Upfronts day 1: That was exhausting

Monday was the most stacked day of the upfronts, with NBCUniversal, Fox and Amazon all presenting. I pity everyone in New York who had to schlep from Radio City (NBC) to City Center (Fox) to the Beacon Theatre (Amazon) — it’s not like those folks were going from one end of Manhattan to the other and back, but still.

There were some funny moments, a couple decent-looking teaser trailers for new shows (none of which are public yet) and a whole lot of talk about personalized, targeted advertising. And frankly, after watching four-plus hours of live-streamed ad sales pitches — which is what these events are at their core — my brain is kind of mush.

I’ll hopefully have more brainpower to deliver an actual take on things Tuesday night, but for this one I’m mostly to link to a bunch of the news from the day. It’s late, after all.

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• Here is NBC’s schedule for the fall — one new drama (Line of Fire) on Monday nights, one new comedy (Newlyweds) on Fridays and a civilian version of The Traitors leading into the Law & Order block on Thursdays. Speaking of L&O, I asked a couple of NBC execs why the show’s renewal came so late in the process this season.

• NBC’s other new shows — a Rockford Files reboot with David Boreanaz and a comedy called Sunset P.I., also about private investigators — will be midseason shows. Sunset P.I. stars Jake Johnson, Jane Levy and Keith David, and its creators (Dan Goor and Luke Del Tredici) worked on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The teaser NBC showed was about as good as you’d expect from that combination of folks (which is to say, this feels very like My Kind of Deal).

• The Rockford Files teaser puts Boreanaz in some vintage-looking clothing — and maybe more important, a vintage gold Pontiac Firebird (he even does a J-turn at one point) — and while virtually no one alive could match James Garner’s easy charm, Boreanaz does fine as Jim Rockford. I’d go with “very cautiously optimistic” for now, but there was no hint of the iconic theme music in the teaser, so boo to that.

• Peacock announced several premiere dates, including for new shows Crystal Lake, a Friday the 13th prequel series with Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees); The Good Daughter, a drama starring Meghann Fahy and Rose Byrne as sisters; and Dig, a comedy that brings Amy Poehler and Mike Schur back together, where she plays an archaeologist.

• NBC will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a three-hour special in December, and let the upfront audience know via a musical number performed by Jane Krakowski, in character as Jenna Maroney from 30 Rock.

• Vin Diesel appeared on stage to ramble for a couple minutes about the Fast and Furious franchise with Jimmy Fallon, then announced that Peacock was going “launch four shows from the Fast and Furious universe.” Or maybe not? The press release Peacock issued immediately afterward said just one show is in development.

• Seth Meyers made some (pretty good) jokes.

• Fox’s fall schedule is also not that different from the one the network rolled out last fall. One exception: A live-action comedy — the only such show Fox has right now, Animal Control with Joel McHale — will join the Sunday animation block for the first time since (wait for it) Rel in 2018.

• The network’s Baywatch reboot will premiere in January, quite likely with an NFL game as a lead-in. The cast looks very good in swimwear, and the teaser trailer Fox showed suggests the show will be something like 911: Venice Beach. It featured a small plane clipping the line of two parasailers, with everyone going down, and a wildfire on the hills behind the beach.

• The network renewed just a boatload of unscripted shows, a few of which have been off air for 18 months or more.

• The afternoon presentation leaned a lot on Fox Sports, with NFL analyst Tom Brady taking part in several segments. It also led to the most LinkedIn-ass line we’re likely to hear this week, uttered by Fox’s ad sales head Jeff Collins: "At Fox, we turn passion into performance — and in many ways, that brings us back to Tom Brady."

• Fox will have World Cup-related shows hosted by Rob Gronkowski and Jameis Winston and, separately, James Corden. So Fox either hates soccer or its viewers, or both.

• Jane Krakowski also did a musical number here (she hosts Celebrity Name That Tune on Fox), making her the clubhouse leader for upfronts week MVP.

• Reacher back.

• Prime Video ordered a third season of Jury Duty, but with no details on the next setting for the hidden-camera, everyone’s-an-actor-but-one-person setup.

• The big series pickup I alluded to on Sunday was announced: Fourth Wing, an adaptation of a hugely popular romantasy book series by Rebecca Yarros. Michael B. Jordan is among the show’s EPs. Prime is also adapting the Rose Hill romance novel series by Elsie Silver.

• The third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres in November.

• In January, Prime picked up a series called Sex Criminals, based on a comic book about two people who, when they have sex, can stop time — so they use their power to rob banks. Imogen Poots and John Reynolds are starring, and on Monday, Nia DaCosta was named as director of the first two episodes.

• I didn’t watch all of the Amazon upfront stream, as I had a middle school orchestra concert to attend this evening. But as far as I know, Jane Krakowski didn’t perform. She is, however, in an upcoming Christmas movie on Prime called The Man in the Bag.

• What I did see of Amazon’s presentation suggested they were throwing a crap-ton of money around. Diplo did a pre-show DJ set, Kacey Musgraves performed two songs to open the show and Oprah went on stage to talk about moving her podcast to Amazon platforms. A little later, Shaboozey performed his Thursday Night Football theme song to introduce the sports segment.

Just one upfront tomorrow — Disney — so that will, I hope, be a little less insane than the three today. I’ll run down the news and try to come up with some more cogent analysis then.

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