Scrubs, Life on Mars Make ABC Schedule

NEW YORK, May 13: Scrubs, which ended its seventh season on NBC this month,
and David E. Kelley’s take on the BBC drama Life on Mars, are among the new series on ABC’s 2008-2009
schedule, which is dominated by returning shows.

Stephen
McPherson, the president of ABC Entertainment, unveiled the upcoming
schedule this morning at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. “We’re returning our
dominant core group of shows from last fall,” said McPherson. “The few openings
we had we’ve filled with the kind of quality programming viewers have come to
expect from ABC, and we have a very strong bench. As always, our focus is on
delivering the best stories and most memorable characters on TV every day of
the week, every week of the year.”

Mondays in the fall will kick off
with Dancing with the Stars,
leading into the returning half-hour comedy Samantha Who?, while Boston Legal ends the night at 10 p.m.

On Tuesdays, the night opens with
Ashton Kutcher’s latest reality project, Opportunity Knocks. The Dancing with the Stars results show will air at 9 p.m., with Eli Stone, a midseason replacement this year, back on the
schedule for 10 p.m.

Pushing Daisies, whose debut season was cut short because of the
writers’ strike, takes the 8 p.m. Wednesday slot, leading into two other shows
that were yanked from the schedule because of the 100-day work stoppage: Private
Practice and Dirty
Sexy Money.

The Thursday successful
combination of Ugly Betty
and Grey’s Anatomy is unchanged,
leading into the new series Life on Mars, based on the BBC series of the same name. The
series revolves around Sam Tyler, a modern-day police detective who, after a
car crash, mysteriously finds himself transported back to 1973 and still
working as a detective. The series is produced by Twentieth Century Fox
Television and ABC Studios. The pilot episode was produced by David E. Kelley
Productions in association with Twentieth Century Fox Television.

Fridays will feature Wife Swap, Supernanny and 20/20, while Saturdays will be home to college football.
The Sunday schedule remains unchanged, with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters.

Ordered for midseason are
Media Rights Capital’s The Goode Family, Scrubs—an ABC
Studios production that launched on NBC in 2001—and an Untitled Ashton
Kutcher/Tyra Banks Project.
Returns for midseason are According to Jim, The Bachelor, Lost.

—By Mansha Daswani