ABC Picks Up Reba McEntire Comedy Pilot ‘Malibu Country’ To Series
ABC is finishing up the slew of new series orders and renewals. The Reba McEntire-starring comedy Malibu Country was the only pilot left in contention when the network made the bulk of its pickups about an hour ago. I hear the multi-camera sitcom will be paired with another multi-camera comedy fronted by a sitcom star Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing. The deal to renew the freshman comedy is almost done. The pickup of Malibu Country, which co-stars Sara Rue, means that NBC’s new series Guys With Kids will have to recast the role she played as a guest star in the pilot as she was in second position to Malibu Country.
For those keeping score, ABC picked up a total of 9 pilots to series today, five dramas and four comedies. The network also will likely look at a couple of other comedy pilots, including the well-received Daddy’s Girls and Ladyfriends, which barely missed the cut at NBC.
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not sure why but I have been super excited about this show. I enjoyed Reba for some reason and think this one will be even better.
I enmjoyed the series Reba, but I think tht had less to do with Reba McEntire and more to do with the cast that surrounded her, especially Steve Howey and Melissa Peterman. I think I remember reading this had Lily Tomlin, who is hilarious, and Sarah Rue isn’t so bad, either.
FINALLY! The news I’ve been waiting for since the pilot was announced last September! Thank you, ABC!
Did the Mandy Moore pilot get picked up? Also is the Rossane/John Goodman pilot at NBC dead?
I really hope daddys girls is picked up. NBC is stupid to let it go.
SHOCKED that AMERICANA is dead.
Hallelujah! Now if they’d only pick up “The Smart One”, my dream revamped (stay clean, please) TGIF would be in place with
8.00 Last Man Standing
8.30 How to Live
9.00 Malibu Country
9.30 The Smart One
They should slot LAST MAN STANDING (8:00pm) and MALIBU COUNTRY (8:30pm) on Fridays and move SHARK TANK to 9:00pm. I’d watch the entire two hours.
Ugh, now officially boycotting ABC. Firstly they shoot themselves in the foot by completely mistreating Pan Am, and sabotaging what could have been a fantastic series. Then they give me (false) hope that I could still have the brilliant Karine Vanasse on my screen in Scruples, and then they don’t pick it up even though it sounded by far to be the most original and fun of the pilots in contention.
Hopefully Ms Vanasse will get cast in a successful show NOT on ABC very soon, and I hope all their new shows fail miserably.
How exactly did ABC mistreat Pan Am? They marketed the heck out of it and it premiered to huge numbers… but the vast majority of people didn’t like it and stopped tuning in. I was a big fan of the show, but if people don’t watch it, you can’t blame the network.
‘They marketed the heck out of it’
Yeah before the pilot aired maybe, but after that the marketing was practically non-existent. Not to mention they stuck it in the 10pm Sunday night death slot, bizarrely decided to air the episodes out of order so that entire plot lines seemed to have been dropped and then re-appeared weeks later, and not to mention they stuck massive hiatuses in between each episode so that the viewing audience never actually knew if the show was airing week to week. No wonder the ratings dropped so massively.
The fact is that ABC had all the raw ingredients to make a really great show with Pan Am, but after the first couple of episodes aired they seemed to completely forget it existed and treated it like the bastard step-child of the network, like they actually wanted it to fail IMO.
I watched the Pan Am pilot and I just woke up five minutes ago.
Pan Am Pilot costs 10 Million Dollar!
But rating is Very Bad….
Pan Am was not treated any worse than any network ever treats a series. Any series is given a marketing push before its premiere, and from that point, it’s left to sink or swim on its own merits. The network needs to save its marketing dollars for the next crop of hopeful series, of which there is always plenty.
Pan Am sunk because it simply wasn’t very good. I watched it all the way through and I was not impressed. It was nice to look at, but the writing veered from okay by broadcast standards to dopey. It was trying to ape Mad Men, but the writing was far too obvious and clumsy.
I’m glad ABC cancelled it and gave its timeslot to another series that, who knows, might actually be worth bothering with. Those are rare on broadcast, but unless they keep trying, they’ll never get any.
Pan Am did itself in with boring stories and utterly stupid plots. ABC stuck with it longer than I thought they would.
you mentioned earlier that AMERICANA could still make it? still the case? what about MANDY?