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Monday
Time of Your LifeFox, 8-9 p.m, Debuts Oct. 25
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''Party of Five'' producers Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman weren't initially kicking up their heels at the concept -- a suggestion from their agents. A spin-off? For ''Party of Five''? Thanks, but no angst.
Not only were they worried about damaging the franchise by removing one of the key Salinger family members... but for godsakes, how much more self-examination and terminal diagnoses can one group of orphans go through?!? Yet right after waving off the idea, the two producers suddenly turned to each other and uttered the same word: ''Love?''
No question, a Jennifer Love Hewitt-helmed series looked like a can't-hardly-lose proposition. Her popularity was soaring. Her departure would open up the storytelling on ''PO5'' without disrupting the family unit. Better still, the groundwork for a spin-off had already been laid in the second season, when Sarah discovered that she'd been adopted. Indeed, all the pieces were falling into place.
But the already high-profile series developed Is this show in trouble? syndrome after word leaked out that the pilot -- an overearnest fable with scant secondary-character development -- would need to be reshot. The net's new thinking was that a punchier-paced version of the series would make the perfect companion piece for that other ultrasensitive-babe-against-the-big-city series, ''Ally McBeal.'' ''We wanted to make [the show] a little more relevant, a little less whimsical and Dickens-like,'' says Fox Entertainment prez Doug Herzog.
So Keyser and Lippman started rewriting (un)like the Dickens, spinning a more grounded tale about a ready-for-anything Sarah who waits tables at a karaoke bar, rooms with a wannabe actress (Jennifer Garner of Fox's short-lived 1998 Keyser/Lippman drama, ''Significant Others''), and finds romantic potential in a struggling musician -- ''That Thing You Do!'''s Johnathon Schaech.
While the jury remains out on the new incarnation (the pilot was still being reshot at press time), Love is making one bold guarantee: ''It's NOT just going to be a chick show -- I won't let it be,'' insists Hewitt. ''And it won't be sappy because New York is not a sappy place. I think the show is going to have a certain urban toughness to it. AND we have a lot of really hot girls on the show. We'll make sure we show bellies and things like that, so the guys should be okay.''
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