A week after presenting its 2013-14 prime-time schedule at Carnegie Hall, CBS on Wednesday announced it has picked up another new series.
The network has scooped up Sony Pictures Television’s Bad Teacher, a single-camera comedy based on the Cameron Diaz film of the same name. (Released in July 2011, the movie grossed $100.3 million stateside.)
All told, it’s been one hell of a development season for Sony TV, which is producing eight new broadcast series. Other Sony newbies are: The Michael J. Fox Show, Welcome to the Family, Night Shift (originally titled After Hours) and The Blacklist (NBC); Rake and Us and Them (Fox); and ABC’s The Goldbergs.
Actress Ari Graynor (Mystic River, Fringe) will portray the character originated by Diaz. Other cast members include Kristin Davis (Sex and the City), David Alan Grier (In Living Color) and Sara Gilbert (Roseanne).
Bad Teacher joins a CBS freshman class that is particularly heavy on comedy. We Are Men breaks into the Monday night comedy lineup at 8:30 p.m., where it will lead out of How I Met Your Mother. At 9:30 p.m., Chuck Lorre’s Mom inherits the plum post-2 Broke Girls slot from Mike & Molly, which will return in mid-season.
After years of speculation, CBS has finally beefed up its Thursday night comedy lineup, adding two half-hour series with big stars attached. The Millers (8:30 p.m.) stars Will Arnett, Beau Bridges and Margo Martindale, and The Crazy Ones is a vehicle for Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Crazy marks Williams’ return to series television for the first time since Mork signed off to Orson for the last time in 1982.
Also in the hopper is the midseason James Van Der Beek/Brooklyn Decker sitcom, Friends with Better Lives (20th Century Fox Television).
CBS’ comedy investment is its most ambitious in recent memory. Last season, the network ordered just two sitcoms, Partners and Friend Me. The former was canceled after just six episodes, while the latter never made it to air.
Bad Teacher is the second new comedy based on a theatrical. NBC’s midseason entry About a Boy will lead out of The Voice in the Tuesday 9 p.m. slot.