CTV bosses are touting an upcoming TV lineup that looks a lot like the current one.
Executives detailed their fall and winter plans Thursday with help from celebrities including Hayley Atwell of Marvel’s Agent Carter, Charlie Weber from How To Get Away With Murder, and James Pickens Jr., from Grey’s Anatomy.
CTV said it’s a “stable” prime-time schedule with the “fewest time slot changes.”
Returning shows include the country’s top comedy, The Big Bang Theory; top drama, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; top new series, The Flash; and top Canadian series, Masterchef Canada.
“We’ve had the best year in a decade, we’ve grown our audiences year after year, we’ve got more Top 20 shows than we’ve ever had, we’re hitting home runs on most every night,” said Mike Cosentino, CTV’s senior vice-president of programming.
“We went into the L.A. screenings with a goal to strengthen a few particular areas and we think we have.”
Cosentino and his team bought four new U.S. series for the fall: the mystery thriller Blindspot for Monday nights, the Marcia Gay Harden hospital drama Code Black to air on Wednesdays, and the Don Johnson strike-it-rich family drama Blood & Oil and conspiracy drama Quantico, both for Sunday’s schedule.
Midseason additions include the superhero series DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, the Shonda Rhimes thriller The Catch, and the devilish police procedural Lucifer.
Lucifer has generated a fair amount of chatter already for its bizarre premise, drawn from a Neil Gaiman comic book.
A petition from the organization One Million Moms seeks to stop the show from hitting the air on Fox, apparently taking issue with its flattering portrayal of the devil.
Tom Ellis stars as the demon, who retires to L.A. after getting bored with life in hell. He called the outcry “a knee-jerk reaction.”
“It’s a satire. It’s based on a comic book, not on the big book,” said Ellis, who added that not only did he grow up in the Christian faith, but his father and uncle are both Baptist ministers and his sister is training to be one, too.
“And they are all very pleased for me that I am doing this because they understand what it is.”
CTV’s parent company Bell Media was the last to detail its TV plans following more low-key presentations by Rogers Media for City and Shaw Media for Global earlier this week. CBC revealed its slate May 28.
