Arts: The 2012 TV Upfronts

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Television The 2012 TV Upfronts CBS shocker: A drama I might actually watch! By Troy Patterson Posted Thursday, May 17, 2012, at 02:10 AM ET As a matter of critical consensus, CBS's The Good Wife is the best drama on network television, but this particular television critic tends to find himself doing something else when it's on, whenever that is. In fact, he has not regularly tuned into a CBS show for pleasure since, like, Murphy Brown, and thus approaches the CBS upfront with an academic attitude that enables him to marvel academically at the juggernaut of the Tiffany Network. When Nina Tassler, the network's president of entertainment, touted her line-up as "television's best schedule," there was little to say other than yes, and wow, and Sam Malone is on CSI these days? Nice gig. So that was one pleasure of Wednesday's Carnegie Hall presentation. Another was the gentle shock of seeing clips of a CBS drama I might actually watch for fun. That would be the detective drama Elementary, which earns its bad title for being inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's tales about the man in the deerstalker. Why the network felt a need to declare this debt is beyond me. Maybe the real hounds of Baskerville County will show up at some point. But what we have for now is a procedural about a deductive genius from London (Jonny Lee Miller) who is in recovery from an addiction (to the seven-per-cent solution?). His "sober companion" (Lucy Liu) assists him in solving crimes perpetrated in the city of New York. This is maybe just House without a hospital ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Why Spending $10 Million on Jeremiah Wright Attack Ads Makes Perfect Sense The Dictator: The Movie That Will Sour You on Sacha Baron Cohen Never Lose at Battleship Again: A Game Analyst's Foolproof Strategy	Advertisement
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