After a failed hourlong legal series, Jim Belushi is returning to his roots: half-hour comedy. The 'According to Jim' star is teaming with 'Murphy Brown' creator Diane English for a new project at ABC Studios.

According to Deadline, Belushi and English will co-write the project. The new sitcom centers on Belushi as a single dad with teen offspring. No network has been announced.

Belushi recently starred in CBS's legal dramedy 'The Defenders' alongside Jerry O'Connell, but is best known for 'According to Jim,' which ran for a seemingly impossible eight seasons on ABC. He joins a bevvy of former sitcom stars prepping returns to TV.

It's just a week before Valentine's Day, and who better to offer romantic advice than Jim Belushi? On 'The Talk' (Weekdays, Syndicated on CBS) today, Julie Chen posed the question to Belushi, "What are some simple things she can do to keep her husband happy?" Leah Remini laughed, saying she thought she knew, but she'd be interested to hear what Belushi had to say.

Belushi's advice was simple and to the point. "It's just one thing," he said. "It's moan more. Moan more, moan louder, moan often."

Men are simple creatures, Belushi explained. Turns out, according to Remini, she did know. Julie Chen, however, was surprised. "Not what I was expecting," she said. We wonder what she was expecting...

What is Jim Belushi doing in the photo to the right? Is he stretching? Practicing a swan dive? Trying to hide George Lopez's face from the camera?

None of the above! In fact, Belushi is showing how he gets his picture snapped by the paparazzi. On 'Lopez Tonight' (weeknights 11PM ET on TBS), the host revealed a photo of Mr. Belushi diving to the ground. George asked what was going on in the picture. "Are you breakdancing?" he said.

It turns out that Jim lives in a busy Hollywood neighborhood -- Jennifer Garner, Noami Watts and Jessica Biel also live there, and the paparazzi are constantly trying to take candid shots of the actresses. But they're not so excited about Belushi.

It's the second legal premiere of the night! And it's also the 1,807th legal show currently on TV, more or less. So the question for the pilot episode of 'The Defenders' (Wed., 10PM ET on CBS) is whether the courtroom series will be able to stand out from the pack.

[Warning: Spoiler alert.]

'The Defenders' is set in Las Vegas, and features Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell as two lawyers who are poster boys for the Vegas lifestyle. In fact, they're literally poster boys -- as they play the type of attorneys who have a big tacky billboard with their 1-800 number posted prominently. The pair aren't upscale lawyers, they're basically scruffy ambulance-chasers. But on the premiere episode, they find themselves embroiled in a case that's a little more serious, involving a murder suspect who puts his life in our heroes' hands.

Every year, and this timid fall season is no exception, the broadcast networks build shows around established actors.

Quite often, they're disappointingly contrived and formulaic, as is the case with NBC's 'Outlaw' and 'The Whole Truth' (10PM ET, ABC).

But 'The Defenders' (10PM ET, CBS) which, like those other shows, is a pretty straightforward legal procedural, has a surprising amount of fun with its familiar building blocks.

Just when you thought that there wasn't room for another legal drama on prime-time, along comes 'The Defenders,' a new hour-long procedural set in Las Vegas. Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell are defense attorneys based on a couple of real-life Vegas lawyers, who were joined on the panel by co-stars Jurnee Smollett and Tanya Fisher, exec-producers Harry Gantz, Joe Gantz, Carol Mendelsohn, Kevin Kennedy and Niels Muller, and showrunner Greg Walker.

Since the show hasn't started shooting yet, there wasn't much in the way of dirt from filming, but Jim Belushi kept the panel lively despite some truly dire questions from attending critics. A rundown of highlights follows after the jump.

There was no emergency landing on the Hudson River for Brooke Shields. Last October it was all over the news that Shields and Jim Belushi were in a plane crash. Her friends and family got more of a scare than she did, Shields explained to Jay Leno on the 'Tonight Show' (weeknights, 11:35PM ET on NBC).

Watch the video after the jump.

Michael Ausiello calls the casting of Jim Belushi in the pilot for the new CBS drama pilot 'Defenders' an "unusual casting decision." It's not that unusual. It's not like Belushi has never done anything serious before. Comics can often do drama too. Belushi will play a Las Vegas lawyer who helps those down and out and those fighting the system. (Not sure if this is the same legal drama that we reported on last year but it sounds similar.)

Since this show is set in Vegas, I'm sure we'll see the inevitable crossover episode(s) between 'CSI' and 'Defenders,' especially if one of them needs a ratings boost or it's a sweeps month. Belushi's character will need help on a case and the only people who can find the evidence he needs is the 'CSI' team.

If 'Defenders' lasts half as long as 'According to Jim' it will last nine years.

After spending years as the star of ABC's long-running comedy 'According to Jim,' Jim Belushi is eschewing the laughs for more dramatic fare: He's been cast in CBS' legal pilot 'Defenders,' says the Hollywood Reporter.

The actor is one of two leads in this hourlong drama, which follows a pair of impassioned Las Vegas defense attorneys who'll stop at nothing to defend their clients. Belushi is set to play a boozy, maritally-challenged lawyer named Nick Mancini. Carol Mendelsohn of 'CSI' serves as one of 'Defenders' executive producers.

Some of the most respected actors in television history have made their name playing lawyers on legal dramas, and now you can add another master thespian to the list: Jim Belushi.

Yes, Variety is reporting that the mind behind 'According to Jim' is currently developing a courtroom drama that will feature Belushi as a friendly lawyer who defends both the innocent and the guilty with equal determination.

Former According to Jim star Jim Belushi is moving to a drama series. He's been tapped to star in a legal drama created by Murphy Brown mastermind Diane English and Homicide and Oz exec-producer Barry Levinson. The show is loosely based on the memoir "How Can You Defend These People?" by TV commentator and lawyer Mickey Sherman.

This is an excellent way for Belushi to wash the stench of According to Jim from his person. If presented as a dramedy (much like many of the popular dramas today), this could be a winner.

I'm guessing that people who never liked According To Jim or understood why it remained on ABC's schedule for so many seasons think that this is an appropriate title for the series finale. Me? I never hated or loved the show. It was just "there," an innocuous family sitcom that a lot of people seemed to like. Also: Courtney Thorne-Smith is really hot.

Did you happen to watch this episode? What did you think of this show being on for so long, in general?

This will be the last season of According to Jim, and I will miss it. Not because I liked the show, or even watched the show (I did see one episode while waiting on line at UPS and then decided to never watch it again), but because According to Jim has been the target of all my jokes about the lack of quality network television for virtually as long as its been on the air.

If you care about such things, then spoilers follow about the series finale.

Ladies and gentlemen, the winner of the TV Squad Put Me Out Of This Misery Award for 2008 is ... According To Jim!

It was inevitable, really. It was the heavy favorite in the TV Squad offices, and the show has really been baffling TV fans with its uncanny ability to survive. A show hasn't survived like this since CBS' Yes, Dear, which lasted for many seasons, then was seemingly canceled, only to come back out of the ashes later with new episodes that hadn't aired yet (hell, it could still come back: the web site is still live).

While it was the clear winner in the category, that doesn't mean there wasn't any discussion. My personal choice for the award was Last Call with Carson Daly, which just seems to be a nothing show, with a lackluster host and bad guests, in a time slot that no one cares about. And his coming back early from the WGA strike didn't endear Daly to many either. But in the end we realized that even though his show is deadly, it's on at 1:35 in the morning and doesn't have the head-slapping "WTF" factor that According To Jim seems to get every season that it's renewed (full disclosure: while I think its time has passed, I find According To Jim rather harmless and better than has been advertised).

As AOL Television continues their look at the 50 Best TV Comedies -- Ever with numbers 30-21, we here at TV Squad are also looking at television comedy, but with a slightly skewed difference. Last week, we took a look at the numerous stand-up comedians who became sitcom stars. In this installment we look at one particular TV comedy that made stars out of a number of actors and actresses.

I'm talking about NBC's Saturday Night Live. Since its premiere in 1975, the late-night sketch show has given us a slew of actors and actresses who have made the move onto both the big and small screen. Sometimes the move was towards more comedy, sometimes it was a switch to more serious roles, other times it was a little bit of both. And, while many of those who made it are still in the public eye these days, some of the greatest of those who came from Studio 8H had their careers snuffed out way too early.

The amount of those who rose to the top varied from cast to cast. Some casts, like the very first one, produced a whole slew of talent who went on to bigger and better things. Others, like the first casts from 1980-85 and the mid-1990s, produced very little in the way of big stars.

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