CBS Orders Reboot ‘Magnum P.I.’, ‘Cagney and Lacey’ Pilots, ‘Murphy Brown’ Gets Series Order

It’s pilot pickup season, and that means TV beat reporters all over the interwebs are struggling to keep up with the waves of orders and pickups.  Earlier this week it was announced that CBS was putting in an order for one of their classic comedies, Murphy Brown.  Today, CBS put the pilot order in for 6 additional series.

Murphy Brown won’t be a reboot, but rather a continuation of the newsroom sitcom starring Candice Bergen (who is returning for the show).  Reportedly, the series will take a stab at the current ‘fake news’ lay of the land, as well as other timely aspects of the current media climate.

The two most interesting of these 6 additional would have to be revists of classic series Magnum P.I. and Cagney And Lacey.

CBS is calling the new-look Magnum P.I.  an update of the 1980-88 action-drama. Hawaii Five-o reboot showrunner Peter Lenkov is writing the pilot, and the new Magnum (not Tom Selleck, obviously) is also a former Navy SEAL, but fresh from a stint in Afghanistan, rather than Vietnam.  This comes after ABC’s failed attempt at rebooting Magnum with a female star last year. TVLine says in this particular reboot, the central core will consist of three men and a woman- Juliet Higgins rather than Jonathan.

Cagney and Lacey, Parenthood showrunner Bridget Carpenter is set to write the script for the pilot, as well as serving as EP for the series.  It’ll still center around two female police detectives ‘teaming up’ to keep the streets safe, but the show is set to take place in Los Angeles rather than New York City.

The other four series CBS ordered pilots for include a police drama Chiefs (about a trio of female police chiefs, from CSI‘s Carol Mendelsohn), a sitcom called Fam (about a woman whose pristine life is demolished by her loose-cannon half-sister), a comedy called Here Comes the Neighborhood (about a Midwestern guy who moves to a tough L.A. neighborhood, Big Bang Theory writer Jim Reynolds is doing that one), and a sitcom called Pandas in New York (about a family of Indian doctors and their rebellious youngest son).