Bottom Line: Loads of laughs from some of TV comedy's best writers and performers.

[Janice]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...7987&&rid=9846

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Back To You

Bottom Line: Loads of laughs from some of TV comedy's best writers and performers.


Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton play Pittsburgh TV co-anchors Chuck Darling and Kelly Carr.

There's no such thing as a sure thing when it comes to new TV series, but "Back to You" is as close as it gets. Created, written, directed and acted by some of the most respected people in the shrinking world of TV sitcoms, there is only one significant question to be raised about this show: Why is it on Fox? More about that later.

Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton star as TV co-anchors Chuck Darling and Kelly Carr. Ten years earlier, he left the Pittsburgh station where they anchored the news. He had a succession of jobs in larger markets until, in Los Angeles, a much-too-candid rant with the mike on and the camera rolling got him fired. Putting the best possible face on it, he returned to Pittsburgh and his former co-anchor.

It's a new series, but in only a minute it will feel as if you've been watching it for years. Grammer and Heaton are familiar faces, and their roles, while not exactly like Frasier Crane and Deborah Romano, bear striking similarities. He is still pompous and smug; she's still controlling and rational.

At the same time, the TV newsroom is one of TV's most reliable sources of comedy and satire going back to when spunky Mary Richards was hired by Lou Grant at WJM in Minneapolis. The ultrasexy weather girl, the remote stand-up in the midst of torrential rain -- it's all in there, albeit with fresh energy.

The multicamera format adds to the show's familiar, as well as conventional, feel. It's what creators Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd know best, but it might be tiresome to a growing number of younger viewers. Only the superior acting and writing of "Back to You" will keep them from becoming bored by the format and annoyed with the studio laughter. Maybe we've reached the point where no comedy can revive the multicamera format and the best one can do is overcome it.

Levitan and Lloyd certainly have done that. They wrote a pilot that is packed with good lines, sometimes even great ones, and sprinkled with the right amount of sexual innuendo to create a hint of romantic tension. A second episode, also sent to reviewers, is just as smartly written.

Levitan and Lloyd also stack their deck by recruiting James Burrows, arguably TV's foremost sitcom director, as the third executive producer. They also assembled a versatile and talented supporting cast. There's irrepressible Fred Willard as the former jock sports anchor, Ayda Field as the superhot weather girl, Josh Gad as the young and easily intimidated news director and Ty Burrell as the reporter with an unpronouncable last name that dashes any hope of becoming anchor.

This is as good as multicamera gets, but in the end, it's still mostly about middle-age adults and is utterly void of flashy, animated or computer-generated gags. That makes it an unlikely addition to the Fox schedule. Some say people watch shows, not networks, and that they'll find a good show wherever it is. Maybe so, but it seems so much more likely that more viewers would find this one if it was on CBS on Mondays or NBC on Thursdays, where it seems to belong.

[Janice]

This just in: 'Back to You' is solid


Back to You
* * * (out of four)


By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

It's not easy to be a sitcom fan these days. Old pickings are slim, new offerings are few, and the shows that are offered often require you to meet them more than halfway, practically willing them to be better and funnier.

You'd think less work would be required with Back to You based on the stars alone: Frasier's Kelsey Grammer and Raymond's Patricia Heaton, two of the funniest pros in the business. And at its best, Back does give you hope that it could be just what we need — a reliably funny, brashly self-confident sitcom.

Now if only it were at its best more often.

Don't blame the stars, who make almost every line work — though at times they work awfully hard to do so. Grammer plays Chuck Darling, a local news anchor who weds Frasier's ego and bluster to the gruffer, less sophisticated ways of a small-time ladies man. Having left Pittsburgh for bigger pastures, he's now returned in disgrace, to the dismay of his tightly wound former co-anchor Kelly — expertly played by Heaton, who has clearly studied every affected head tilt, half-smile and vocal trick in the anchor canon.

Were their pairing not enough, they're working with yet another comedy great — Fred Willard, who, as a dim sports anchor, proves once again he has mastered the art of letting a sweet-natured insanity peek through a normal facade.

Yet as hard as they (and we) try, Back remains a stilted work in progress that too often shifts from smart to silly and, worse, smarmy. Riskier still, the show takes a sudden twist at the end that threatens to shift it from sitcom to soap, and bad soap at that.

Still, even when Back is faltering, you flash back to the skill of its stars and to moments when the show succeeds in making you laugh out loud. And you hope it will build on its strengths and put a brake on some of its smutty weaknesses.

Is that enough to make Back worth watching? Up to you.

[Janice]

http://www.printthis.clickability.co...rtnerID=168106

Fox's new 'Back to You': Grown-up & funny

LAUNCHING A successful network sitcom's been likened to catching lightning in a bottle, a metaphor that's of little comfort to the legions who've failed to be funny for 22 minutes a week.

Still, when a comedy works, it lights up the night, and and sometimes even people's lives.It also makes its creators enormously rich. (See "Seinfeld" producer Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" for details.)

So while no one can reasonably expect lightning to strike the same bottle twice, the people who make TV are bound to keep trying.

Laying in a good supply of glassware and checking the forecast for thunderstorms guarantees nothing, but it can't hurt.

Or so goes the thinking at Fox, which starting tomorrow night will have former "Everybody Loves Raymond" co-stars Patricia Heaton and Brad Garrett employed in back-to-back time slots.

Garrett's there, along with Joely Fisher, for another season of " 'Til Death," while Heaton's paired with another successful lightning rod, "Frasier's" Kelsey Grammer, in the series premiere of "Back to You."

Co-created by "Frasier's" Christopher Lloyd and "Just Shoot Me's" Steven Levitan - whose resume includes a stint as a morning anchor on a Madison, Wis., TV station - "Back to You" may not be quite as classy as Heaton's and Grammer's former shows.

But compared with what Fox usually offers up in the way of live-action comedy - remember "Stacked," the show built around Pamela Anderson's breasts? - it's shockingly grownup.

And once you get past the sometimes predictable banter, sexual and otherwise, in the newsroom of Pittsburgh TV station WURG, where anchors Chuck Darling (Grammer) and Kelly Carr (Heaton) find themselves working together after a decade apart, you'll even find a grown-up dilemma at the show's core.

One I've been asked not to mention.

I'm not sure the writers of "Back to You" needed to mention it, either, at least not so soon, but that's only a quibble.

Grammer and Heaton slip easily into characters who won't be easily mistaken for Frasier Crane or Debra Barone, the writing's professional, the supporting cast dependable (and in the case of Fred Willard, another "Raymond" veteran, dependably hilarious).

It may not be lightning in a bottle, but it's at least something of a decent vintage.

Readers weigh in

To say that Reader Reviewers gave "Back to You" a warm welcome is putting it mildly. Not only did the 15 panelists I showed it to last week award it an average score of 9.2 out of 10 - they volunteered to sit through a second episode Fox had included with the pilot screener.

"Absolutely hilarious - I never laughed so hard from a Fox sitcom," wrote Rasheed Clark, of Hunting Park, one of 10 Everybody's a Critic participants to give the show a perfect 10.

"Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton were terrific together," wrote Michele Branella, of South Philadelphia. "I would definitely watch this show."

"I love the hard-biting, sarcastic humor," wrote Ernest Evans, of West Oak Lane.

"The timing is great," wrote Gwendolyn Mininall, of Nicetown.

"This show is not 'Frasier,' not 'Raymond,' and may never be," wrote Bob Johnson, of Warminster, who also found the supporting cast "kind of weak."

"But I like this show," he added. "I will watch this."

[TJL]

I'm telling Brian you're posting Back To You stuff behind his back!

[Janice]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...39&ft=1&f=1008

'Back to You' Crew: Sitcoms Are Serious Business

There's no substitute for experience, or so the saying goes. When it comes to comedy experience, the cast and crew of the new Fox sitcom Back to You have it in spades.

In fact if you were to take all of the sitcoms they've worked on, you'd have a list of just about every hit — and some of the flops — of the last three decades.

Director Jim Burrows started on The Mary Tyler Moore show in 1974. Then he worked on Newhart, Laverne & Shirley, Taxi and Will & Grace.

Between them, writers Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd (the latter of whom is not to be confused with the Back to the Future actor of the same name) boast credits including Golden Girls and Just Shoot Me — along with such lesser lights as Down Home and, er, Stacked.

"I'd like to forget that [last] one right now," jokes Levitan.

And Back to You star Kelsey Grammer? His 20 years of sitcom experience can be summed up in a single name: Frasier Crane.

For a show with so much institutional wisdom about what makes a sitcom tick, Back To You has a pretty standard storyline. Grammer plays TV news anchor Chuck Darling, who screws up big-time at his network job and has to go back to his old local station. He has a little trouble adjusting to the downscaling: On his first day, he asks the young-looking news director to park his car.

Back To You isn't the first sitcom to make its "sit" a local news station. Levitan, the show's co-creator, says it's fertile ground for comedy.

"You have people that think they're giant stars in little towns," he says, enumerating the possible sources of laughs. "You got a ticking clock, which is great for comedy — everything's happening, we're working towards a show, and we got to get it on the air. You got egos bumping up against each other, and that's all funny."

But the "sit" is irrelevant to Burrows, the show's director. He thinks the writing, pacing and the characters are a lot more important. Burrows points out that some of the best sitcoms have had very simple concepts.

"Six people sitting around a coffee shop," Burrows says, meaning Friends. "A garage in New York City, with a bunch of cab drivers (Taxi). A bar in Boston (Cheers). Wow. The execution of the sit is more important than the sit."

Burrows and Grammer have 20 years of experience working together, and it's almost as if they communicate in code, Levitan and Lloyd say. For one Back to You moment, the creative team wanted a particular kind of comic reaction from Grammer, but no one knew quite how to ask for it — no one except Burrows.

"He goes, 'Kels, gimme a No. 42 on that,'" Lloyd recalls — and Grammer knew exactly what to do.

"He went, 'I got you; I'll give you the Chagrin No. 17," Lloyd says. "And they did the scene one minute later, and he made a hilarious face, and it was exactly what we wanted."

[Janice]

Originally Posted by TJL

I'm telling Brian you're posting Back To You stuff behind his back!

Shhhhh....

[Ireneparalegal]

Originally Posted by TJL

I'm telling Brian you're posting Back To You stuff behind his back!

[Brian Damage]

LOL I love it!

[catlover79]

If this show was just Grammer, Heaton and Willard reading the phone book, it would be hilariously funny. Give Willard a bigger role!! I've always enjoyed his appearances on Jay Leno as various characters named "Willard J. Fredericks".

[sweetdiggity]

Originally Posted by catlover79

If this show was just Grammer, Heaton and Willard reading the phone book, it would be hilariously funny. Give Willard a bigger role!! I've always enjoyed his appearances on Jay Leno as various characters named "Willard J. Fredericks".

I've been a fan of his since he was on Roseanne. And he's GREAT on Leno!!

[Janice]

http://tnjn.com/2007/sep/20/foxs-bac...delivers-laug/

Fox`s "Back to You" delivers laughs from the news room



There are few things that will attract me to a new sitcom.

One of them is Kelsey Grammer.

He's a legend in the world of sitcoms. He portrayed Dr. Fraiser Crane for 19 years (nine years on "Cheers," then 11 on "Fraiser"). He can play the egotistical, snobbish intellectual with great comic effect. The logical next step from the radio host Dr. Crane would be to a Ted Baxter-like news anchor.

"Back to You" gives us that character in Charles Darling. The show starts off 10 years ago when Darling (Grammer) is leaving the news desk at a local Pittsburg television station for a job in a new city. Flash forward 10 years, and he's worked his way to a Los Angeles news station. After a being caught on camera cursing at a co-worker, he's fired and returns to his old station in Pittsburg.

He is welcomed warmly by most of his old co-workers. Among these are the always funny Fred Williard ("Waiting for Guffman"). Willard is Marsh McGinley, the sports reporter who likes his jokes on the misogynistic side. The only person in the station that gives Darling the cold shoulder is his old co-anchor, Kelly Carr (Emmy Award winner Patricia Heaton).

As Darling catches up with Carr, he slowly deduces that Carr's daughter is the result of a one-night-stand from before he left. The first episode ends with Darling, a woman-chasing bachelor, adjusting to his new role as a father, even though the daughter doesn't know who he is.

The producers have a solid cast with Grammer, Heaton and Willard. The comedy is sharp and the acting on point. It will remind the older viewers of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and the younger viewers of "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy." Luckily for us all, it's a far cry from "Anchorman." It's funny, smart and it has Kelsey Grammer.

[Janice]

http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/lifestyle/story.html?id=d5269658-ad3c-46d6-a5cf-15e32a561288

Back to You comedy off to promising start

Friday, September 21, 2007

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- The new Fox network comedy Back to You, starring TV sitcom veterans Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton, got off to a promising start as the No. 1 show in its time slot, Nielsen Media Research reported Thursday.

The TV newsroom comedy pairing two of U.S. television's best-known talents, averaged 9.4 million viewers Wednesday night to eclipse the debut of the highly anticipated -- and controversial -- reality show Kid Nation on CBS.

Back to You ranked as the night's second-most watched broadcast overall behind the NBC hit game show Deal or No Deal, which drew 9.7 million viewers.

It also tied at No. 1 with another Fox offering, chef-to-the-rescue show Kitchen Nightmares, in the night's ratings race for viewers aged 18 to 49, the group generally most prized by advertisers.

The launch of Back to You is seen in the TV industry as a key test of whether a traditional TV sitcom can thrive in an era when such shows are being crowded out by reality TV, drama-comedy hybrids and a new breed of single-camera comedies shot in a more cinematic style, without a studio audience.

The show marks an especially big gamble for Fox, a network better known for its cartoon fare such as The Simpsons, gonzo sitcoms like Married . . . With Children, edgy dramas like 24 and the hit talent show American Idol.

Grammer, who played snooty psychiatrist Frasier Crane for 20 years on Cheers and spinoff sitcom Frasier, stars on Back to You in the similarly pompous role of TV news anchor and womanizer Chuck Darling, hitting a mid-life career crisis.

After an on-camera gaffe costs him a plum job in Los Angeles, Darling lands back at his old Pittsburgh station with his former co-anchor and paramour, Kelly Carr, played by Everybody Loves Raymond veteran, Heaton.

Executives at Fox, which began as a network tailored to young viewers, say they are counting on Back to You to help build a more mainstream audience.

[Janice]

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_6935010

Can 'Back to You' save the sitcom?

SHOW HAS HELP FROM TV VETERANS IN FRONT AND BEHIND CAMERAS

San Jose Mercury News

BEVERLY HILLS - Here's all you need to know about the current state of the American television comedy: There will be just 20 live-action sitcoms this coming season; five years ago, there were twice that number. CBS and NBC - once home to TV's top sitcoms - have just four each on their fall schedules.

It's all a matter of diminishing returns.

What half-hour comedies there are on the air aren't doing particularly well. No sitcom has ranked in the Top 10 of most-watched shows since "Everybody Loves Raymond" ended its run in the spring of 2005. Last season, just one - "Two and A Half Men" - regularly ranked in the Top 20.

Still, there are comedy writers - good comedy writers - out there trying to find the one breakout hit that will revive the genre.

"It's become cool to trash the sitcom," says Steve Levitan, who has worked on "Frasier" and "Just Shoot Me" among other shows. "I understand why, because I think there have been a lot of bad shows throughout the years; some of them done by me.

"But I grew up watching 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' and 'All in the Family,' 'Mary Tyler Moore' and 'Cheers.' I know it's cool not to love (sitcoms), but I do love them."

Levitan is executive producer and co-creator of this season's highest-profile attempt to revitalize the traditional sitcom: Fox's "Back to You," which debuts at 8 tonight (Chs. 2, 35).

Back to basics

It's about as old school as you can get, including being filmed with multiple cameras before a live audience in an era when single-camera comedies with no laugh track are the norm. But if any new comedy looks like a sure thing on paper, it's Levitan's show.

His co-creator is Christopher Lloyd, one of the lead writers on "Frasier" during its heyday. Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton - returning to series TV for the first time since "Frasier" and "Raymond" - play a local news anchor team whose relationship is more than a bit rocky. Fred Willard ("Best in Show") heads the supporting cast as a cluelessly un-PC sports anchor. James Burrows - whose career dates back to "Mary Tyler Moore" - not only directed the pilot but is sticking around as the show's lead director.

It's a comedy all-star team and "it feels good to us," Lloyd says. "But there's such a low batting average in comedy that you have to go into the fight with all the weapons you can."

Grammer feels confident as well and perfectly happy with the perception of "Back to You" as a traditional piece of comedy work. "If by traditional you mean funny, yes, it's very traditional," he says with a laugh.

So far, "Back to You" has avoided one of the major problems afflicting TV comedy. Too often, network sitcoms are the product of group-think with network executives, studio bosses and researchers all weighing in on what the show ought to be. The result: a lack of singular comedic vision.

Levitan and Lloyd created "Back to You" outside the system. Before they approached a network, they wrote the pilot script, signed up Grammer and Heaton and brought in Burrows.

"We wanted to make the best show that we knew how to make," Lloyd says. "The way we went about it made that easier to do because we weren't beholden to any particular network.

"There was no sort of meddling, because it was a finished product."

Inspiration from TV news

At least in tonight's opening episode, the result is a polished bit of work with a very viable premise. Anyone who watches a lot of local news knows how often silliness seeps into the newscasts, even in major television markets. ("Back to You" is set in Pittsburgh.) That's fertile ground for laughs, without straining credulity.

Levitan, who started his career in local news, says, "This world, I always thought, was extremely ripe for a comedy. What's so funny, to me, about local news is there's this great narcissism pretending to be altruism. It's just a wonderful place for a larger-than-life character to be a big fish in a small pond."

The inspiration for Grammer's character was an anchor Levitan worked with in Madison, Wis. The night John Lennon was murdered, the anchor came on the air to lead the station's coverage - only to have things go very wrong when he somberly announced that "Lennon is survived by his wife, Topo Gigio."

Topo Gigio, unfortunately, was the name of a puppet that often appeared on the "Ed Sullivan Show." Lennon was married to Yoko Ono.

Still, Levitan adds, the writers are working hard to make sure the show "is very accurate about the way that local news is done" - although Lloyd admits that "it wouldn't be too funny if they were totally brilliant at their jobs."

Good chemistry

What really makes the opening episode work, though, is the chemistry between Grammer - as Chuck Darling, an egotistical newsman who has returned to Pittsburgh after his career stalled - and Heaton as his uptight longtime co-anchor, Kelly Carr, who isn't thrilled by his return.

"It just seemed right. I thought, 'Oh, God, me and Kelsey together would be a lot of fun,' " says Heaton about why she decided to return to weekly television.

And their characters are different enough that Grammer and Heaton don't feel like they're reprising Frasier Crane and Debra Barone.

"Although Frasier was self-obsessed, he was trying to do the world some good," Grammer says. Chuck Darling "is trying to do himself some good. I think what makes himfunny is that he has a kind of arrogance and a comfort in his own ego."

Now that they have built it, though, the question is: Will they, the viewers, come?

Fox, which won a bidding war for the show, certainly thinks so. The creators and cast of "Back to You" think so. And fans of the sitcom - both inside and outside the TV business - are hoping so.

Back to You
*** (first episode only)

[Janice]

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment...article/258070


Back to You heads in right direction

They say you can never go home again.

But this certainly isn't true for the sitcom characters played by Kelsey Grammer. First it was Dr. Frasier Crane, the pompous and effete psychiatrist who left a bar in Boston where everybody knew his name (Cheers) to be with his family in Seattle (Frasier). And now Grammer's new alter ego, TV anchor Chuck Darling, is returning home to Pittsburgh on Back to You (Fox, Global, 8 tonight).

Here are five things you should know about this new sitcom:

1. It's a traditional, multi-camera comedy that's filmed in front of a studio audience.

2. It co-stars Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond) as anchor Kelly Carr.

3. It has a great script and clever backstory.

4. It has a talented cast.

5. It is funny.

But let's begin at the beginning – a 1996 newsclip from WURG Channel 9. It's Chuck's last day at the mid-market station in Pittsburg; he's leaving to be a smaller fish in progressively bigger ponds.

After stops in Minneapolis and Dallas, Chuck is hired by KZMB Channel 3 in Los Angeles. Alas, instead of parlaying this into a national gig, Chuck has a meltdown one night that's caught oncamera and promptly uploaded to YouTube ("L.A. Anchorman Fired After Freak Out.").

Cue the infamy. Cut to the present.

"The security guard is asleep, the hall smells like curry — I'm back!" exclaims Chuck, upon his return to WURG.

Soon, we meet Chuck's new (and new-old) co-workers.

There's Ryan Church (Josh Gad), a 26-year-old from the station's Internet division who is now the frazzled news director with perspiration issues.

Montana Diaz Herrera (Ayda Field) is the weather person who overcompensates for her emotional insecurity by slinking around the newsroom in sexpot microskirts and plunging blouses.

Meanwhile, Marsh McGinley (Fred Willard) is the ex-jock sports reporter, a dim but lovable everyman given to incorrect gibes and puzzling non-sequiturs.

And Gary Crezyzewski (Ty Burrell) is the long-suffering field reporter who dreams about becoming an anchor while covering an endless array of fires, storms, court cases, bake sales and live remotes.

So what do you have? A bit of NewsRadio, a slice of Just Shoot Me, a touch of Murphy Brown and a nod to The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

The real strength of Back to You abides in its powerhouse casting, specifically Grammer (for whom the role was written) and Heaton (who came aboard after falling in love with the character).

Whether they're perched at the anchor desk, mugging for the news cameras with polite banter and synchronized glee, or fuming behind closed doors, scowling at each other, the veteran duo possess the one intangible that every good comedy needs: chemistry.

Producers often say they don't want to hire actors that may be saddled with previous-role baggage. But that's precisely why Back to You works: when Chuck and Kelly are squabbling, it might as well be Frasier and Lilith, or Debra and Ray.

Because over the past two decades, sitcom viewers have been Pavloved to enjoy each actor's on-screen dysfunction; all it takes now is an arched brow or tremulous outburst.

Back to You was created, written and executive-produced by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, two comedy writers who worked on Frasier, among others.

And what they've done here — at least based on the two episodes sent for review – is create a hybrid comedy (part workplace, part romantic) that manages to feel fresh and old at the same time.

[Janice]

http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TVGuide-Editors-Blog/Biz/Save-Multicamera-Comedy/800022698?rssDate=12345678

Can Back to You Save Multi-camera Comedy?

Back to You

A time-period-winning 9.5 million viewers watched Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton return to prime time Wednesday in their new Fox sitcom, Back to You. Most of them surely tuned in to see two stars from two of their favorite shows, Frasier and Everybody Loves Raymond. But the industry insiders are watching carefully for another reason: They’re curious as to whether the series about two over-the-hill local TV news anchors with a past can prove that the multi-camera comedy has a future. Steve Levitan, executive producer, writer and creator of the show with partner Christopher Lloyd, offered his thoughts to The Biz about meeting the challenge.

TVGuide.com: Do you feel the future of the multi-camera sitcom is riding on this show?

Steve Levitan: I hate the thought of that. We have enough pressure trying to do a funny show. But some people are saying it, and it does start to weigh on you. I’m not sure that’s fair. The No. 1 comedy on TV is a multi-camera show in Two and a Half Men. So I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate [that the genre is dying].

TVGuide.com: Why do you believe it’s going to work?

Steve Levitan: I’ll tell you why Christopher Lloyd and I wanted to do it. The way things go in Hollywood is the whole town makes a collective decision that one thing is cold and one thing is hot, and we don’t buy it. We don’t buy that audiences only want single-camera comedy. We believe audiences are starved for another multi-camera comedy that has wonderful actors and great characters and good writing. I find it impossible to believe that human nature has changed so much in the past few years since Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond and Will & Grace, you name it — and people say, no, I don’t like that form of comedy anymore. Perhaps there haven’t been enough shows that have connected.

TVGuide.com: But putting on a sitcom with such a strong cast and production auspices is something of a test as to whether there is still a real appetite out there, right?

Levitan: One agent has told me, "if this show doesn’t work, I am quitting the television business and going into movies, because I don’t get it." I think there’s a sentiment out there that if this doesn’t work, we really don’t know this business anymore.

TVGuide.com: Some people would say local TV news has seen better days, too. What makes it such an appealing setting for a sitcom?

Levitan: You’ve got stories that come in naturally. [A local TV newsroom] is looking for stories. It becomes easy for us to find ways for interesting things to happen. For example, in our second episode, one of the reporters gets tasered. We wrote it months ago and just shot it weeks ago, and what’s the biggest story in the news today? It all comes around.

TVGuide.com: What made the pilot episode immediately contemporary was showing Chuck Darling’s gaffe on YouTube. Today when you make a fool of yourself on TV, you can’t run and hide.

Levitan: If you make a mistake, the world is going to know. It’s great for us because we’ve used YouTube as a wonderful source of reporter and anchor screw-ups. The changing world affects those in TV news and they’re wrestling with the digital age. It’s just another element to play with.

TVGuide.com: There’s a lot of goodwill towards the two stars. Does that give you a lift when you’re taping in front of an audience?

Levitan: When people come to the show, they’ve said, "I feel like I’ve been watching this show for five years. I come in and feel comfortable watching this show. They all seem like they’ve been doing it for a long time together." It doesn’t feel like we have that slow, creaky start. It feels like we’ve hit the ground running from our point of view.

TVGuide.com: But it’s different because…?

Levitan: This is a very different dynamic for both of them. Kelsey didn’t really play against a single strong woman in Frasier. There were a bunch of women who would come and go. It was largely his family. Debra on Raymond was dealing with married issues. Now they are both dealing with very different things, and I think that’s what makes it fresh. But the fact that they are strong characters and great actors makes it feel reminiscent of their great shows. Hopefully, people will say it’s funny and smart like those shows were, but it’s different enough that I want to watch it. One critic suggested, "Why do we need this show when we have Raymond and Frasier?" That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Why do anything new? Should we stop making television?