2007 Fall TV Preview: Big Shots On ABC

Big Shots - Season 1

Premieres: Thursday, September 27th at 10:00 p.m. EST
Network: ABC
Creator(s): Jon Harmon Feldman
Starring: Michael Vartan, Dylan McDermott, Christopher Titus, Joshua Malina, Nia Long, Peyton List, Jessica Collins, Amy Sloan, Wendy Moniz, Paige Turco
Website: ABC.com

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Big Shots centers on four men who, in terms of their professional lives, are on top of the world. James Walker (Vartan) runs AmeriMart Industries. Brody Johns (Titus) is the Senior Vice President of Alpha Crisis Management. Karl Mixworthy (Malina) is the CEO of a large Pharmaceutical company. And Duncan Collinsworth (McDermott) is the CEO of Reveal Cosmetics. While all of these guys have reached the pinnacle of their careers, their personal lives aren’t doing so great.

Mixworthy has a wife and a mistress to deal with, Johns’ wife is quite demanding, Walker’s wife has a secret and while Collinsworth is divorced, his personal life is also full of drama. Luckily, the guys have each other. These are modern men with classic problems who are just looking for a way to deal with them without losing everything they’ve spent their lives working for.


From the promo teaser on ABC’s website, the series looks like a man’s version of Desperate Housewives. Instead of four women trying to cope with their rough wealthy lives, Big Shots has four men. I like Desperate Housewives but I’m not sure I’m all that interested in seeing the same type of occasionally comical drama play out from a man’s point of view.

On ABC’s website, it says “The concept for Big Shots sprang from creator Jon Harmon Feldman's desire to explore, in comedic and dramatic terms, what it means to be a man in 2007.”

So I’m wondering what kind of audience Feldman had in mind for a series like this. Will women be interested in a show about today’s man? Or is he hoping that the viewers will largely consist of men who can either relate to the characters or otherwise, wish they could. Am I over-thinking this?

I’ll probably check out the first episode because I’ve had a crush on Michael Vartan since he starred in Alias (Ok, fine – the crush goes back to Never Been Kissed) but unless the show is significantly more entertaining than the teaser was, I’ll probably pass on this one.