Some familiar faces will be missing from CBS's fall lineup - and some familiar faces will be joining it.
Among the surprises is that Bob Newhart's "Bob" isn't on the schedule - although reportedly it may return as a midseason replacement. And among the shows getting the ax are "Major Dad," "The Golden Palace" and, as previously announced, "Designing Women."Among the stars of CBS's new shows are Harry Anderson, Bronson Pinchot, Faye Dunaway, Robert Urich, Beau Bridges and Connie Chung.
CBS has made the biggest changes on its weakest nights - Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
No. 1 in the ratings for two years in a row, the network has added nine new series - five half-hour comedies, an hourlong comedy, two dramas and a news magazine.
NEW SHOWS
CBS's new sitcoms, and the network's descriptions of them:
- "Dave's World," which stars Harry Anderson and is based on Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry's syndicated columns.
- "The Trouble with Larry" stars Bronson Pinchot ("Perfect Strangers") and Courtney Cox ("Family Ties") in a comedy "about a colorful adventurer, missing and presumed dead for 13 years, who resurfaces and moves in with his former wife and her new family."
- "The Nanny" stars Fran Drescher ("Princesses") as a "quintessential `girl' from Queens, who appears at the doorstep of a widowed Broadway producer's upscale Manhattan townhouse as a door-to-door cosmetics peddler, and moves in as the nanny."
- "It Had to be You" is the series debut of Faye Dunaway, who plays "an acerbic socialite, a publisher who meets her match in the most unlikely man, carpenter Mitch Quinn (Robert Urich)."
- "Family Album" is about a doctor and his wife who "pack up their three kids in California and move back to Philadelphia to be near their folks." The large cast is headed by Peter Scolari ("Newhart") and Pamela Reed.
And CBS's new hourlong shows are:
- "South of Sunset," an action/drama that stars Glen Frey as a "Los Angeles private detective whose clients are falling in and out of the illusion called the California Dream."
- "Angel Falls" a drama about a single mother who moves back to her home town after her father's death to take over his business, the Red Eye Pool Hall. No stars have been announced for the large, ensemble cast.
- "Harts of the West" stars Beau Bridges in a comedy about "a 41-year-old big city lingerie salesman whose recent coronary episode has convinced him it's time to take a chance on his lifelong dream . . . to be a cowboy." So he buys a broken-down Nevada Ranch. Lloyd Bridges has a recurring role (though not as Beau's father).
- "Eye to Eye with Connie Chung," a weekly news magazine.
CANCELLATIONS
Other shows biting the dust include "Bodies of Evidence," "Dudley," "The Hat Squad," "How'd They Do That?," "The Raven," "Space Rangers," "Street Stories" (although it will continue with new segments through the summer) and "Top Cops."
"Knots Landing" retired after 14 seasons.
MIDSEASON REPLACEMENTS
CBS has announced three shows that will premiere sometime during the coming season:
- "Tom," a sitcom starring Tom Arnold as a blue-collar worker.
- "Down Home," a drama about a family who moves from New Jersey to New Orleans, "where the husband joins his father-in-law in the tugboat business on the Mississippi River."
- "Diagnosis Murder," in which Dick Van Dyke returns as the crime-solving doctor he's portrayed in three TV movies.