Bob Still Hearts Abishola on CBS
Season two of Bob Hearts Abishola is on CBS Nov. 16. Billy Gardell plays Bob and Folake Olowofoyeku portrays Abishola in this Chuck Lorre comedy, about a compression sock guy who falls for his Nigerian nurse.
Exec producer and showrunner Al Higgins was pleased with how season one landed. “People who watch our show truly love our show,” he said. “They fell in love with these characters and this world.”
Season two sees Bob looking at engagement rings. The producers wondered about working COVID into the show, especially with Abishola working in a hospital, then decided not to. “It would overtake everything else in the story,” said Higgins. “I’d rather not have it in my face.”
Producing in the COVID age was challenging, but the producers were pumped to have cast and crew back on the job, and psyched to offer America a bit of entertainment. Higgins said it’s encouraging when crew members laugh during shooting. “It’s always nice when the crew responds in the way you want the audience to respond,” he said.
The season goes deeper on a wider array of characters, including Bob’s family and the warehouse guys. “We have a great ensemble,” said Higgins, “and we’re gonna use them to the utmost.”
ABC Shoots For the ‘Sky’ With David E. Kelley Thriller
Big Sky begins on ABC Nov. 17. It’s a David E. Kelley drama about two sisters who are kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana. Searching for them are a pair of private detectives, and the estranged wife of one of them. They learn the sisters are not the only ones missing.
The series comes from the C.J. Box novel The Mountain. “It’s cliché to say that I couldn’t put it down, but really, I couldn’t put it down,” Kelley said during a press event.
It was a challenging novel to adapt. “The biggest challenge for me was to be able to deliver what the book did, and that is the tension, the thrill, the drama, the relational equations of the characters, which were rich and profound at times, and then the sense of escapism,” Kelley said.
The cast includes Katheryn Winnick, Kylie Bunbury and Brian Geraghty. Showrunner Kelley’s recent work includes Big Little Lies and The Undoing on HBO. He admitted he was not all that pumped to get back to broadcast TV, where his past hits include Chicago Hope and Ally McBeal.
“When we set forth with ABC, they were really frisky to break their own mold and to present storytelling to the audience that would be more in line with cable or streaming,” he said. “I think this show lends itself to be a great bingeing show.”
