Cloning Sex In City

Michael Idato previews the new US shows set to air here.

It is always difficult to predict the fortunes of TV shows, as last years pilot season in the US demonstrated all too brutally. Aaron Sorkins Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, hailed as a masterpiece by critics, was dead in the water by mid-year, while Heroes, a sci-fi drama with what most industry cynics saw as limited geek appeal, became the unexpected wonder boy.

The annual May screenings started in Los Angeles last week, with international programmers getting their first glimpse at the output of the US television studios. It follows a week of network advertiser launches in New York known as "the upfronts", where networks confirm which pilots have been picked up for a full series and where they will be in the US schedule.

The early predictions are that Channel Nine has the best return this year from its US studio relationships. It will pick up Pushing Daisies (Warner Bros), a "high-concept" series about a young man with the ability to restore life, and Damages (Sony), which stars Glenn Close as high-powered New York lawyer Patty Hewes.

Sex and the City clones - of both genders - make up the most over-cooked genre this year. Cashmere Mafia (Sony), Darren Stars pseudo-Sex and the City comedy-drama about four career women in New York, stars Australians Miranda Otto and Frances OConnor and will go to Nine. Big Shots (Warners Bros) is a male take of the concept. It follows four competitive male company executives, stars Michael Vartan and Dylan McDermott and goes to Nine. Finally, theres Lipstick Jungle from Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell.

The best guess is only one of these three shows will survive and the smart money is on Cashmere Mafia. Star, who produced Sex and the City, has a stronger instinct for television than Bushnell, who simply wrote the book on which the original series was based. The two Australians in the cast will be a serious advantage for Nine when it launches the series here.

The fate of Lipstick Jungle and a remake of the 1970s action series The Bionic Woman is uncertain. Either could end up with channels Seven or Ten because both are part of the NBC Universal output deal. The fine print on NBC Universals contract with Ten allows Seven to cherry-pick a show, leaving Ten with the rest. Whether Seven will pick Lipstick Jungle, Bionic Woman or one of the other shows covered by the deal, including the comedy The IT Crowd, remains to be seen.

Sevens fortunes look shakier than Nines, although it picks up two key spin-offs from hit shows it already airs - Private Practice and Heroes: Origins. The former shifts Greys Anatomys Dr Addison Montgomery-Shepherd (Kate Walsh) into her own McDreamy-less show, while the latter introduces new story threads to the Heroes storylines. Unusually, the six episodes of Heroes: Origins air as part of Heroes.

Seven gets the soap opera Dirty Sexy Money, described by US network executives as "the next Dynasty". It stars Peter Krause (Six Feet Under) as an idealistic lawyer who becomes enmeshed with a wealthy, decadent New York family. It is generating a lot of buzz, largely because of its film-star cast - Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin and Jill Clayburgh - and sharp writing.

The post-Friends comedy landscape is bleak. Most US studios have cut back on half-hour comedies because they are almost impossible to launch. Ten has what looks to be the strongest half-hour on the block, Back To You, a dark comedy about feuding newsreaders starring Kelsey Grammer (Frasier) and Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond). Seven also gets a potential half-hour comedy hit in Sam I Am, starring Christina Applegate as a woman with amnesia.

Another interesting Ten acquisition is Journeyman (Fox), a sci-fi series about a time traveller. It has niche appeal but should sit well with another Ten acquisition, the hit BBC series Torchwood, a big-budget Doctor Who spin-off.

Australian actors are more prominent in the pilots, with Otto and OConnor joined by Rose Byrne in the Glenn Close series Damages and Alex OLoughlin (son of AC/DC frontman Bon Scott) in Moonlight (Warner Bros), about a vampire who solves crimes, which will go to Nine.

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