Elizabeth Guider Reports: Twentieth Century Fox’s Comedy-Heavy Slate

LOS ANGELES: Elizabeth Guider surveyed a number of buyers about Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution’s new slate of series, which includes a host of comedies, among them Ryan Murphy’s The New Normal for NBC.

There’s a reason the Hollywood heavyweights dominate the biz year after year: Even when one or another is dealt a relatively negligible hand, it can rely on its other games to make its rubber, as it were. The bridge analogy applies in the TV trenches just as much as in the film fray, where an Avengers can quickly offset a John Carter, a wacky Lorax make up for a foundering Battleship.

Consider this go-round for Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, which is hawking a handful of prime-time network sitcoms at the Screenings, with only one yet-to-be greenlit drama hovering in the midseason wings. It is dramas that are the trump cards in the foreign TV biz, as they are the U.S. shows that the key free-to-air broadcasters around the globe most covet, and for which they shell out the big bucks.

One thin season, however, does not unduly dent the fortunes or rattle the nerves of a huge Hollywood studio. In any case, most of the estimated 1,200 overseas TV buyers in town for the L.A. Screenings are expected to alight at Century City at some point during the week to see the new wares or further business for other product. (Despite the dearth of new orders for hour dramas, Fox will have 43 new and returning shows on broadcast and cable channels this fall.)

On Tuesday morning some 200 buyers showed up to view pilots for the five new laffers on offer, including an entry from former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin’s indie company called Ben and Kate and the latest effort from Glee creator Ryan Murphy, The New Normal. Of the five half-hours unveiled, those two drew the most positive responses from a non-scientific sampling of overseas buyers during lunch.

“I thought Ben and Kate was engaging, with a lot of good lines. It could work easily enough,” said one European buyer from a niche channel. “It didn’t appear to break ground but it was appealing and the leads (Dakota Johnson and Nat Faxon) were good.” The half-hour was the only new show on offer that will debut (on FOX) in the fall; the other contenders are for midseason or later, either on FOX or on NBC.
 
A coterie of buyers for Comedy Central’s various offshoots across Europe responded well to the humor on offer. “It’s interesting to see how the TV zeitgeist shifts in America,” one of them suggested. “Two years ago it was all about strong women in corporate roles. Then it was weak men with psychological issues. Now we’re seeing a lot of gay characters.” She went on to say that the younger niche audiences across Europe are generally more open to U.S. shows that push the envelope than are, say, mainstream commercial broadcast audiences. And the select American sitcom can work way beyond the traditional English-language territories.

All of that doesn’t necessarily mean that any given Comedy Central spinoff would fork out for any particular Fox show on offer, but it did suggest that there is a readiness to experiment with more “out-there” fare than there was a decade ago. (A laffer that Comedy Central has already latched on to, for its Scandinavian feed at least, is Anger Management, the Charlie Sheen vehicle which is being licensed by Lionsgate.)
 
One territory that is less attuned to U.S. TV sensibilities, especially to its funny bone, is Japan, whose audiences flock to American movies but don’t easily warm to small-screen fare from the States. “It’s hard for us, I mean hard to imagine us buying most sitcoms here,” said a Japanese buyer from one of the country’s cable channels. “What we’ve seen so far, including Fox this morning, is OK. But probably not for us.”  (On the drama front, Fox did in the past make sizeable inroads into Japan with The X-Files, 24 and Prison Break, but is still in search of the next breakout hour that will work in that market.)

Other buyers at the Fox event pointed to the studio’s trailers for its upcoming movie releases—notably, they said, those for Prometheus, Ice Age 4 and Life of Pi—as making their ongoing deals with the studio worthwhile. “One relatively weak year of series orders does not bother us. In fact, sometimes less is more. We only have so many slots on our station and to have too much to accommodate from (our deals with several Hollywood majors) in the States can put us in a bind."
 
For her part, Marion Edwards, the president of international television at Fox, was both phlegmatic and philosophical about her current hand. “Yes, sitcoms are tougher in foreign. And Modern Family raised the bar in terms of what’s expected. But remember: We’re not just trying to place things on the main flagship channels abroad. The business nowadays is much more complex. Many of these key broadcasters now manage a portfolio of niche channels, which means there are many more opportunities for us to service them.”

Edwards was also quick to point to several midseason hopefuls, including a procedural with supernatural elements called Gotham, for which Fox and ABC are still trying to nail down the financing but whose pilot was screened Tuesday along with the sitcoms. (It would have Francis Lawrence, who helmed Water for Elephants and is set for the next Hunger Games installment Catching Fire, directing at least the pilot.)

Another promising drama project, she continued, is a period piece for FX set in the ’80s about disaffected Russian spies. The Americans stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys and boasts Joe Weisberg (Falling Skies) and Graham Yost (Justified) as writer-producers.

Also, from the studio’s broader perspective, comedies are nothing to be unhappy about. If they work and make it to 100 episodes, the pay-off from reruns in domestic syndication will far outweigh what international brings in from its dramas. The only real worry for Fox right now is that just about everybody is jumping on the sitcom bandwagon. The Big Four in fact will jointly air some 30-odd comedies this fall compared to just 16 or 17 five years ago. That means the competition will be stiff.

Edwards did say she and her team managed to place all five of her new comedies with Canadian buyers, who came, saw, bought and headed back home earlier this week.