ABC's New Horror Friendly Lineup

This week all the major channels announced their new lineups for the fall and beyond. A lot of shows are getting the ax, and luckily for us horror fans ABC is replacing their victims with some new shows that might be of some interest.

First up is one we’ve talked about on the site a few times now. “Eastwick” is based on the 1987 Jack Nicholson film “The Witches of Eastwick”. There was actually a pilot for another version of this show back in 92 that never got picked up. I’m not sure what changed everyone's mind 15 years later but we will see. I don’t think Matt Dallas can pull off the “horny little devil” role nearly as well as Nicholson but I think the people at ABC are hoping that Rebecca Romijn will pick up the slack. I think the big question is will anyone watch a show based on a movie that came out over 20 years ago? I don’t give this one long.

Next up is “V”. Yup a reboot of the early 80’s TV movie and series about a group of aliens who come to earth with promises of peace, love and all things beautiful. Turns out those aliens are a bunch of filthy liars and a small group of rebels is our only hope. As a child I couldn’t get enough of this show and was both in love with and afraid of Jane Badler who played the role of alien ice queen Diana. From the trailer Morena Baccarin looks like she can be a real hard ass so I’ll give this one a go. I’m most interested to see what they’ve done with what the aliens look like without their makeup. The original was pretty laughable so they can’t do much worse.

Then we have “The Forgotten”. A new drama about a group of people who pick up murder cases when the police reach a dead end. According to the show there are apparently groups like this all over the place. I’ve never run into them but I must be going to the wrong bars. This one has Jerry Bruckheimer as its producer though so I might have a shot. The story lines are pretty limitless but I can’t really get a good idea of what’s going on here from the trailer. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

And finally "Happy Town" which stars Amy Acker as Rachel Conroy, a happy go lucky gal who recently moved to a small town in Minnesota to open a candle shop. Yeah, I don’t know who still opens candle shops but I assume it will be right in between the blacksmith and the general store. Anyway the town seems perfect, it’s got a bread factory that makes it smell like fresh baked bread all the time for God's sake.

The conflict happens when Rachel discovers a string of unsolved murders and kidnappings that have occurred over the past decade, and “Happy Town” turns to crappy town. See what I did there? Man, I’m good. Anyway I’m not sure how you can make this idea into more then a mini-series but we will see. I hate when I watch shows like this and they get canceled before you find out what actually happened. I may need to avoid this one.