the man

Almost a year ago we reported that James Todd Smith aka Ladies Love Cool James aka LL Cool J was making his return to television. The rapper-turned-actor's new drama, The Man, even seemed to be heading for the fall season lineup.

Then it disappeared from the radar into the deep, deep depths of the TV pilot abyss.

However, according to the Hollywood Reporter, CBS is close to inking a deal to add The Man to the midseason schedule.

You would think that the early, painful demise of The Nine, Kidnapped, Smith, Six Degrees, and other new dramas this season that there would be more comedy pilots picked up for the 2007 season. But according to The Hollywood Reporter, that's not the case.

Except for some solid buzz from a handful of comedies, including ABC's Sam I Am, ABC's Cavemen and Miss/Guided, and several shows at CBS, it looks like more dramas will make the schedule, including NBC's Bionic Woman and Journeyman, ABC's Dirty Sexy Money and Pushing Daisies, CBS' Babylon Fields, The Man, and Viva Laughlin. The new Jimmy Smits drama might replace Close To Home on Fridays, while FOX has the much-hyped Sarah Connor Chronicles, K-Ville, and Them.

The networks have added a few new faces to their pilots, because, well, otherwise the shows would just be shot after shot of empty sets, and that's not very exciting. Here's what's goin' on:

Jeffery Tambor (The Larry Sanders Show, Arrested Development) has joined the cast of the CBS comedy The Captain. The series stars Fran Kranz as a writer who moves into an apartment building where Tambor, a retired TV writer, also lives.

Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (which is actually a much funnier movie than it has any right to be) will star in The Call, a comedy from ABC about a group of paramedics in Los Angeles.

In this roundup of all the latest casting and pilot news, it says that ER star Shane West has been added to the cast of Supreme Courtships, a new FOX comedy that really has to get a new title before it hits the air.

Hmmm...does that mean he's leaving the NBC drama? Not that all pilots get picked up of course, but just the fact that he's starring in the pilot is interesting. I think when he joined ER it wasn't supposed to be a long term role. But now it seems like he's smack dab in the middle of all the action at the hospital: concentrating on his medical career instead of his music, being in a possible triangle with Gates and Neela, etc.

In other casting news, The Nine's Daybreak's Adam Baldwin has joined the cast of NBC's Chuck, and LL Cool J will play a cop in CBS' Anthony Zuiker (CSI) drama The Man.

[via TV Tattle]

LL Cool J is set to star in a new show by CSI creator Anthony Zuiker. It seems that Zuiker is something of an LL fan, so when offered the chance to work with the rapper/actor, he jumped at it. The result is The Man. LL will play an undercover cop who deals with busting perps and running stings at night, and then works to raise his three adopted children by day. The formula is to have the crime stories as the weekly feature while the home life is serialized and takes place in longer arcs throughout the season.

I like to think of it as CSI: In the House, as this does vaguely resemble the plot for LL's previous TV role on that fairly successful sitcom. LL appeared in an episode of House last season, as well as the movies Last Holiday and SWAT. There is nothing official on when this all might come to fruition, but given that it is CBS golden boy Zuiker, things should move quickly.