Upfronts; NBC

Not surprisingly, there's a number of new shows on tap for NBC next season. That's what happens when your plan to fill five hours a week with a half-baked attempt at a prime time talk/variety show achieves its destiny by tanking. Still, it's not as bad as they year ABC brought on something like 25 new shows. So what's on tap?

What's gone - the two most notable cancellations are Law and Order and Heroes, neither of which was a surprise given the amount of chatter about cancellation beforehand. Mercy and Trauma also got the official axe, ending months of being on TV's version of a permanent vegetative state.

Night by night - here's how NBC's schedule looks as of now:

Monday - Chuck returns, thrilling its dozens of loyal fans. (That's a joke, save your hate mail).  It will be paired with two new shows. One is the conspiracy thriller The Event, which sees an "Everyman" uncover what's described as "the biggest cover-up in US history" while investigating the disappearance of his fiance. The cast has some notable names (Blair Underwood, Laura Innez, Zeljko Ivanek), but from a first reading it comes off as Vanished 2.0, which is a problem given how few of us were interested in the original.

This is followed by Chase, a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced hour about a team of US Marshals who try to catch America's most dangerous criminals. Nothing really jumps out at me from the description or the cast, and if not for Bruckheimer's name I'd think this generic sounding show would be toast by Christmas.

Tuesday - Two hours of The Biggest Loser followed by Parenthood, which against all odds seems to be working.

Wednesday - This is likely going to be NBC's most talked-about night of programming going into the season. It starts with Undercovers, the post-Lost project of JJ Abrams. It follows a married couple - who met as spies and retired when they fell in love - who get back into the espionage game when a friend of theirs disappears while investigating a Russian arms dealer. As with Chase, I don't know if this would really interest me without Abrams' involvement. I am more likely to check this out than Chase based on Abrams alone, but I do fear it's going to go the Alias route.

This is followed by Law and Order: SVU and Law and Order: Los Angeles. I can't say I care about either, and while the franchise will likely benefit from the west coast reboot, I don't know that we need yet another show involving LA-based cops and lawyers.

Thursday - Almost unchanged, as the quartet of sitcoms in residence this season will return, just with a slight change of times (30 Rock and Parks and Recreation are swapping time slots). With Parks and Rec slated to return in the spring, the fall will bring us Outsourced, where an employee of a midwestern novelties company is sent to India to oversee its new call center. Wacky culture clashes ensue, which could be an amusing twist on a popular business phenomenon or a half-hour of poorly done ethnic jokes ("Did you ever notice that Bengalis drive like this, while Kashmiris drive like this...). Still, I'm hopeful.

We then get an hour-long comedy to end the night, Love Bites, or more accurately, Love: New American Style. Becki Newton (Ugly Betty) and Jordana Spiro (My Boys) play friends who are still single, and its around them that each week's trio of romantic plot lines will turn. The show promises an edgy and irreverent spin to things, though I don't suppose it'd promise to be sappy, would it?

Friday - Brings back Dateline NBC and the celebrity family tree-tracing Who Do You Think You Are?, and adds to it Outlaw, which features Jimmy Smits as a Supreme Court justice who quits the bench so he can defend the little guy. There's a suggesting that this won't be as hokey as it sounds - Smits' character is supposed to be a bit of a rogue, and the idea that he'll use his inside knowledge of the justice system may bring us some juicy moments - but this does not sound promising. This is apparently the show that NBC bought from Conan O'Brien, I'm assuming because they felt bad about what they did to him.

There is also the reality show School Pride, where a team goes all Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on a run down school, with the idea that a better facility will translate into a better student body. It's not the worst idea, either for TV or education.

Saturday - repeats

Sunday - Football for the fall, and the combination of Dateline, Minute to Win It, and Celebrity Apprentice in the spring. In other words, NBC will own the night for half the season and take a knee for the other half.

The Replacements - there are a number of shows waiting in the wings for the inevitable failures. For dramas, we have The Cape, where a cop framed for murder by his crooked department goes into hiding and fights the corrupt system in the guise of his son's favorite comic book hero, The Cape. This is sadly the better of the relief dramas, as Harry's Law looks to combine Six Degrees and Eisenhower and Lutz by creating a strip mall law firm out of people who just kind of run into each other.

The sitcoms are even less interesting, as you have rehashes of Friends (Friends with Benefits), How I Met Your Mother/Rules of Engagement/Any Show Featuring a Group of Married People (Perfect Couples), and Curb Your Enthusiasm/It's Garry Shandling's Show (The Paul Reiser Show). I really, really hope Outsourced doesn't suck. And as bad as these sound, they're no worse than a lateral move from The Jay Leno Show.