(Wall Street Journal) — To a television network executive, the pitch sounds irresistible. “Dark but fantastical cop drama about a world in which characters inspired by Grimm’s Fairy Tales exist.” This idea for a TV show has the ingredients the industry is seeking this year: a comfortable set-up (the cop show) with a slight twist (fairy tales). It beat out about 500 other pitches. Then it survived months of second guessing, rewriting, and testing with focus groups. “Grimm” is one NBC is considering adding to its fall prime-time lineup. Network executives are currently meeting to decide which new shows to pick up and will announce their choices next week. After a year of perfecting each show, almost all of them will fail. In the running for this fall, ABC has a remake of “Charlie’s Angels,” this time set in Miami. Don Johnson stars in the NBC pilot “A Mann’s World” about a male salon owner. CBS will bring “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star Sarah Michelle Gellar back to the small screen with “Ringer,” a thriller about a woman on the run from the mob. On Tuesday, Fox picked up “Alcatraz” about a present-day team of investigators looking into the mysterious reappearance of the prison’s 1960s inhabitants. ”People ask me why we don’t take more risks. There’s inherent risk in everything we do,” says CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler.
