The 2015-16 prime-time television series begins tonight, including the premieres of the comedy “Life in Pieces” on CBS and the dramas “Minority Report” on Fox and “Blindspot” on NBC.
“Life in Pieces,” which airs at 8:30 p.m., departs from the usual comedy format by telling multiple, separate stories in each episode about a family consisting of siblings Colin Hanks, Thomas Sadoski and Betsy Brandt and parents portrayed by James Brolin and Dianne Wiest.
The format was inspired by how television presented Warner Bros. cartoons, creator Justin Adler said at last month’s Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour.
Adler recalled being assigned to write an episode for a series he did not name and “realized I had written the same exact episode on a different show eight years before.”
“I started thinking, ‘Why is this happening?’ because this is a room of really talented, funny writers,” said Adler, who was a producer on the ABC comedies “Better Off Ted,” “Less Than Perfect” and “Samantha Who?” “I started thinking about how maybe it’s structural.
“When you have the same 21 minutes and 30 seconds to tell a relatable family story or relatable office story it’s no wonder you start falling into the same patterns with how you tell it.
“So then I started thinking back to one of my most favorite shows growing up, ‘Looney Tunes.’
“I loved how it had independent stories, multiple stories within a half- hour episode and each story had its own beginning, middle and end. I thought why couldn’t you do that with a big, extended family?”
Adler said he modeled the series’ family after his own. He is the youngest in a family of three children, with a brother as the middle child and a sister as the oldest.
“I’m a big believer in birth order and how that affects personality,” Adler said. “That was a good starting point to really start developing these characters.”
“Minority Report,” airing at 9 p.m. on Fox, is based on the 2002 film directed by Steven Spielberg and is the first of his films to be adapted for television. Spielberg is an executive producer of the series.
“Minority Report” is set in Washington, D.C., in 2065, 10 years after the closure of PreCrime, the law enforcement agency depicted in the film that stopped murderers before they acted by using three mutated humans known as Precogs who “previsualize” crimes by receiving visions of the future.
In the television version, Precog Dash (Stark Sands) returns in secret to help police detective Lara Vega (Meagan Good) attempt to stop the murders that he predicts.
They form an uneasy alliance with Dash’s manipulative twin brother Arthur (Nick Zano) who uses his ability to advance his self-interest. The cast also includes Wilmer Valderrama as Vega’s newly appointed boss, and Laura Reagan as Arthur’s ingenious but reclusive foster sister.
“Blindspot,” which airs at 10 p.m. on NBC, stars Jaimie Alexander as a beautiful woman with no memories of her past who is found naked in an unclaimed duffel bag in Times Square with her body fully covered in intricate tattoos.
Her discovery sets off a vast and complex mystery that draws the attention of one of the FBI’s most seasoned agents, Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton), who begins to follow the road map on her body to reveal a larger conspiracy of crime while bringing her closer to discovering the truth about her identity.
The show’s executive producers include Greg Berlanti, an executive producer of The CW superhero dramas “Arrow” and “The Flash,” the NBC crime drama, “The Mysteries of Laura,” and the new CBS superhero drama “Supergirl.”
“Blindspot” fulfills creator Martin Gero’s longtime desire “to do a mystery puzzle show, something the audience can engage in.”
“I love ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ ‘The Goonies’ and ‘National Treasure,’ that fun adventure where you feel like you can solve it along with the characters,” said Gero, who had been a producer of the HBO detective dramedy “Bored to Death” and creator of the CW drama “The L.A. Complex.” “It’s just really hard to do on TV.”
Gero said “the image of the woman covered in a treasure map with an FBI agent’s name on her back came to me. I thought ‘This is something.’ We’ll figure this out.”
Gero describes “Blindspot” as “a procedural for people who don’t like procedurals, a character drama for people who don’t like character dramas. We just sprinkle in great amount of action on top.”
“It will feel familiar in a way that’s not alienating, but unique and original in its own way,” Gero told City News Service. “The character stories that we’re telling are extremely unique, but really beautiful and emotional.”
