Update!

Press Tour: Can ABC Revive the Family Comedy?

Get news on Modern Family, The Middle, Hank and Cougar Town

By Drusilla Moorhouse, Jennifer Godwin Aug 08, 2009 11:57 PMTags
Julie Bowen, Patricia Heaton, Courtney CoxABC/BOB D'AMICO, ABC/CRAIG SJODIN, ABC/KEVIN FOLEY

Good morning, TV fans! We're at the Television Critics Association press tour today, gathering news about the Alphabet's upcoming series. 

We've got the wonderful Modern Family, then Patricia Heaton's The Middle, Kelsey Grammer's Hank (the panel for which was largely a great chance for Grammer to smack around Fox and CBS), and last but not least, Cougar Town and the comedy stylings of creator Bill Lawrence.

Read on for the funny...

Modern Family: There is no TV justice if Modern Family doesn't turn into a big hit. The cast, which includes the likes of Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Julie Bowen, Ed O'Neill and Sofia Vergara, is awesome, and show runner Steve Levitan (Just Shoot Me) is clearly a prototypical TV boss.

Where does the funny come from? Real life. The relationship between ol' man Ed O'Neill and foxy Sofia Vergara, for example, is inspired by Levitan's observation that, "There are fathers in my daughters' classes that are in their 70s and 80s, and I see them trying to keep up with their families. My daughters' school has this giant staircase...and you could see the older fathers just trudging along, trying to keep up with everybody else." Ed's character, see, is supposed to be living on his own terms at this stage in his life, but is going to have to continue trudging along to the beat of Vergara's character's drum.

But the show isn't just going to be as easy as stealing from real life—the comedy mojo of the actors is key, and as Levitan says, "I think comedy is harder than drama. To play comedy well, you have to play drama well, and then a layer of comedy." With likes of Bowen and O'Neill in the cast, Modern Family should be able to pull that off, easy.

Modern Family premieres Sept. 23 at 9 p.m.

The Middle: Yay for the Midwest. The title of The Middle refers to both middle-class life and the big middle of the United State (the show is set in Indiana), and native Midwesterner/executive producer DeAnne Heline says, "It's wish fulfillment. We go back home, and people are just so nice to you in the drugstore, and we know so many people there that we love, and we felt like they deserve a show, too."

Star Neil Flynn is from Chicago, and Patricia Heaton told reporters at the press tour, "I had an agent who told me I had to lose my Cleveland accent or I would never work, and all I've ever done is play Midwesterners."

And how do these Midwestern roots inform the series? Exec producer Heline says we can expect an episode set in a corn maze, and in another, "Where I grew up, when the Indianapolis 500 happened, there was a street near us called Forest View. They would have the Forest View 500, and it was a circuit, and the dads would all get out their riding mowers and do three laps. We'll do an episode like that."

Check out ABC's new Midwestern showcase, The Middle, on Sept. 30 at 8:30 p.m.

Hank: Hank, the Kelsey Grammer series, is one of ABC's more tepid offerings this season, and the TCA press tour panel did nothing to dispel that impression. However, reporters did enjoy Kelsey Grammer's discourses on the failure of his previous series, Back To You, and NBC's shenanigans with Medium, which he executive-produces.

Grammer says that Back To You was doomed by a combination of factors, including the writers' strike, his own heart attack in June 2008, and yes, that "the guy who never wanted the show in the first place was now running Fox." (Producers had pitched Back To You to Kevin Reilly when he was at NBC and he passed then. Ruh-roh.)

As for Medium, now at CBS, the show was always relegated to stepchild status at NBC, but according to Grammer, it wasn't exactly honored by CBS, either. Says Grammer, "I pitched it to Les Moonves originally and he spent the next four years trying to make the same show. When they said Medium could be a nice offspring of Ghost Whisperer, I thought that was disingenuous." Preach it, Kelsey.

Hank premieres Sept. 30 at 8 p.m.

Cougar Town: We know you've heard of Cougar Town, because it stars former Friend Courteney Cox Arquette, but you might not know that the creator, Bill Lawrence (Spin City, Scrubs), more or less based Arquette's character on his real-life wife, Christa Miller (who played Jordan on Scrubs).

According to Lawrence, the opening scene of Cougar Town, where Arquette inspects her fortysomething body, is inspired by a real incident from Bill and Christa's lives together. According to Bill, "After Chris had our first baby, I walked past her in the bathroom after she got out of the shower and she just looked at herself and said, 'F--k.' And I just thought that was so funny." And then off Miller's look, Lawrence quipped, "I just ruined my weekend." Mocking Miller was a theme of the panel, as Lawrence also announced to the assembled reporters, "[My relationship with] Courteney is the best relationship I’ve ever had with any female."

As for Arquette, who is playing 41 on the series, she fielded a question about Jennifer Aniston's similar-sounding feature, Pumas, and announced a new paradigm (apparently pumas and cougars are different, just FYI): "Pumas are in their 30s, cougars are in the 40s, jaguars are in their 50s, and saber-tooth tigers go right into their 60s." And there you have it, folks.

Cougar Town premieres Sept. 23 at 9:30 p.m. Be there!

Poll

ABC Comedies Poll

Which ABC comedy are you most excited to see?
Cougar Town
57.2%
Hank
2.5%
The Middle
5.8%
Modern Family
34.4%