Fall Preview 2016: ‘The Great Indoors’ brings Joel McHale back to TV
Joel McHale is the sort of actor who is not going to be away from TV for long. He’s too talented to not have something great on the air. For many years, that was a combination of “Community” and “The Soup.” Now, it’s “The Great Indoors,” an upcoming comedy for CBS that seems to have a little of that soul to go along with a little of “The Big Bang Theory” and “Last Man Standing.” It’s a classic fish-out-of-water story about a guy trying to make things work with a group of people he has little in common with.
Will this prove to be a worthwhile series? That is something we’re looking to spotlight further in the latest edition of our Fall Preview series.
Premiere Date and Timeslot Competition – Thursday, October 27 at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time. While you have to wait until after “Thursday Night Football” is over in order to see it, hopefully it’s going to prove itself to be worth the wait. It’s certainly getting one of the best possible lead-ins out there in “The Big Bang Theory,” and we’d argue that NBC’s lineup is probably the biggest competition for now.
Logline – “An adventure reporter (Joel McHale) must adapt to the times when he becomes the boss to a group of millennials in the digital department of the magazine.”
Cast – Joel McHale, Stephen Fry, Chris Williams, Shaun Brown, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Christine Ko, and Susannah Fielding.
Trailer – CBS probably gives away much more than they need to here, since you could’ve just made this a couple of minutes without giving away most of the pilot. Still, we do like that this is a little edgier than the standard multi-camera sitcom, and there are some unpredictable jokes in here plus a great bit with a baby bear. There are some similarities between McHale’s character here and Jeff Winger from “Community,” but there’s enough separating the two that you don’t feel you are watching the same exact thing.
Overall Take – It’s hard to get us excited about a multi-camera show since much of the genre has been done to death, but “The Great Indoors” is promising. We like the cast, that it’s mostly a workplace comedy, and that you have a lead who is genuinely funny and we’d want to watch do anything. It’s too early to tell whether or not this will be a great show ten or so episodes in, but it’s off to a pretty good start for now.