignant cameo) and The Workplace‘s Brian Baumgartner as variations of themselves, counsel the sequence might need been higher suited, so to talk, if it had stayed true to the creator’s authentic intent of constructing a sequence round Hollywood brokers.
SEEDS OF INTRIGUE: Inexperienced thumbs are muddied by the sticky fingers of scandal in Grosse Pointe Backyard Society, an enjoyably seriocomic melodrama that provides off Huge Little Lies vibes from the opening scene, when 4 members of a hoity-toity Michigan backyard membership frantically bury a physique below the moonlight. However whose is it?
That’s the sudsy premise, because the baroque plotting seeded with gardening metaphors offers every of the primary characters an adversary price placing six toes below. The newcomer to the group, wacky and narcissistic Birdie (Brooklyn 9-9‘s Melissa Fumero), is a camp bouquet of ridiculous extra, upsetting the pure steadiness established by winsome schoolteacher Alice (AnnaSophia Robb), her divorced greatest pal Brett (Ben Rappaport), and high-end realtor Catherine (Aja Naomi King).
They’re unlikely conspirators in a messy cover-up that, if uncovered, may trigger them break of their snooty suburb. If you happen to pine for the times when ABC’s Determined Housewives dominated on Sundays, that is your present.
Fits LA, Collection Premiere, Sunday, February 23, 9/8c, NBC (two and a half stars)
Grosse Pointe Backyard Society, Collection Premiere, Sunday, February 23, 10/9c, NBC (three and a half stars)