Matt LeBlanc starts in Man with a Plan.
Global Television is “MacGyvering” its 2016-17 line-up with a reboot of the cheesy 1980s action-drama, with X-Men star Lucas Till taking over the role made famous by Richard Dean Anderson.
Airing Fridays at 8 p.m., the MacGyver reboot – which comes from Hawaii Five-O showrunner Peter Lenkoff – is one of 11 new shows being added to Global’s primetime schedule.
Barb Williams, executive vice-president and chief operating officer for Corus Entertainment, said the new additions were “strategically selected” to build on established franchises, while simultaneously building a younger audience through comedy and adding buzz-worthy dramas to its existing roster.
Global will broadcast 15 hours of its prime time schedule in simulcast with its U.S. counterparts, which Williams said would position the network to deliver big audiences for advertisers.
MacGyver is being joined by a one-hour drama chronicling a pre-fame Dr. Phil McGraw (Bull, airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m.), and a drama about the first woman to play Major League Baseball (Pitch, airing Thursdays at 9 p.m.).
Global is also sprinkling in four new comedies, all featuring well-known sitcom stars. The new additions include Kevin James’ first network TV role since the 2007 conclusion of his long-running CBS sitcom King of Queens, along with new starring vehicles for Friends star Matt LeBlanc and Ted Danson (Fargo, Cheers).
In Kevin Can Wait (Mondays at 8 p.m.), James plays a newly retired police officer whose plans for a cushy retirement are complicated by his wife and three kids.
It will be followed at 8:30 p.m. by Man with a Plan, which marks LeBlanc’s first appearance on network TV since the 2006 conclusion of the ill-fated Friends spin-off Joey (though he is also appearing in the under-appreciated Showtime series Episodes).
The show stars LeBlanc as a man whose wife returns to work, leaving him to take care of the family’s young kids – who turn out to be more than he can handle.
Global’s completely revamped Monday night schedule continues at 10 p.m. with Timeless, an action-adventure series starring Abigail Spencer (Suits) and Matt Lanter (90210) that follows a group of unlikely heroes as they chase a mysterious group of criminals through time, encountering some of biggest moments in history along the way.
Airing at 9 p.m. Tuesdays, Bull stars former NCIS star Michael Weatherly as Phil McGraw in a show focusing on the future daytime TV star’s time heading one of the most prolific trial consulting firms of all time, Courtroom Sciences Inc. (CSI).
Elsewhere, a new Thursday night comedy block features The Good Place, starring Danson and Veronica Mars star Kristin Bell, who plays the colourfully named Eleanor Shellstrop – who enters the after-life and realizes she wasn’t a very good person.
Elsewhere on Thursday, Joel McHale (Community, The Soup) stars in The Great Indoors, playing a man who leaves behind his thrilling life as an adventure reporter for an outdoor magazine to become the desk-bound boss of a group of millennials in the publication’s digital department.
The other addition to Global’s Thursday night line-up is Pure Genius, a medical drama airing at 10 p.m. that follows a Silicon Valley tech billionaire (played by The Borgias’ Augustus Prew) who creates a cutting-edge hospital that treats only the rarest medical mysteries – all for free.
Mid-season shows include The Blacklist: Redemption, which follows Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold, The Blacklist) as he joins forces with Susan “Scottie” Hargrave (Famke Janssen, X-Men), who heads a covert mercenary organization called Grey Matters.
Another mid-season series sees the addition of Chicago Justice to Dick Wolf’s growing Chicago franchise. The legal drama follows the state attorney’s team of prosecutors and investigators.
Canadian additions to the schedule include the suspense drama Ransom, a joint effort between Global and France’s TF1 (with CBS also joining as a broadcast partner); Mary Kills People, a six-part series about a single mother and doctor who helps terminally ill patients with assisted suicide; and the fifth instalment of Big Brother Canada.
Returning series for the 2016-17 season include two war-horses in Survivor and The Simpsons (returning for their 33rd and 28th seasons respectively); the NCIS franchise (NCIS, NCIS: LA and NCIS: New Orleans), which reached nearly 6 million weekly viewers; the Chicago franchise (Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med), which reaches more than 4 million weekly viewers; and the top 20 series Blacklist (which will introduce its own mid-season spin-off The Blacklist: Redemption).
Other returning series include Madam Secretary, Elementary and Hawaii Five-O. Late-night returnees include The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and the weekend mainstay Saturday Night Live.
