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Written by: Lake County News Reports

Published: 07 September 2013

“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”

This maxim has been around for some time, and it bears a lot of truth about the difficulty of launching successful comedy series on network television.

Peter O’Toole’s washed-up actor Alan Swann uttered these words in the 1982 film “My Favorite Year.”

The famous quote has been attributed to many, from Edmund Kean to Groucho Marx and Joseph Stalin, though the murderous Russian tyrant is an unlikely source of humor.

New comedy series are a big part of the landscape for the FOX network this fall, and yet when speaking to TV critics during the recent press tour, Kevin Reilly, president of Fox Entertainment, had not much to say, other than to answer critical questions about “Dads.”

In fairness, Reilly did lump the comedy “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” with the mystery-adventure drama “Sleepy Hollow,” noting how “surefooted these two shows are right now, right out of the gate.”

Well, this was a rare occasion when a TV network executive was not engaging in hyperbole or deception. The aforementioned shows may be two of the best new series on the schedule.

Part of the FOX strategy is to create a strong comedy block on Tuesday nights, leading off with the half-hour new series “Dads” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” during the eight o’clock hour and ending with returning comedies “New Girl” and “The Mindy Project.”

Unlike the practice of the other major networks to launch new series during the traditional Nielsen week starting Sept. 23, FOX begins a week earlier, so look for the new Tuesday night comedy block to premiere on Sept. 17.

The spirit of “Barney Miller” lives within the new comedy “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” set in the police workplace where a diverse group of colleagues get a new captain, Andre Braugher’s Ray Holt, with a lot to prove in a far-flung district in the New York borough of Brooklyn.

Evident from the pilot episode, the key to the mayhem in the Brooklyn precinct is Andy Samberg’s Detective Jake Peralta, a gifted investigator with the best arrest record among his colleagues, but also a carefree goofball studiously oblivious to the usual norms.

A stickler for rules and regulations, Captain Holt’s arrival as the commanding officer at the Nine-Nine precinct puts a crimp in Detective Peralta’s jocular style, attempting to force him to now follow standard decorum and even wear a tie to work.

Samberg is hilarious in his efforts to not-so-subtly undermine authority while continuing to be an outstanding police officer, and his eagerness to nab crooks is fueled by a dogged competition with his comely colleague, Detective Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero).

The ensemble comedy features interesting characters, such as Joe Lo Truglio’s Detective Charles Boyle, a brilliant but bumbling workhorse who pines for the abrasive, opinionated Detective Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), with whom he stands no chance at all.

Chelsea Peretti is the eccentric and self-absorbed civilian officer manager Gina Linetti, and the always wonderful Terry Crews is Sergeant Jeffords, a linebacker of a man who lost his nerve after his wife had baby twin girls named Cagney and Lacey.

I predict “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” is FOX’s new comedy hit, but Kevin Reilly spent precious time at the press conference defending some offensive aspects of “Dads,” another comedy from the creators of “Family Guy.”

Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi are two successful guys in their mid-30s whose lives get turned upside down when their inappropriate and pain-in-the-neck patriarchs move in. Gifted actors Martin Mull and Peter Riegert, playing their dads, may not save this show from early demise.

Another comedy, not scheduled until later in the fall season, is “Enlisted,” an irreverent military-themed comedy (shades of “M.A.S.H.”) about three brothers on a small Army base in Florida and the group of misfits who surround them.

Geoff Stults is the natural born leader, Sergeant Pete Hill, who was on a path for a huge military career until one mistake overseas got him booted stateside, where his two younger brothers are stationed.

With its goofy, sarcastic sensibilities, “Enlisted” looks like a potential winner. It may even shape up to have some of the Army humor reminiscent of “Sgt. Bilko,” the great vintage TV series starring Phil Silvers, not the middling Steve Martin movie of the same title.

The FOX team gave us a military cap emblazoned with the title of the show, but this small gift has not affected my judgment on “Enlisted.” I just tell you this as a matter of full disclosure.

Now that we have run down the list of new comedies, let’s focus on a show of a different nature, one that Kevin Reilly rightly described as a winner “right out of the gate.”

That show, to premiere on Monday, Sept. 16, before being moved to a Friday night slot, is “Sleepy Hollow,” a modern-day version of Washington Irving’s classic novel in which Ichabod Crane is resurrected and plunged 250 years into the future.

In the FOX version of “Sleepy Hollow,” Tom Mison’s Ichabod Crane is a Revolutionary War hero who is brought back to life in the contemporary world of the Hudson Valley, where things are different than envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Revived alongside Ichabod Crane is the infamous Headless Horseman who is on a murderous rampage in the present-day Village of Sleepy Hollow, creating a major catastrophe for the local police force.

Of course, no one believes Ichabod’s tales of America’s past and dire warnings about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but young cop Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) has had her own supernatural experiences and she teams up with Ichabod to embark on a mission to stop evil.

Judging by the pilot episode, “Sleepy Hollow” looks like it will draw a fan base of the younger male demographic and those who enjoy supernatural mysteries and adventure.

Waiting in the wings for a midseason replacement is “Almost Human,” a science-fiction action-packed police procedural set 35 years in the future, when police officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids.

Karl Urban plays a detective who survived a horrific attack and wakes up after a 17-month coma to find he can’t remember much, is outfitted with a prosthetic leg and suffers from mental atrophy and depression.

Nevertheless, instead of being on disability, he rejoins the police force, though he must be partnered, much to his displeasure, with a robot.

I have not seen a pilot of this show, but I am already thinking “Robocop.” We’ll wait and see.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.