More than a few TV viewers spent the middle of the 2024 TV schedule mourning the plethora of shows canceled this year, with one of the most debatable decisions being CBS’ move to end So Help Me Todd and its quirky legal dramedy. Even all these months later, fans are still missing Marcia Gay Harden and Skylar Astin’s mother-son duo. While we can’t expect the network to suddenly reverse that decision, we can celebrate creator Scott Prendergrast landing a new small-screen project.
No punny titles this time around, as Prendergrast’s newest broadcast hopeful is going under the title Pennies, though it will indeed be another lighthearted hourlong procedural whose narrative is anchored by two family members. Rather than a mother and son, the balance this time will be shared between two sisters.
Pennies will center on a forensic pathologist in San Francisco named Penny who would much rather hang out with and study the dead bodies that pass through her office than with any of the real people in her life. Naturally, Penny won’t be keeping her discoveries to herself, and she’s adept at solving mysteries tied to those studied corpses.
Not that she’ll be doing it alone. Penny will be helped in her efforts by a loved one in the form of her polar-opposite sister, who is both outgoing and teeming with confidence in her job as an attorney working through the D.A. office. Bizarrely enough, the sibling’s name is also Penny. I’m gonna need somebody to explain that right there in the pilot, assuming we ever see it.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prendergrast isn’t linking back up with CBS this time around, and it’s Fox that came out on top, landing Pennies in a competitive bidding with others. Though the network didn’t put in a full series order, the project was given a script commitment plus penalty, which pretty much guarantees that the creator will get paid no matter what, with Fox having to pay out if execs choose not to move forward with it.
Though it’s unclear at this point when Fox would be aiming to get Pennies slotted in, it’s likely that Pennies would be showcased among other 2025 TV premieres, considering it doesn’t sound like a show that would need heaps of post-production and effects work. (Unless we find out later that both Penny sisters are actually anthropomorphic coins, but that seems non-cent-sical. I’ll see my way out.)
Hard to blame Fox for jumping at the chance to work with Prendergrast, who previously showed off his acting skills on Silicon Valley. After all, So Help Me Todd wasn't canceled due to poor ratings, and instead of excised alongside NCIS: Hawai'i due to its schedule being overly stuffed post-strikes. So if Pennies has the same kind of impact on audiences, it could end up being a huge hit.
At this point, Fox's most promising new show in the works is the highly anticipated, and highly questioned, Baywatch reboot. The network is also developing series adaptations of movies like End of Watch, Hell or High Water and Starsky & Hutch, as well as animated projects for Bloom County and Taskmasters.
For those who still miss So Help Me Todd's breezy storytelling, the series' two seasons can be streamed in full with a Paramount+ subscription.
