With all the fanfare and high hopes that accompanied the launch of the fall season in September, it's somewhat sad to note that by the time January rolls around, 11 of 31 new series have already been canceled. Fox in particular has already canceled more than half of the shows it premiered in the fall. What this means is that January marks the beginning of another new cycle of hype and hope, although most of the shows premiering in January will likewise not make it beyond the next few months.
In some cases, that's a good thing. NBC is attempting to reinvigorate its once "Must See" Thursday night comedy lineup by moving the successful My Name is Earl into the prime 9 p.m. slot, continuing to pair it with The Office, whose ratings have been improving, shifting the aging Will & Grace to 8 p.m. and shelving the disappointing Joey. The last part of this strategy involves a new sitcom, Four Kings (8:30 p.m.), and if the network thinks this abysmal piece of trash from Will & Grace creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick is going to return them to Thursday night dominance, they're seriously deluded.
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Even fans who've stuck with Will & Grace through its long decline might balk at Kohan and Mutchnick's second awful new show of the season (their Twins is still running on Friday nights on the WB). Kings follows four twentysomething buddies who find themselves living together in the sort of huge apartment only found on TV (conveniently willed to them by one of their grandmothers) and engaging in all sorts of hoary sitcom clichés, spouting terrible jokes and generally acting like morons while the incongruous laugh track reacts uproariously. Especially when compared to the clever, sophisticated Earl and The Office, this show comes off as a pale imitation of an earlier and much less funny era.
NBC does far better with its other launch of the week, the controversial drama The Book of Daniel (Fridays, 10 p.m.; premieres January 6 at 9 p.m.), although it doesn't exactly have the optimal time slot for a thoughtful show about serious issues. Its title character is an Episcopal minister who's the antithesis of 7th Heaven's Rev. Camden: He's addicted to painkillers, his wife is a lush, his son is gay, his daughter is dealing drugs and his other son is promiscuous, adopted and Chinese. On top of that, his brother-in-law has embezzled $3 million from the church, his sister-in-law is bisexual, and his Catholic priest buddy is in with the mob. Also, he talks to Jesus. Literally. And that's just the first episode.
Granted, Daniel pushes a little too hard to convince viewers of its edginess. The pilot is a bit cluttered as it crams in shocking flaws for each and every one of its characters. But once the conventions have been established and the show gets some room to breathe, what remains is a well-written and layered family drama that features the controversial religious aspect as only one element of its broader narrative template. Like FX's Rescue Me, Daniel uses Jesus' presence to serve as a moral sounding board for the lead character, and although Daniel's Christ (Garret Dillahunt) speaks in modern English and seems a little more tolerant than Pat Robertson, he is always the one telling Daniel to do the right thing and is never mocked in any way.
The rest of this week's premieres are both uncontroversial and uninteresting, putting them on par with the fall's offerings. We get the latest in the endless parade of procedural crime dramas with In Justice (ABC, Fridays, 9 p.m.), which follows a group of investigators who work to overturn sentences of the wrongly convicted. With the introduction of this show, the crime drama circle is now complete, as the technicians of CSI can catch the criminals, the prosecutor on Close to Home can put them behind bars, and the characters on this show can get them back out. Despite its twist on the format and a couple of semi-lively characters, In Justice is formulaic all the way.
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ABC is bringing back last year's mediocre midseason comedy, Jake in Progress, and pairing it with its distaff flipside, Emily's Reasons Why Not (Mondays, 9 p.m.). Heather Graham stars as a single young professional in New York whose dating travails follow the same Sex and the City-lite formula that Jake (and a number of other mediocre shows this season) employs. There are plenty of reasons why not to watch this show, including its endlessly annoying voiceovers, repetitive on-screen "reasons," stereotypical characters and overall shrill tone. The only reason why you might want to bother is Graham herself, who's an effortlessly charming presence and makes the show go down much more easily than it might have otherwise.
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The last network premiere of the week comes from producing titan Jennifer Lopez, so you know it has to be good. At least Lopez sticks to what she knows for her first foray into TV with South Beach (UPN, Wednesdays, 8 p.m.), a vapid, soapy drama about pretty young things in Miami. Never succeeding as genuine drama, South Beach is also not nearly campy enough to work as trashy entertainment. UPN's quickly-canceled Sex, Love and Secrets from the fall was much more fun to watch, and much more clever. All South Beach has going for it are some hot, young stars and pretty locations, and you can get those from a J.Lo video in a fraction of the time. Expect it to be gone and forgotten in time for the new season of America's Next Top Model in March.