Kay McFadden / Times staff columnist
Shows are new, but summer's still a snooze

FOX In Fox's "The Jury," 12 ordinary people will piece together a puzzle and then make the most important decision of someone else's life. It premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday on KCPQ-TV.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most e-mailed articles

Other links Search event listings

Revolution is in the air, or so the headlines say.

Network television traditionally goes into a summer slump of low ratings and dozy reruns while viewers go outside to play or watch cable. It's been that way for a decade.

But now, some networks are shaking off their somnolence. Executives are proclaiming summer 2004 a groundbreaker that will bring viewers great new shows, stimulate advertising revenue and forever change the face of television.

The promises are thrilling on paper: short-run scripted series, just like cable; daring takes on traditional formats; interactive, not reactive, TV.

What's on tape is another story. We're nearly three weeks into the grand experiment, and if The WB's "Summerland," NBC's "Come to Papa" and Fox's "The Jury" are fair indications, one thing is clear:

This revolution will not be televised.

Substandard summer

So far, summer 2004 has delivered a standard soap opera, a substandard comedy and a legal drama whose concept confounds the senses and whose execution may thwart even the shortest attention span. (Read on for a review of "The Jury.")

It's difficult to see how these so-called summer series are different from the series that weren't good enough to get scheduled during the real season. In some cases, they are undoubtedly one and the same.
 
New reality series also have rained down over the past several weeks. But who can distinguish a summer reality show from a winter one? It's like being able to tell that Paris and Nicole are wearing less clothing.

The networks are not to be chided for trying to create a third season. From June through August, cable takes a bite out of audience share by running fresh series against network repeats. Nagging TV critics ask why the networks can't be more like cable.

Yet I suspect what's propelling Fox and The WB toward summer programming is not so much a bold leap as a shove from behind.

The WB's viewership was down significantly in the 2003-04 season. At the "upfronts," a preview of new shows in New York last month, Co-Chairman Garth Ancier conceded it was "a wake-up call."

Fox would seem to be in good shape thanks to the buzz surrounding "American Idol," "The O.C." and the critically praised "Arrested Development."

But take away "Idol" and last fall's baseball playoffs, and you have a network that rarely cracked the Top 20 in ratings all year.

In short, The WB and Fox can't expect much from repeats of their regular scripted series. They've got holes all over their schedules.

The problem, at least if you are a consumer, is that these holes are being filled with mediocre fluff and then presented as a season. It's a case of the emperor's new shows.

Desperation leads to utilitarianism, not innovation. The WB is unveiling a plethora of reality series that include "Superstar America," "High School Reunion" and "Wannabes," an actress version of rival UPN's "America's Next Top Model."

There's also the aforementioned "Summerland," a sappy drama starring Lori Loughlin as a career woman who raises her dead sister's three children.

"Summerland" bowed last week to mostly poor reviews but still scored higher ratings than did repeats of The WB's better-regarded "Gilmore Girls" and "Smallville" in the same time slots.

For The WB, that's a win. It justifies the notion that audiences will check out anything new, especially if the show is promoted as part of an exciting new season.

Yet if summer is the next big thing, why aren't the most successful networks joining in?

CBS, which ranked first in total viewers for the 2003-04 season, is resting on its repeats, confident that "CSI," "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Cold Case" will do well.

Ratings so far would confirm that strategy. Last Monday, for instance, CBS's 8-to-11 block of comedies and "CSI: Miami" blew away second-place NBC's "Fear Factor" and reality/dating special "The One That Got Away."

NBC, No. 2 in total viewers and No. 1 in ages 18 to 49, hasn't proclaimed an official summer position. The network is inserting the occasional new offering in weak slots while remaining mostly reliant on rerun powerhouses like "Friends" and "Law & Order." Its new offerings don't herald a dawning age of summer quality. "Come to Papa" is a staggeringly weak domestic sitcom, and the reality shows aired thus far smell of burnoff.

The network most adamant about summer's possibilities has been Fox. At the upfronts, entertainment President Gail Berman laid out a dazzling blueprint of schedules, commencing with a June to August season.

Among June shows are the "O.C."-like soap opera "North Shore," the sitcoms "Quintuplets" and "Method & Red," and "The Jury." The network also will introduce reality shows "The Casino" and "The Complex" and a second installment of "The Simple Life."

Clearly, Fox isn't bluffing, at least when it comes to turning its back on repeats of almost everything except its Sunday-night comedies and the durable "That '70s Show."

Should "The Jury" prove typical of what Fox is promoting as a revolution, however, viewers may take to their muskets.

"The Jury" is a crime

Debuting tomorrow in back-to-back episodes from 8 to 10 p.m., "The Jury" flaunts its production credentials. The creators are the distinguished Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana and James Yoshimura.

Come on. If the makers of "St. Elsewhere," "Oz" and "Homicide: Life on the Street" had a great new show, we wouldn't be watching it in June.

Each episode of "The Jury" features a group of jurors attempting to reach a verdict. During their decision-making, the program flashes back to courtroom arguments and bits of the original crime.

After a verdict is reached, the last scene tells what really happened.

Got that? Good, because you're expected to vote. The big gimmick in "The Jury" is that audiences will be able to text-message their opinions prior to the final reveal.

This might be enticing, were the plot not caught on the jagged teeth of its own mechanics. The script works so hard juggling its cumbersome parts and a cast that appears to rival a 1930s Hollywood musical, there's little room for color or thrills.

Or character development. Members of "The Jury" fall into stereotypes: the white female liberal, the angry blue-collar guy, the older black gentleman who is, inevitably, the foreman.

That could be a sensible way to set up tensions in a shorter drama: say, a film called "Twelve Angry Men." But for a weekly TV series, the simplicity is off-putting.

The dialogue is hokey and overly dramatic, another result of compression. The regulars — the prosecutor, judge, public defender, bailiff — are forced into improbable conflicts that undermine the whole point of a deliberative process.

On our Mojito meter, "The Jury" rates an empty glass. But you'll feel like you've downed a half-dozen after watching. If this is summer, switch me over to cable.

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com