When you’re talking about extremely recognizable connections between a network and a day of the week – because who isn’t having those conversations? – the example that probably comes to mind the quickest is Fox’s Sunday nights. It’s always been one of the network’s flagship evenings, and only last year saw the decade-long Animation Domination block end in order to bring in some live-action laughs. Hope you weren’t too comfortable with that schedule, because it’s getting some major shifts for the Winter/Spring season, with shows both coming and going.
The first big change is that after a year-and-a-half in the slot, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is saying goodbye to its post-Simpsons slot and moving back to Tuesday nights, where its award-winning first season aired. This will begin on January 5 at 8:30 p.m. ET, when it will be tethered to the return of New Girl and the hit freshman series Grandfathered and The Grinder. That should help to bring the ratings back up.
The second big change involves the consistently peculiar Last Man on Earth, which is now floating around without a home, much like Jason Sudekis in the show. It will exit the Sunday night schedule and, like Bones, will have to wait for a specified return date to be announced. Sad as it is to see it go for a little while, Season 2 of the post-apocalyptic comedy has seen huge ratings dips. Perhaps it’ll make it into the workweek at some point to bring those numbers back up.
While two live-action shows are going away, only one is returning to take their place, and that show is Cooper Barrett’s Guide to Surviving Life, which needs to be abbreviated to Cooper Barrett if anyone expects me to say it aloud. The comedy, which stars Jack Cutmore-Scott as a 26-year old who shares his wisdom about post-college life with the younger crowd, will make its debut on Sunday, January 3, and will slide into Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s old slot of 8:30 p.m. ET. It also stars Justin Bartha, Charlie Saxton and James Earl.
Filling in the post-Family Guy slot at 9:30 p.m. ET is another Seth Macfarlane production, Bordertown. Created by Family Guy writer Mark Hentemann, Bordertown centers on two families living next to each other in a desert town on the U.S.-Mexico border, with one character being a border agent and the other an immigrant happy to be in the States. It stars Hank Azaria, Alex Borstein, Missi yPyle, Nicholas Gonzalez, and Judah Friedlander.
All in all, it sounds like Fox is slowly trying to bring things back around to Animation Domination, but we’ll just have to wait until at least February to see how things are shaking out. Here’s hoping Last Man on Earth has found its spot by then.
