Did you hear about the new sitcom that will reunite Roseanne Barr and John Goodman? How about Reba McEntire's return to TV, or Marc Cherry's follow-up to "Desperate Housewives"?
Before you get too excited, though, hold on a minute. None of these new network shows is a done deal -- far from it.
This is pilot season in Hollywood. At this point, executives of the broadcast networks have considered all the pitches they've heard for new series and read all the scripts they've received. The next step, for the lucky ones, is "going to pilot," as the network orders one episode produced.
Making a pilot episode is a big deal, and expensive, calling for casting actors, assembling a writing staff, hiring crew and creating sets. In a best-case scenario, the pilot will be picked up as a series, and the episode being produced now will be the one shown to advertisers at the "upfronts" in May, when the networks announce their fall schedules.
Most pilots, however, go nowhere. The network passes, the actors and writers are released, and the sets are torn down.
The pilot generally goes unseen.
As long as you take pilot announcements with the necessary skepticism, though, they provide an interesting preview of how the next TV season could look.
Which pilots the networks order also show what they're looking for. Dramas with supernatural elements seem big, along with prime-time soaps; comedies often center on unconventional families or living situations.
