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Women on Top
Entertainment Weekly - July 16, 1999
By Kristen Baldwin, Shawna Malcom
The networks are tweaking their lineups for fall, with trends both fresh and flat. Here's a peek.
Summer's in full swing, which is why we're obsessing over...the fall TV season. (Hey, it's never too early to plan a viewing schedule.) Sitting in the darkness of our offices, we've been sifting
through tapes of next season's shows, and a number of intriguing trends have already become apparent. For one thing, despite what you've heard, next year is not just about teen-skewing sitcoms and
dramas--though The WB alone does have 10 such shows on its schedule. We've noticed plenty of other patterns, the most promising of which is the lack of out-and-out stink bombs (like last year's
Nathan Lane debacle, Encore! Encore!). "There are more shows that have potential than in other years," says Tim Spengler, senior VP at Western Initiative Media. "The last two
seasons there was a lot more garbage." Some other tube trends we've picked up: feeling."
--WOMEN ON TOP Thanks to the surprise success of NBC's female-friendly Providence, fall is filled with women-starting-over shows. CBS' Family Law features Kathleen Quinlan as an abandoned wife who
rebuilds her law practice after her husband steals her clients. ABC's sitcom Then Came You revolves around a thirtysomething divorcee (Big Night's Susan Floyd) who falls for a twentysomething
hotel employee. And in CBS' Judging Amy, ex-NYPD Blue star Amy Brenneman plays a lawyer-turned-judge who leaves her husband and moves back in with her mother (Tyne Daly). "Providence's
success was really good news for us," says exec producer Brenneman, who based the series on her mother's experience as a juvenile-court judge. "It showed there was an audience for shows
about women at the crossroads of their lives."
Copyright © 1999 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
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