WEDNESDAY 10-11
ABC Nashville vs. NBC Chicago Fire
Oh, to have seen the look on Denis Leary’s face when he was told that NBC was about to revive the long-dormant firehouse drama. The sandpaper-nerved comic’s searing FX vehicle Rescue Me had been off the air a little more than eight months when NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt announced that Dick Wolf’s Chicago Fire would introduce the neglected genre to a new generation of viewers.
The first look at Chicago Fire was about what one would expect from the man who brought us the Law & Order franchise: workplace drama, blue-collar grit, grim-faced stoicism in the face of danger. Plus, there’s a guy who takes his shirt off every chance he gets, no doubt catnip for the considerable number of those who fetishize fi refi ghters.
At first blush, ABC’s Nashville seems like the Music City version of Smash. This sudsy musical pits country crooner Connie Britton (in the Shelby Lynne role) against Auto-Tuned pop tart Hayden Panettiere, who portrays a sort of Knight Rider evil twin version of Taylor Swift. Nashville has a good shot at finding an audience in the post-Grey’s Anatomy time slot, though so much has to go right if the show is to sidestep the inherent pitfalls of the genre.
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