Upfronts: NBC

Upfront season is upon us again, as the networks introduce next season's lineup to ad buyers, media, and us, the viewing public. First up, NBC, who really hopes you're in the mood for a song. Or a show you may have seen before if you watch PBS or lived in the UK.

Returning Shows - most notable among the changes to returning shows is that Chuck gets moved to Friday, apparently in an attempt to kill it once and for all. That or have its smallish fanbase seem larger given the lower expectations for Fridays.

Both The Sing-Off and The Voice will return, and both will anchor Mondays, the former in the fall and the latter in the spring.

Everything else appears to be coming back to its current time slot, or will return to fill in during the summer (or later as things get cancelled).

New Shows - as usual, we'll take this by night.

Monday - Both new shows here hope to ride someone else's zeitgeist. The fall brings us The Playboy Club, which is set in the early '60s at Chicago's Playboy Club (for those of you who don't know what that is, here's a primer. It's NBC's attempt to get in on the Mad Men gravy train (ironically, one episode of that show involved scenes at New York's club). Hopefully they remember to focus on characters and story rather than history, otherwise this becomes a series version of NBC's insipid The '60s miniseries.

Notable cast includes Amber Heard and Eddie Cibrian. Not a whole lot of wow factor, though Heard seems like a solid choice to play a Bunny.

In the spring we get Smash, which follows the creation and casting of a Broadway show based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. I know it's not set at a school, but I'm calling this a Glee rip-off based on the likely abundance of show-stopping numbers. Otherwise, why cast American Idol finalist Katherine McPhee?

The cast is interesting - Debra Messing plays a writer and Anjelica Huston a producer - and Stephen Spielberg was somehow involved in coming up with the concept. There better be plenty of jazz hands.

Tuesday - no new shows

Wednesday - NBC has a pair of new comedies to start the night, or I suppose we could go with "new" as both tread some common ground. Up All Night is supposed to be an new take on the work/life/baby balance. Lorne Michaels is one of the creators, and it has good leads with Christina Applegate and Will Arnett (and Maya Rudolph as Applegate's still single boss). So perhaps they can find some new wrinkles to this concept.

This is followed by Free Agents, an workplace/romance comedy based on a UK show. Hank Azaria stars as a divorced PR exec who falls into bed with a colleague who lost a finace. They try to straighten out their relationship while Azaria's friends (one played by Buffy alum Anthony Head) work to get him back on the dating scene. I suppose this is better than the bevy of "create three couples and put them in situations" approach to sitcoms we've seen of late, but how much better is an open question.

Thursday - returns 2/3 of last season's comedy block, and wisely puts them back in a 8-10 framework. 30 Rock doesn't return until the spring, and in its place we get Whitney, which follows a happily unmarried couple that's trying to keep the spark alive while all their friends get hitched. Meh. The Whitney in this case is Whitney Cummings, who will also have a show she co-created on CBS this fall. When was the last time one person got cancelled on two networks in the same season?

The new drama at 10 is Prime Suspect, which may sound familiar to you as it's an American version of the much-lauded British series that starred Helen Mirren. The unenviable task of following in Mirren's shoes goes to Maria Bello. I have no idea why this seems like a good time to do this, other than the thought that if we could bring Parenthood back then anything less old is fair game.

I'm also not sure who the target audience is. People who watched the original may not want to see a remake (or at least I don't), and if you didn't watch the original I'm not sure what specifically would interest you in the remake. Heck, NBC may be better off rerunning the original.

Friday - Combine Buffy, murder police shows, and fairy tales and what do you get? You get Grimm, in which the lead, a homicide detective, learns he is actually a member of a family dedicated to protecting humans from supernatural creatures. I do not look forward to the episode where the lead pistol-whips an uncooperative naiad.

Duh, I should have seen the Buffy connection earlier, as this show is coming from one of that show's writers, David Greenwalt. Still, don't care.

Saturday - no new shows

Sunday - the spring brings us The Firm, which is in fact based on the John Grisham book of the same name. Rather than being a straight retelling, we pick 10 years after Mitch McDeere brought down the Memphis law firm for mobsters where he worked. Apparently things get a little boring after 10 years in the witness protection program, as Mitch and his family leave it to live in the open. And guess what? The mob is still a little ticked at him!

The only interest I have in this show is in learning why Mitch thought this would be a good idea.

Not Yet Scheduled - for sitcoms we have Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, based on Chelsea Handler's book of the same name (but starring Laura Prepon, with Handler playing an older sister), Best Friends Forever, where a newly-divorced woman moves in with her best friend, to the detriment of the friend's live-in boyfriend (WARNING: all of the actors have been in previously-cancelled mid-season romantic sitcoms), and Bent, where a lawyer/divorced mom falls for the shiftless handyman she hired to fix her new downsized house (starring Amanda Peet, who is clearly paying the price for some sort of karmic offense).

There are also three new unscripted shows: Betty White's Off Their Rockers (Punk'd, but with senior citizens pranking youngsters), a Brian Williams news magazine show and Fashion Star, which reads like Project Runway if you allowed any designers - clothes, jewelry, bags, whatever - to compete.

I'm 0 for 6 here. Well done, Peacock.