With this week’s Uprfont presentations by the television networks now concluded, it has been revealed that a number of stage favorites will be returning to series television in new shows during the 2008-2009 season.
Tony Award nominee Rufus Sewell (Rock ‘n’ Roll) will be the star of CBS’ The Eleventh Hour, an adaptation of a British series about a government agent who saves people from the abuses of sciences.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, last seen on Broadway in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, will be part of FOX’s comedy Do Not Disturb, about the wacky goings-on at a local inn, while Radio Golf star Harry Lennix will co-star in FOX’s highly anticipated Dollhouse, created by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
Lucille Lortel Award winner Gloria Reuben will co-star alongside Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Jane Kaczmarek in TNT’s legal drama Raising the Bar, while the network also approved Truth in Advertising starring Eric McCormack, who starred on Broadway in The Music Man, and Tom Cavanagh, who will appear this summer in the Williamstown Theatre Festival-Bay Street Theatre co-production of Christopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy.
As previously reported, HBO will air The No 1. Ladies Detective Agency, starring Tony Award winner and current Cat on a Hot Tin Roof star Anika Noni Rose, as a series in 2009. The show, based on a series of books by Alexander McCall Smith, features Rose as the loyal secretary of agency owner Precious Ramotswe (to be played by Jill Scott). At Friday’s Drama League Awards luncheon, Rose told TheaterMania she will leave this summer to film in Botswana (where the show’s pilot was filmed).
At the Drama League event, honoree and 2008 Tony Award nominee Bobby Cannavale also told TheaterMania that he will be filming the ABC pilot Cupid this summer, an update of the former Jeremy Piven series. The show, if picked-up, will shoot in New York, allowing Cannavale to continue his stage work.
In other news, it has been confirmed that ABC’s Ugly Betty, which co-stars Broadway veteran Vanessa Williams, will film in New York City next season.
