• ABC has given a straight-to-series order to an untitled Grey’s Anatomy spinoff set in rural West Texas, premiering midseason 2027
• The show is co-created and written by Shonda Rhimes and current Grey’s showrunner Meg Marinis, with Ellen Pompeo executive producing
• It’s the first Grey’s franchise entry not set on the West Coast and the first not built around a series regular from the mothership
• The spinoff will likely share a Thursday 10 p.m. time slot with Grey’s Anatomy, airing back-to-back during midseason
• Rhimes writing the new series marks her first creative work on the Grey’s franchise since Derek Shepherd’s death in Season 11

Twenty-one years in, the Grey’s Anatomy universe is heading somewhere it has never gone before — and it’s a long way from Seattle. ABC has handed a straight-to-series order to an untitled Grey’s Anatomy spinoff set in rural West Texas, co-created by Shonda Rhimes and current Grey’s showrunner Meg Marinis, with Ellen Pompeo on board as executive producer. The new drama is set to premiere in midseason 2027.

The show is described as an “edgy drama about a team at a rural West Texas medical center — the last chance for care before miles of nowhere.” That logline alone signals a pretty sharp departure from the glossy, relationship-tangled halls of Grey Sloan Memorial. This is frontier medicine. High stakes, scarce resources, and a whole lot of open road between patients and their next option.

Marinis, a Houston native and University of Texas at Austin graduate who started her Grey’s career as a writers assistant in Season 3 and spent two decades working her way up to showrunner, didn’t hide how personal this one is. “I am incredibly excited to expand the Grey’s Anatomy universe,” she said. “This opportunity will bring new characters and stories to life that will embody the same heart, emotion and connection audiences have loved from Grey’s for more than two decades — all set in my home state of Texas. I am so grateful to Shonda Rhimes for creating this dynamic world and feel so fortunate that I get to be a part of it.”

What Makes This Spinoff Different From Private Practice and Station 19

This is the fourth series in the Grey’s Anatomy franchise — after the mothership, Private Practice, and Station 19 — but it breaks the mold in some significant ways. For starters, it’s the first entry not set on the West Coast. Seattle and Los Angeles have been the franchise’s twin homes since 2005. West Texas is a completely different world, tonally and geographically.

It’s also the first Grey’s spinoff that won’t be built around a series regular from the original show. Kate Walsh’s Addison Montgomery headlined Private Practice after departing Seattle Grace to give Meredith and Derek their shot. Jason George’s Ben Warren anchored Station 19. This new series is expected to center on an entirely fresh group of doctors — though sources indicate it will still be connected to the Grey’s world through one or more characters. Fans have already started speculating: Jake Borelli’s Levi Schmitt relocated to Texas with his life partner in Season 21, which would make for a pretty tidy bridge.

Whether ABC uses an episode of the mothership as a backdoor pilot — the way it did for both Private Practice and Station 19 — hasn’t been decided yet. The episode order for the spinoff is also still TBD, though it’s expected to land somewhere around nine episodes, in line with recent ABC midseason entries.

One thing that is confirmed: Rhimes will write the new series. That’s a bigger deal than it might sound. The last time she wrote or co-wrote a Grey’s Anatomy episode was the Season 11 gut-punch “How to Save a Life” — the one where Derek Shepherd died. Before that, she wrote the original pilot and the backdoor pilot for Private Practice. Her return to the franchise as a writer, not just a producer, is a signal of how seriously Shondaland is treating this.

The Scheduling Plan and What It Means for Grey’s Season 23

The spinoff and its parent show are expected to share Grey’s Anatomy’s Thursday 10 p.m. slot on ABC, behind 9-1-1 and the recently ordered 9-1-1: Nashville. The plan would have Grey’s Anatomy air in the fall, with the new Texas series taking over the slot at midseason — a programming strategy ABC has been leaning into hard, having also expanded The Rookie into The Rookie: North next season.

Grey’s Anatomy has already been renewed for Season 23, which is expected to premiere this fall. The show closed out Season 22 on genuinely strong numbers — 5.99 million total viewers in MP+7, up 9% over the prior week and more than doubling its Live+Same Day audience. For a show in its 22nd year, that’s not a series in decline. That’s a series with real runway left.

It’s also worth noting that the spinoff is being produced by Shondaland and 20th Television — and because it’s a spinoff of an existing series rather than an original, it falls outside of Rhimes’ exclusive deal with Netflix, where Shondaland has been based since 2017 producing hits like the Bridgerton franchise. ABC gets this one.

Rhimes and producer Betsy Beers — who exec produced Station 19 alongside Pompeo — are both on board. Whether Marinis will serve as showrunner on both Grey’s and the new series simultaneously is still being worked out, though it’s apparently doable: her predecessor Krista Vernoff ran both Grey’s and Station 19 at the same time.

There’s also a parallel worth watching at CBS, where a still-untitled medical drama from Walker creator Anna Fricke — starring Jared Padalecki as a doctor running a mobile clinic in rural Texas — received a development room order last November and is still delivering scripts. Whether the Grey’s spinoff announcement affects that project’s fate is an open question.

For now, the Grey’s Anatomy universe is packing its bags and heading south. New doctors, new terrain, new stories — and Shonda Rhimes back at the keyboard for the first time in over a decade. “Miles of nowhere” has never sounded so compelling.

The post Grey’s Anatomy Is Getting a Texas Spinoff for 2027 appeared first on Cream.

• Jimmy Kimmel opened Disney’s 2026 upfront presentation with a 10-minute monologue roasting his own tumultuous year
• He joked that “the president has tried to f-k me twice” while crediting Trump for boosting his ratings
• Kimmel quipped ABC only pulls you off air if you “throw a chair at your Mormon boyfriend” — a dig at Taylor Frankie Paul’s Bachelorette fallout
• He admitted he’s cost Disney “billions” and called his hiring “the worst personnel decision” in company history
• The appearance came just a day after Kimmel joined fellow late-night hosts on Colbert’s show, where his two-word reaction to Melania’s callout was revealed

Jimmy Kimmel walked into Disney’s upfront presentation on Tuesday and did exactly what you’d expect from a man who’s spent the last year as a walking political lightning rod — he made it funny.

Introduced by Ryan Seacrest at the Javits Center in New York, Kimmel took the stage to big applause and immediately leaned into the absurdity of his situation. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you guys again either,” he told the assembled advertisers and Disney brass. “But the bad boy of data and measurement solutions is back.”

It set the tone for a roughly 10-minute monologue that was equal parts self-deprecating, politically sharp, and genuinely hilarious — the kind of performance that reminded everyone why ABC has kept him around for 24 years, even when keeping him around has gotten very expensive.

“The President Has Tried to Get Me Twice”

Kimmel didn’t dance around the drama. He went straight at it.

“The president has tried to f-k me twice over the last six months — that’s one way to look at it,” he said. “You could also say I’ve generated unparalleled engagement across a variety of platforms.”

He also took stock of the financial damage. “I cost our company a lot of money this year, billions,” Kimmel said. “It is very possible that no employee in the history of any company has cost their employer more. Hiring me 24 years ago, just from a purely mathematical standpoint, was the worst personnel decision that Disney Corporation has ever made. Not even the captain of the Exxon Valdez did more damage.”

His show’s ratings, though? Up. “Largely thanks to our partners in Washington,” he noted.

The backstory behind those jokes has been a genuinely wild ride. Last fall, Kimmel was briefly pulled off the air after comments he made about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing. Then in late April, he performed a parody White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast in which he said Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow” — a crack he’s since clarified was about the 23-year age gap between the president and first lady. The joke landed just days before a gunman attempted to storm the actual WHCD event at a Washington, D.C. hotel.

Melania fired back on X, calling Kimmel’s rhetoric “hateful and violent” and saying “people like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.” Trump escalated on Truth Social: “This is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.” The FCC, meanwhile, launched an accelerated licensing review of Disney-owned broadcast stations — which FCC chair Brendan Carr insists has nothing to do with displeasing the White House.

Disney has pushed back, saying the agency’s actions “threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech.” And Kimmel, clearly, has not gone quietly.

The Taylor Frankie Paul Dig

He saved one of his sharpest lines for a more local target. Addressing the idea that ABC might pull him from the air, Kimmel quipped: “Usually in order for ABC to pull you off the air, you have to throw a chair at your Mormon boyfriend.”

The room got it immediately. It was a direct reference to Taylor Frankie Paul’s controversy — the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star whose season of The Bachelorette was shelved after a highly publicized incident with her boyfriend. The joke landed, by multiple accounts, very well.

Near the end of his set, Kimmel signed off with characteristic dry wit: “That’s it for me — probably forever.”

“Oh Boy” — The Two Words That Started It All

The upfront appearance came one day after Kimmel joined Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Fallon for a special episode of The Late Show — a reunion of the Strike Force Five podcast ahead of Colbert’s final episode on May 21.

It was Oliver who revealed how Kimmel first reacted when Melania’s post went live. After the first lady’s tweet hit, Kimmel sent two words to a group chat of his fellow comics: “Oh, boy.”

“It’s an amazing thing to get a text from Jimmy saying ‘Oh, boy,’ and then a picture of Melania mad at him,” Oliver said. “What a way to start the day!”

Fallon admitted he had a slightly different reaction. “And then I sent a text to you guys, and I said, ‘Hey, don’t be mad at me, but I liked it. I think she’s got a point.'”

When Colbert asked Kimmel how it feels to wake up to that kind of attention, Kimmel’s answer was perfectly, deflating-ly honest: “The saddest part of it is that I realize in those moments that the only four people who care are sitting right here. It takes 12 hours for the rest of the people in my life to even figure out that anything’s going on.”

He also got one good line in about Colbert’s impending exit — when the Late Show cancellation came up, Kimmel told him: “Don’t worry, give me a few months and it’ll be Strike Force Three.”

Back at the upfront, the message from Disney was clear: Kimmel is still their guy. The drama has quieted. The FCC review continues. And as of Tuesday, ABC’s most controversial employee was back on stage in New York, joking about how much it’s all cost — and getting a standing ovation for it.

The post Kimmel Owns His Trump Drama at Disney Upfront appeared first on Cream.

• Conan O’Brien will host the 99th Academy Awards on March 14, 2027, live on ABC and Hulu
• It’s his third consecutive year as host — the first three-peat since Billy Crystal in the early ’90s
• The announcement was made at Disney’s upfront presentation in New York on May 12
• Executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan return for a fourth straight year; Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney back for a third
• The 2027 ceremony will be the second-to-last Oscars on ABC before the show moves to YouTube in 2029

Conan O’Brien is coming back to the Oscars — and at this point, it’s starting to look permanent. ABC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially announced Tuesday that O’Brien will return to host the 99th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 14, 2027, making him the first host to hold the gig for three consecutive years since Billy Crystal did it in the early 1990s.

The news dropped during Disney’s upfront presentation in New York, with Robin Roberts delivering the announcement from the stage. Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Lynette Howell Taylor confirmed the rehire alongside a full returning production team: executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan are back for a fourth straight year, and O’Brien’s longtime collaborators Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney return as producers for a third time, with Sweeney also pulling double duty as a writer.

“We are thrilled to be working again with Conan, Raj, Katy, Jeff and Mike for the 99th Oscars,” Kramer and Howell Taylor said in a joint statement. “They are an incredible team and have produced such captivating, entertaining and heartfelt shows over the last two years. We are so grateful for their ongoing partnership as we honor our global film community — and we look forward to Conan superbly leading the celebration with his brilliance and humor.”

Craig Erwich, president of Disney’s Television Group, was equally effusive. “Conan has created remarkable energy around The Oscars,” he said. “His singular comedic voice makes Hollywood’s biggest night one of the most entertaining celebrations of the year. We’re proud to welcome him back and look forward to what he and the producing team deliver next.”

How We Got Here: From Reluctant Host to Franchise Player

For context on just how rare this is: for much of the past decade, celebrities have treated big awards show hosting gigs as something to avoid. The criticism can be brutal, the ratings pressure relentless, and the upside increasingly hard to justify. O’Brien, though, wanted in from the start.

“When the first offer came in, I told him, ‘You don’t need to do this, you’ve got nothing to prove,'” producer Jeff Ross told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of this year’s show. “When we quit late night, the goal was to only do things that are fun, things that we want to do. Well, this is what Conan wants to do.”

O’Brien himself explained his decision-making in characteristically offbeat terms: “There’s a little bearded Viking inside me. He’s been there since I was 10 years old. And when that Viking decides on something — whether it’s replacing David Letterman with no experience, skiing some advanced slope I have no business going down or hosting the Oscars, that’s what’s going to happen.”

His instincts have paid off. O’Brien’s 2025 debut as host drew a post-pandemic high of 19.7 million viewers, the night “Anora” swept the awards. Ratings dipped roughly 9 percent this year — down to about 17.86 million for the ceremony that crowned “One Battle After Another” as best picture — but social media engagement during the broadcast jumped over 42%, and reviews for O’Brien’s performance remained glowing. The Hollywood Reporter’s chief TV critic Dan Fienberg called him “very good” in his second outing and predicted the Academy would be quick to invite him back.

They were.

The day after the 2026 ceremony, Walt Disney TV exec VP Rob Mills told Deadline the door was wide open: “Conan has, obviously, a standing offer to host as long as he wants. 100% we’d love him back.” After O’Brien “signed off” at the end of the 2026 show with a sketch parodying “One Battle After Another” — in which he was appointed “Oscars host for life,” promptly killed, his body hauled away and incinerated, and Mr. Beast named his successor — Mills was asked if it was just a comedy bit. “Conan is host for life, yes,” he said. “He hasn’t even accepted yet. He’s just being told. We’re going to treat that as if that was fact.”

Turns out, it was.

The Team Behind the Show

The production team reassembling around O’Brien is no accident. Kapoor and Mullan both won Emmys for their work on the 96th Oscars and have built a real creative rhythm with O’Brien over the past two years. “Getting to reunite with Conan O’Brien for a third year at the Oscars is really special,” they said in a joint statement. “He brings that signature humor everyone loves, along with a real warmth and generosity that carry through the entire show. He’s a true creative partner, someone we trust completely, and someone who makes the whole process genuinely fun, both behind the scenes and on stage. We’re incredibly grateful to keep building this together and can’t wait to share what’s next.”

O’Brien himself has six Primetime Emmy wins across 33 nominations — including a nod for his Oscars work — and brings the same writers’ room sensibility to the show that defined his decades in late night on Late Night, The Tonight Show, and Conan. He’s also currently hosting the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast and the HBO travel series “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” so it’s not like he’s been sitting around waiting for the call.

At a press conference ahead of the 2026 show, he offered a peek behind the curtain on his process: he and the writers evaluate jokes for topicality right up until showtime, and he compared the experience to his early improv days at The Groundlings. “You just gotta let it go and go out there and let my natural low self-esteem take over,” he said.

The End of an Era — and What Comes Next

There’s a bittersweet undercurrent to all of this. The 2027 ceremony will be the penultimate Oscars to air on ABC and the second-to-last held at the Dolby Theatre, which has been the show’s home for over two decades. After Disney airs the landmark 100th Oscars in 2028, the broadcast moves to YouTube and the ceremony relocates to the Peacock Theatre at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles, beginning with the 101st Academy Awards in 2029.

O’Brien himself seemed to see the writing on the wall. In his opening monologue at this year’s ceremony, he told the audience he was “honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards… Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.”

For now, the human is back. The 99th Oscars air live from the Dolby Theatre on March 14, 2027, at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and Hulu.

The post Conan O’Brien to Host the 2027 Oscars for Third Year in a Row appeared first on Cream.

• ABC is holding High Potential Season 3 for a 2027 midseason debut rather than its usual fall premiere
• R.J. Decker takes over the Tuesday 10 p.m. slot behind Dancing With the Stars
• The Scrubs revival gets a fast-tracked fall return, leading off Wednesday nights
• ABC has renewed every scripted series on its roster — a first in the network’s history going back to 1948
• No Bachelor franchise show will air this fall for the first time since the 2019-20 season

ABC’s No. 1 show isn’t coming back this fall — and the network is completely fine with that.

The Alphabet unveiled its fall 2026 schedule on Tuesday, May 12, and the biggest story isn’t what’s on it. It’s what’s missing. High Potential, the Kaitlin Olson-led procedural that has been ABC’s signature primetime hit and the No. 1 broadcast entertainment series of the season in adults 18-49, will not be returning until midseason — meaning viewers won’t see Season 3 until 2027.

In its place on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. will be R.J. Decker, the Scott Speedman crime drama that narrowly avoided cancellation before earning a Season 2 renewal. The show will air behind Dancing With the Stars, which continues to dominate Tuesday nights and soared nearly 80% in the demo last season.

Why ABC Is Keeping Its Biggest Show on the Bench

The decision to hold High Potential wasn’t made lightly, and ABC’s senior VP of content strategy and scheduling Ari Goldman spent a lot of time explaining it.

“The ‘High Potential’ move to midseason is one that’s really born out of the success that we’ve proven over the last couple of years with ‘Will Trent,’ ‘The Rookie’ and the uninterrupted runs that we’ve enjoyed starting in that January timeframe going through the end of the season,” Goldman told reporters. “We’re thinking about the behavior of our linear audience, but also the streaming viewers, who really have shown the importance of week-over-week steadiness in planning and rolling out these shows. We do not take lightly the move of ‘High Potential’ to midseason, but I think this is a real opportunity to bridge through to the end of the year, to keep an uninterrupted run of episodes.”

Goldman also pointed out that the show’s previous two seasons have dealt with scheduling choppiness. “We’ve had to take a number of breaks the first couple seasons with ‘High Potential,'” he said. “Season one, it had more to do with a short first season order. Season two, it had the ‘Dancing With the Stars’ lead-in in the fall, and then get into holiday programming and it just gets a little bit choppy after that. So we’re thrilled to be able to bring it back with much more attention.”

The strategy also lets ABC lean into an extraordinary stretch of live events in early 2027. The network will broadcast the College Football Playoff championship game, the Super Bowl (its first in 21 years), the relocated Grammy Awards, and the Oscars — all in the first quarter of the year. Goldman called it “the most formidable block of live events that’s ever been assembled on broadcast television,” and sees each as a marketing opportunity to reintroduce audiences to ABC’s entertainment slate.

And yes — a High Potential Super Bowl lead-out seems like an obvious play. Goldman wouldn’t confirm it, but he wasn’t exactly subtle: “I can tell you, we are very excited for the opportunity, and we are very clearly focused on an ABC Entertainment series that will air after Super Bowl.”

As for episode count, that’s still up in the air. Season 2 ran 18 episodes, and Goldman said only that “we’re still looking at a really full season for ‘High Potential.'” He also confirmed the show has new showrunners in Nora and Lilla Zuckerman — the delay, he stressed, is about scheduling strategy, not creative concerns. “With ‘High Potential’ and the really dominant success that it’s enjoyed, we have no real concern about the audience not making the journey over to midseason to follow the show,” Goldman told TheWrap.

Fans, though, are doing the math: that’s at least seven months without their favorite show on the air.

What’s Actually on the Fall Schedule

Outside of the High Potential move, ABC is playing it steady. The network renewed every single scripted series it carries — Goldman confirmed it’s the first time in ABC’s history, dating back to the network’s founding in 1948, that every scripted show has been picked up. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he said simply.

The biggest winner in the shuffle is the Scrubs revival, which is coming back fast after a strong spring debut. It was the No. 1 new comedy on a multiplatform basis and the No. 1 comedy in adults 18-49 on linear this season — and ABC is wasting no time capitalizing. Scrubs will lead off Wednesday nights at 8 p.m., rolling into Abbott Elementary at 8:30 (confirmed for a now-rare 22-episode Season 6 order), followed by Celebrity Jeopardy! and Shark Tank. Goldman said of the Scrubs premiere: “We did have the highest-rated comedy telecast on any network all season with that premiere. It was a big event for us and really brought a lot of attention back to ABC Wednesdays.”

Thursday nights stay exactly as they were — 9-1-1 at 8, 9-1-1: Nashville at 9, and Grey’s Anatomy at 10. None of those shows are lighting up the overnight ratings, but all three perform well in delayed viewing. Goldman noted episode counts for Thursday shows are still being discussed, though he described any adjustments as “nothing particularly austere.”

The full fall lineup breaks down like this:

Monday: ESPN’s Monday Night Football (simulcast with ESPN)
Tuesday: Dancing With the Stars (8 p.m.), R.J. Decker (10 p.m.)
Wednesday: Scrubs (8 p.m.), Abbott Elementary (8:30 p.m.), Celebrity Jeopardy! (9 p.m.), Shark Tank (10 p.m.)
Thursday: 9-1-1 (8 p.m.), 9-1-1: Nashville (9 p.m.), Grey’s Anatomy (10 p.m.)
Friday: Celebrity Wheel of Fortune (8 p.m.), 20/20 (9 p.m.)
Saturday: College Football (7:30 p.m.)
Sunday: America’s Funniest Home Videos (7 p.m.), The Wonderful World of Disney (8 p.m.) — kicking off with the TV premiere of Inside Out 2

What’s Waiting in the Wings for 2027

The midseason bench is deep. Joining High Potential in the 2027 lineup are The Rookie (which just logged its most-streamed season premiere ever with Season 8), Will Trent, Shifting Gears, The Bachelor, and Bachelor in Paradise. For the first time since the 2019-20 season, no Bachelor franchise show will air in the fall — a notable absence driven in part by the ongoing uncertainty around the unaired season of The Bachelorette starring Taylor Frankie Paul.

“‘The Bachelorette’ dynamic right now is one that we were just approaching day by day,” Goldman said. “This is real life, and we want to make sure we don’t rush into any determination in either direction.”

The most anticipated midseason addition is The Rookie: North, the newest spinoff in the franchise, starring Jay Ellis. The series follows Alex Holland, a man whose midlife wasn’t exactly screaming for a crisis — until a violent home invasion reignites something in him and sends him to the Pierce County Police Department as a rookie. The show also stars Janet Montgomery, Karen Fukuhara, Chris Sullivan, Froy Gutierrez, Mya Lowe, and Malik Watson, with franchise creator Alexi Hawley and Nathan Fillion among the executive producers. Goldman all but confirmed it will be paired with The Rookie mothership when both return: “It is simply a rule of audience flow that shows and their spinoffs will have higher compatibility than other pairings.”

As for Dancing With the Stars, Goldman is bullish heading into the new season. The show is adding Summer House‘s Ciara Miller and The Traitors star Maura Higgins to its cast, and the team has been aggressive on TikTok and across social platforms. “The margin now between ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and the nearest entertainment titles just continues to grow and grow,” he said.

Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich framed the whole thing as a network operating from a rare position of security: “We enter this fall season from a position of undeniable strength. Our focus has always been simple: Make the best shows on television and get them to audiences however they want to watch.”

For High Potential fans, that strength might feel cold comfort when their show isn’t back until January. But if Goldman’s plan works — an uninterrupted run backed by Super Bowl-level promotion — the wait could set up Season 3 to be bigger than ever.

The post ABC Benches ‘High Potential’ Until 2027 in Bold Fall Move appeared first on Cream.

• ABC has ordered The Rookie: North to series for the 2026-27 season, with a midseason premiere expected.
• Jay Ellis stars as Alex Holland, a man who joins the Pierce County Police Department after a violent home invasion upends his life.
• Nathan Fillion appears in the pilot as John Nolan and executive produces alongside creator Alexi Hawley.
• The order is for 10 episodes, with crossovers between North and the mothership series already in the works.
• This is The Rookie’s second spinoff attempt, following the one-season run of The Rookie: Feds in 2022-23.

The Rookie is back in the franchise business. ABC has officially ordered The Rookie: North to series, handing Jay Ellis his next leading role and giving Nathan Fillion’s long-running cop drama a second shot at building a universe. The pickup, for 10 episodes, was confirmed just hours before Disney’s upfronts presentation on Tuesday, May 12 — and the deal between ABC and indie studio Lionsgate Television reportedly didn’t even close until Sunday night. Classic upfronts drama.

The new series is set in Washington state and follows Alex Holland (Ellis), a man who, as the logline puts it, “believed his midlife wasn’t worthy of a crisis.” Then a violent home invasion changes everything, pushing him to join the Pierce County Police Department as its oldest rookie. Policing a terrain that stretches from the urban coast to the rural forest — where backup isn’t just five minutes away — Alex has to prove himself to his skeptical training officer, his fellow rookies, and maybe most of all, himself.

It’s a premise that echoes the original show’s DNA while pushing into new territory, both geographically and emotionally. Where The Rookie is rooted in Los Angeles, North films in Vancouver and leans into the Pacific Northwest’s isolation as part of its identity.

Nathan Fillion Is Already Showing Up

Fillion isn’t just lending his name to this one. He appears in the North pilot as his Rookie character John Nolan — a move that immediately signals how connected the two shows are meant to feel. He also executive produces both series, cementing his role as the franchise’s anchor.

Creator Alexi Hawley, who wrote and directed the pilot, will serve as showrunner on both The Rookie (heading into its ninth season) and North simultaneously. He’s done this kind of juggling act before — there was a stretch where he was running The Rookie, The Rookie: Feds, and his Netflix series The Recruit at the same time. “I have a really good team,” he told Deadline.

As for crossovers, Hawley is already thinking about it — carefully. “Maybe a couple episodes, or two or three episodes a season” is what he’s envisioning for stories that bridge the two shows. But he’s realistic about the logistics. “It’s harder obviously, with the Vancouver or the Pacific Northwest of it all and LA,” he said. “Feds was designed on purpose with a lot of crossovers.” The mothership series is set to premiere in January, which puts both shows running concurrently in midseason — exactly the window you’d want for those kinds of storylines to land.

A Deep Ensemble Behind Ellis

Ellis leads a cast that includes Chris Sullivan, Karen Fukuhara, Froy Gutierrez, Janet Montgomery, Mya Lowe, and Malik Watson. Hawley executive produces alongside Fillion, Mark Gordon, Bill Norcross, and Michelle Chapman. Ellis himself is on board as a producer. Lionsgate Television and 20th Television are co-producing.

The pilot order came back in November, after the project had been in development for over a year. That it made it to series is a win — the other pilot ABC ordered this cycle, a comedy called Do You Want Kids?, didn’t make the cut.

Learning From The Rookie: Feds

This isn’t ABC’s first rodeo with a Rookie spinoff. The Rookie: Feds, starring Niecy Nash-Betts, launched in 2022 and was canceled after a single season in 2023. That show also leaned heavily on crossovers with the original — but it never quite built its own footing. North is clearly being positioned differently, with a distinct setting, a grittier tonal premise, and a lead in Ellis who brings a different kind of energy than Fillion’s everyman warmth.

Crossovers, when they work, are genuinely good TV business. ABC knows this — 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Nashville pulled one off this season, and Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 built years of shared storytelling before Station 19 ended. The blueprint exists. Now it’s on Hawley and Ellis to make North worth the trip.

“Alex must prove to his skeptical training officer, his fellow rookies and himself, that he’s finally found something worthy of the fight.” If the show can deliver on that promise, the franchise might finally have its second act.

The post Jay Ellis’ ‘The Rookie: North’ Gets ABC Series Order appeared first on Cream.

• ABC has renewed R.J. Decker starring Scott Speedman for a second season.
• The pickup completes a rare sweep — ABC renewed all 10 of its scripted series with zero cancellations.
• It’s the first time the network has had no cancellations since at least 2012.
• The show’s premiere drew over 15 million viewers across 35 days of multiplatform viewing.
• A Rookie spinoff, The Rookie: North, is still in contention for a pickup and could expand ABC’s slate further.

Scott Speedman is staying in South Florida. ABC has renewed R.J. Decker for a second season, TVLine first reported — and the pickup does more than just save one show. It completes something genuinely rare in network television: ABC has renewed every single one of its current scripted series for the 2026-27 season. Ten shows. Zero cancellations. The network hasn’t pulled that off since at least 2012.

R.J. Decker was the last scripted show on ABC’s slate with an undecided future, and it had been sitting squarely on the bubble. The freshman drama tapered off after a strong launch — its March 3 premiere behind High Potential became the network’s best 10 PM drama premiere on linear in over five years, accumulating more than 15 million viewers through 35 days of multiplatform viewing on ABC, Hulu, Hulu on Disney+ and digital platforms. But in average linear numbers week to week, it lagged behind its Tuesday lead-ins, Will Trent and High Potential. Still, it held its own on Hulu, regularly cracking the Daily Top 10, and over seven days of linear-only viewing it averaged just under 5 million viewers — right in line with The Rookie (5.23 million) and fellow first-year drama 9-1-1: Nashville (4.73 million).

Behind the scenes, the show had sizable internal support. Speedman himself was a major selling point, and there was belief in the series’ trajectory over the course of the season — even accounting for a rocky start that included a pilot with reshoots following a recasting. A telling sign came late last month when Speedman appeared at Disney’s TV awards season party alongside talent from shows that had already been renewed.

What the Show Is About

Based on Carl Hiaasen’s 1987 crime novel Double Whammy, R.J. Decker follows a disgraced former newspaper photographer and ex-convict who reinvents himself as a private investigator in the gloriously chaotic world of South Florida. Speedman plays the title character alongside Jaina Lee Ortiz as his journalist ex Emilia “Emi” Ochoa, Bevin Bru as her police detective wife Melody “Mel” Abreu, Kevin Rankin as Aloysius “Wish” Aiken, and Adelaide Clemens as the enigmatic Catherine Delacroix — a woman from R.J.’s past who could be his greatest ally or his fastest route back to prison.

Showrunner Rob Doherty, who previously ran Elementary, adapted Hiaasen’s novel and executive produces alongside Carl Beverly, Sarah Timberman, Hiaasen himself, and Jason Tracey. Speedman also serves as a producer. The series is produced by 20th Television.

“The first time somebody talked to me about Carl Hiaasen, and what the show should be like, she said it’s a love letter to Floridian weirdness,” Doherty told TVLine at the show’s premiere. “That’s what we’re trying to be. Something we care about is embracing the weirdness of the place without speaking down to it.”

ABC’s Unprecedented Clean Sweep

To put the full scope of this moment in context: ABC is heading into next season with 9-1-1 (Season 10), 9-1-1: Nashville (Season 2), Abbott Elementary (Season 6), Grey’s Anatomy (Season 23), High Potential (Season 3), The Rookie (Season 9), Scrubs (Season 2), Shifting Gears (Season 3), Will Trent (Season 5), and now R.J. Decker (Season 2). It’s worth noting that while Fox also skipped cancellations heading into the 2024-25 season, that was widely considered an anomaly born out of the Hollywood strikes disrupting development — this feels different.

The network also has one pilot still in play for a pickup: The Rookie: North, a spinoff starring Jay Ellis. If that gets the green light — and it’s expected to — Deadline reports it could result in slightly trimmed episode orders for some existing ABC shows to accommodate the expanded slate. The network recently passed on a comedy pilot called Do You Want Kids? from Rachel Bloom and Dan Gregor, making The Rookie: North the lone remaining decision.

For Speedman and the R.J. Decker team, the renewal means more time in the sunshine — and more of that Floridian weirdness to come.

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• Taylor Frankie Paul’s Bachelorette season is not part of ABC’s announced summer lineup.
• The season was pulled in March after a 2023 domestic violence video involving ex Dakota Mortensen resurfaced.
• Reality Steve had predicted ABC would announce a summer premiere at its upfronts — that didn’t happen.
• ABC exec Rob Mills has said the season is “wonderful” and he hopes audiences eventually get to see it.
• ABC renewed The Bachelor, Bachelor in Paradise, and Dancing with the Stars for 2026-27, but The Bachelorette was absent.

Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of The Bachelorette will not be hitting your TV this summer — at least not according to ABC’s official plans. The network rolled out its summer premiere slate and the season was nowhere on it, despite weeks of speculation that a warm-weather debut was in the cards.

The absence stings a little for Bachelor Nation, which has been holding its breath since March 19, when ABC pulled the plug on the season 22 premiere just days before it was set to air. The trigger was a video posted by TMZ showing Paul in a 2023 altercation with ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, during which she threw a barstool that struck her then-7-year-old daughter, Indy. Paul had previously pleaded guilty to felony aggravated assault over the incident in exchange for other charges being dropped, but the footage itself had never been seen publicly — and once it was, two networks had to rethink their relationship with her almost overnight.

“In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of The Bachelorette at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,” Disney Entertainment Television said in a statement at the time.

Reality Steve’s Summer Prediction Didn’t Pan Out

Earlier this month, Bachelor Nation’s go-to spoiler source Reality Steve posted an Instagram Reel claiming ABC was planning to air the season this summer — and not on a streamer. “It’s gonna air on ABC this summer,” he said, predicting the network would make an official announcement at its upfronts. He even reasoned that ABC’s careful wording in its March cancellation — “at this time” — was intentional wiggle room. “You would have just said we’re done and this show is never airing,” he noted.

That upfronts announcement never came. And while the summer slate does include new unscripted programming — Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro debuts July 13 — there’s no Bachelorette slot to be found.

Still, the show’s absence from the schedule isn’t the same as a cancellation. Walt Disney Television’s EVP of unscripted and alternative entertainment Rob Mills has been notably careful not to slam the door shut. Speaking at Deadline’s Reality TV Summit in late April, he said the network was still open to finding ways to air the footage as long as Paul was doing well. Then, in an interview with TheWrap, he put it plainly: “We take everything a day at a time. We’re sort of really still processing everything and figuring out planning for the next cycles of The Bachelor franchise, and really just kind of looking at everything, and first and foremost, honestly, just making sure that Taylor, her family, everyone is being taken care of, just on a personal and human front.”

He’s also made clear he believes in the season itself. “I love the season, and if people who enjoy the show — Bachelor Nation — get to see it, I think they will love it as well,” Mills told Vulture. “Obviously, I would love for people to experience it.”

What Mills Saw When He Met Taylor Before Casting

In a candid Vulture profile, Mills recalled flying to Utah to meet with Paul before she was formally offered the lead role. What he found wasn’t a ratings-hungry influencer looking to stir up drama — it was a single mom being honest about her life.

“It was not, ‘Oh, this is somebody who’s going to be absolutely crazy,’ or, ‘This is going to be the wildest season of The Bachelorette ever,'” Mills said. “[She] very honestly spelled out, ‘I have three children by two different men, it’s hard and I need a partner.'”

Paul, 31, shares daughter Indy, 8, and son Ocean, 5, with ex-husband Tate Paul, and son Ever, 2, with Mortensen. She was named the season 22 lead in fall 2025, with her premiere originally set for March 22 — a departure from the show’s traditional summer window that was announced with considerable fanfare on Call Her Daddy.

“It does raise the stakes when we have a single parent,” Mills added. “They are thinking of children as well as themselves.”

Paul has said she was open with her contestants throughout filming. “I really told everyone as a whole if there’s anything you want to know, please let me know,” she told Us Weekly in March. “I wasn’t trying to shove everything down their throat… I wanted to tell them what they wanted to know. Please ask anything. I am [a] very open book.”

Where Things Stand for Taylor Now

The timeline of the past few months has been a lot. In February, a new domestic violence investigation involving Paul and Mortensen was opened by Utah’s Draper City Police Department. Production on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 5 paused. Then in mid-April, authorities confirmed Paul would not be charged, and filming on Mormon Wives resumed.

Through it all, people close to Paul say she’s been doing the quiet work. “She has been doing the work behind the scenes, taken accountability and is focused on moving forward in a more positive way,” an insider told Us Weekly. “The hope is that viewers would connect with that growth and see a different side of her, making this season feel like a true redemption moment rather than just a return to TV, but right now her priority is her family and her mental health.”

Taylor herself has said she’s hopeful the season eventually airs. And the financial stakes for ABC are real — Page Six previously reported the network is out tens of millions of dollars on a season that’s already been fully produced. An industry source told the outlet back in March that “ABC left a window in their statement to bring [the show] back. They haven’t canceled it — they simply paused it.”

For now, ABC has renewed The Bachelor, Bachelor in Paradise, and Dancing with the Stars for the 2026-27 season. The Bachelorette isn’t on that list either — but Mills’s words keep echoing. “If it gets seen,” he told Variety, “I’m sure people will absolutely enjoy it.”

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