Splitsider

Every year, each of the major TV networks produces a couple dozen pilots for new shows before determining which ones to air that fall. Programming execs at all the big networks just this week picked which pilots to scrap and which ones to air this coming season, but they left some rather promising shows by the wayside. Collected below is info on 10 of the coolest-sounding comedies that ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox passed over. I haven’t seen the pilots for these shows; this list is just going off of their premises and the previous work of the cast and crew.

One last thing before we start, I want [...]

The immensely likable Horatio Sanz has just been cast in a new, as-yet-untitled ABC pilot in which he'll play "the put-upon, wry-humored Jonathan, who’s the stay-at-home dad of 2-year-old twin girls" and the neighbor of the main character, a "a high-powered executive who now faces the biggest challenge of her life when she finds herself unemployed and acting as a full-time mom to her two teenagers." Don't worry, high-powered executive. Sanzy is here to help.

Jeff Goldblum has joined the increasingly fantastic cast of Sarah Silverman's NBC pilot as Silverman's character's ex-boyfriend, whom she probably broke up with because she was sick of hearing his thoughts on how chaos theory means that all her plans will end in dinosaur attacks.

The Jimmy Fallon-produced NBC pilot DILFs by Charlie Grandy has secured a lead in Jesse Bradford, who'll play "a handsome recently divorced lawyer who is confident in everything except parenting his 9-month-old son." Don't you kind of wish this was a laugh-track, family-friendly mid-2000s CBS show so there would be a voice-over going, "Depositions he can handle. But diapers? No way!" [...]

Andrew Rannells, the scripture-totin' star of The Book of Mormon, is set to star in the surrogacy comedy from Glee's Ryan Murphy and Allison Adler. With those three involved, this pilot is gonna get greenlit faster than you can say "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."

FX and NBC both picked up new pilots today: one's about drone pilots in Nevada bombing people in the Middle East, and one's about a guy who gets hired as his brother's personal assistant. Now you guess which one belongs to which network!

I don't know if it's a good or bad sign for him returning to Community, but Dan Harmon is producing a 30-minute animated pilot for Adult Swim, as one of the eight new pilots they're considering. The show, Rick & Morty, is about "A genius inventor grandfather and his less than genius grandson, and the journeys in life they share." It sure sounds like an Adult Swim pilot. Also, the writers (Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg) and stars (John Cho and Kal Penn) of the Harold & Kumar series are all signed to make an animated show out of the mini-hamburger-built film franchise. Below are the other six [...]

It truly is the best time of the year to be an unproductive employee. The first episode of Don't Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 is available right now on Hulu. Get to it, or you'll have to wait till the April 11 premiere to see just how semi-autobiographical James Van Der Beek's character really is.

Every year during TV's pilot season (it's happening right now!), each network develops three times as many shows as it actually needs, seeing what works and what doesn't before deciding which shows to pick up. While most of the rejected shows are turned down for a reason, every once in a while, TV networks let a show slip by that could have turned into something special. Let's take a look back at 10 TV series that networks passed up, including the shows that spun off Spinal Tap and Between Two Ferns, the community college comedy that's not Community, and a show that's been described as "Reno 911! in space."

Nicholas Stoller, writer of such films as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek and The Muppets, is moving to TV! CBS just ordered a pilot for his "twenty-something ensemble comedy about a guy who gets his heart broken by his girlfriend and now has to work one cubicle away from her at an ad agency." Hopefully at least one member of this twenty-something ensemble is Jason Segel. And the ex-girlfriend is Miss Piggy. And the entire project is a TV version of the Muppet movie. What? Who said that? Not me.

In addition to appearing in roughly a billion movies in the next 12 months, The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi sold CBS a new series in which he plays a "divorced marriage counselor," doling out relationship advice while trying to pull his own life together. Or, as it would be if I controlled network programming, Aasif Mandvi plays a divorced Commander Zhao from The Last Airbender as he pursues a second career in marriage counseling. One day, my friends! One day.

Looks like David Walton may escape his NBC single-season purgatory: he's just been cast in a new CBS pilot temporarily called Oh F**k It’s You. In it, he'll play "a notorious womanizer who, after surviving a health scare, realizes that 'The One' he has never found is actually his best friend of 15 years, Wendy. The problem is that Wendy is engaged to a guy Nick likes; she and Nick own a business together; and their attempt at dating back in college was a disaster." We'll see if this makes it to series and then makes it to Walton's very first season two.

Perennial bit player Will Forte is finally getting the chance to play a regular joe instead of a cross-dressing love interest or an out-of-town teetotaler (name those guest roles!). He'll be starring in Steve Levitan's new Fox pilot Rebounding as a widower getting over his late wife with help from "the idiots on his pickup basketball team." No word on who'll be playing the aforementioned idiots, but with the right cast it sounds like this could be a great ensemble comedy. And who knows, maybe playing the protagonist will turn out to be Will's forte. (I really need some kind of special sound effect to accompany all these [...]

Here's something Louis C.K. wrote in 2006 about the process of making a TV pilot. Honestly, it sounds so painful it's a wonder anyone wants to make television shows at all. And who better to talk about something as miserable as that than Louis C.K.?

Monday: table read. The network and studio come and watch the actors read the script. Then they give the writers notes. Sometimes the notes are staggering like “We don’t know if the main point of the story is really that good or funny.” And you have to insanely re-invent everything. This is probably not going to be a television show now. Just the [...]

House of Lies is set to premiere this Sunday on Showtime, but they put the pilot onYouTube yesterday. The show is about a not-so-ragtag group of management consultants trying to manage and/or consultant (I don’t know how business works) in this crazy world and features many familiar, well-liked faces. Should you watch it?

Reasons you should watch:

It stars a movie star and that movie star is Don Cheadle

If anything can be learned from New Girl is that it’s an absolute joy to be able to watch a movie star on TV each week (and that school teachers in LA have an endless supply of vintage dresses). [...]