Fox Offers an Early Glimpse of Its New Season

The Fox network Wednesday night got a jump on next week’s announcements of new fall television shows by releasing the details of the four new dramas and five new comedies it has ordered for the next television season.

Fox is picking up an unusually high number of new shows, partly because it has seen its momentum in prime time slacken over the past two years as its longtime bellwether show, “American Idol,” has suffered ratings declines.

So Fox is turning to some prominent television creators, including J.J. Abrams (“Lost”), Michael Schur (“Parks and Recreation”), Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs”) and Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (the “Transformer” movies) for its new roster of shows.

New stars for Fox include Andy Samberg, Andre Braugher, Greg Kinnear, Seth Green, Alexis Bledel and Terry O’Quinn.

Mr. Samberg, the former “Saturday Night Live” star, will headline a new comedy with Mr. Braugher (“Homicide”) called “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” set in a police precinct and created by Mr. Schur and his “Parks” partner Dan Goor.

Another comedy, “Dads,” stars Mr. Green, along with Giovanni Ribisi, as single guys whose lives are upended when their dads, Martin Mull and Peter Riegert, move in. Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy” is one of the creators.

“Us and Them” is an American adaptation of the British comedy hit “Gavin and Stacey” and stars Ms. Bledel (“Gilmore Girls”) and Jason Ritter (“Parenthood”) as a couple trying to survive their chaotic friends and family.

“Surviving Jack” is a new comedy from Mr. Lawrence, and it stars Christopher Meloni (“Law Order SVU”) as a father trying to raise a son in the 1990s.

The last new comedy is “Enlisted” which follows three brothers on a small Army base in Florida.

Fox managed to add one new successful drama this season, “The Following,” but it has holes to fill and four new hourlong entries to try to fill them.

Mr. Kinnear will star in a series called “Rake,” an adaptation of an Australian series about a gifted criminal defense lawyer with a self-destructive private life. Peter Tolan (“Rescue Me”) is one of the creators.

The new drama from the prolific Mr. Abrams is “Almost Human,” about police work 35 years in the future when cops are paired with lifelike androids, one of whom, a female, seems to have an emotional connection to her partner, who hates robots.

“Gang Related” is another crime drama, but a contemporary one, set in the world of a Los Angeles gang task force.

Maybe the most intriguing new Fox drama is “Sleepy Hollow,” which is a contemporary reworking of the Washington Irving story, with Ichabod Crane brought back to life to help solve a centuries-old mystery that threatens the future of humanity. It was created by Mr. Kurtzman and Mr. Orci.

Fox will announce its complete new schedule next Monday.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 9, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the surname of an actress in the cast of “Us and Them,” a new series on Fox. She is Alexis Bledel, not Blendel.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/business/media/fox-offers-an-early-glimpse-of-its-new-season.html?partner=rss&emc=rss