7 New Fall TV Shows Featuring Broadway Stars
The fall TV season is here, and if you look carefully enough, you'll be able to spot a number of famous faces from the world of Broadway. Let us be your Broadway guide to seven of the new shows you'll want to watch in order to get your theater fix.
1. Murphy Brown
Network: CBS
Premiere Date: September 27
Broadway vet Candice Bergen (The Best Man) revisits her beloved title character, Murphy Brown, a journalist who decides to return to the airwaves to combat the stream of fake news crossing the country. The complete original cast will come back for this revival, with Tony winner Tyne Daly (Downstairs) joining the team as Phyllis, the new proprietor of Murphy's favorite watering hole, Phil's Bar. We're looking forward to seeing these two theatrical heavy-hitters back on our TV screens for the first time in a decade.
2. The Connors
Network: ABC
Premiere Date: October 16
(© David Gordon)
John Goodman (The Front Page) and two-time Tony winner Laurie Metcalf (Three Tall Women) head the cast of this spinoff of the recent Roseanne reboot, which finds the members of the iconic television family (minus the show's original leading lady) forced to look at their daily struggles in a way they never have before. Metcalf received three Emmy Awards for her performance as Aunt Jackie during the show's original run, with another nomination this year. She's sure to earn a new piece of statuary for her shelf (and will hopefully come back to Broadway shortly thereafter).
3. One Dollar
Network: CBS All-Access
Premiere Date: August 30
Set in a small rust belt steel town, One Dollar is told through several different perspectives as a dollar bill changes hands and connects a disparate group of people to a shocking murder. Stage vets Philip Ettinger (Bad Jews), Christopher Denham (Red Light Winter), and Nathaniel Martello-White (People, Places & Things) head the cast, with recurring appearances from Tony winner Leslie Odom Jr. (Hamilton), Jeff Perry (August: Osage County), and Ashlie Atkinson (Fat Pig). In the vein of plays like Sweat, One Dollar explores economic status, the decline of the steel industry, class issues, and cultural divides. You know theatrical sparks will fly, and it couldn't be a timelier story to tell.
4. The Romanoffs
Network: Amazon Prime
Premiere Date: October 12
Written, produced, and directed by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, The Romanoffs is an anthology series that features eight separate fictional stories about people who think they're descended from the Russian royal family. The wide-ranging cast list includes stage vets Andrew Rannells (The Boys in the Band), Corey Stoll (Othello), Kathryn Hahn (Boeing-Boeing), Isabelle Huppert (The Mother), Ben Miles (Wolf Hall), John Slattery (The Front Page) and Amanda Peet (The Commons of Pensacola), among many others. Weiner is known for casting from the Broadway talent pool, and it's always made for great television. Just ask Robert Morse.
5. Maniac
Network: Netflix
Premiere Date: September 21
Two strangers take part in a mysterious pharmaceutical trial in this new equally mysterious (and as of right now, very tight-lipped) Netflix series. Oscar winner Emma Stone, last seen on Broadway in Cabaret, heads the cast, alongside Tony nominees Sally Field (The Glass Menagerie), Gabriel Byrne (Long Day's Journey Into Night), and Billy Magnussen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike). None one knows what to expect from this piece of sci-fi, but how can you say no to a cast like that?
6. Kidding
Network: Showtime
Premiere Date: September 9
Jim Carrey's never been on Broadway, but he's surrounded himself with a number of theatrical pros: Catherine Keener (Burn This), Judy Greer (Dead Accounts), and four-time Tony winner Frank Langella (The Father). If that's not enough, Kidding is coproduced and cowritten by playwright Halley Feiffer, whose warped sense of humor, on display in plays like How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them, is sure to elevate this new series about a children's TV icon learning to cope with the cruelty of the real world, to new levels of demented hilarity.
7. The Good Cop
Network: Netflix
Premiere Date: September 21
A buddy comedy starring Josh Groban (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812) and Tony Danza (Honeymoon in Vegas), as father-and-son police officers — one good (Groban), one disgraced (Danza) — who are both named Tony? Count us in. Even if Groban doesn't sing, you already know this pairing will make a delightful odd couple for the 21st century. And who knows? Maybe they can be persuaded to do a musical episode in the future.
