Network TV’s nostalgia bait seems to be paying off this fall

A slate rife with throwback sensibilities is pulling in solid ratings—and helping reestablish network television as a comfort-watch destination.

By Saloni Gajjar | October 23, 2024 | 10:00am

Photos: Sonja Flemming/CBS, Ray Mickshaw/ABC, Ron Batzdorff/NBC

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Network TV’s nostalgia bait seems to be paying off this fall

The fourth episode of ABC’s Doctor Odyssey opens with a game of strip poker. The crew aboard a luxury cruise ship—sweating and shirtless, and with the camera lingering on series star Joshua Jackson’s glistening biceps—discuss the dangerous impact of global warming while dealing cards. Then, the ship’s captain (played by Don Johnson) casually remarks, “Speaking of disasters, it’s time for the rest of you fools to lose your clothing.” This is ridiculously over-the-top yet—admittedly—kinda entertaining. In other words, it’s yet another Ryan Murphy series that has taken over fall television in 2024.

Doctor Odyssey is perfectly sandwiched between Murphy’s 9-1-1 and Grey’s Anatomy on ABC’s Thursday night schedule. This works out well because Doctor Odyssey is a healthy mix of the other two long-running dramas, with its wild medical situations and romantic entanglements. (Fun fact: 9-1-1 and Grey’s have had memorable boat accidents as well.) Naturally, Doctor Odyssey’s entire premise is that all of its chaos occurs within the confines of a lavish ocean liner. “Wellness Week,” last week’s episode that was watched live by more than three million people, revels in the ship getting stuck in the eye of a storm. At the same time, the head nurse suffers from life-threatening appendicitis, with both of her love interests waiting by her side. It has the vibes of early Grey’s (and its will-they/won’t-they with Meredith, Derek, and Finn) with the added twist of a potential throuple.

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ABC’s promising new lineup harkens back to its famous TGIT block, when Grey’s was joined by Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder. This trio of Shonda Rhimes shows was appointment viewing a decade ago. And, with Doctor Odyssey at its core, ABC is trying to pull off something similar again, luring us in with 9-1-1’s “bee-nado” and making us stick around for Doctor Odyssey. This one-two punch apparently paid off: 9-1-1’s season-eight premiere raked in a 4.8 million same-day audience, and Doctor Odyssey’s debut attracted 4.13 million viewers, a number that ticked up to a whopping 14 million across platforms within days for the new show. (Admittedly, the allure here may well boil down to TV’s erstwhile Pacey Witter charming everyone’s socks off.)

Doctor Odyssey, like several fall network premieres, relies on our thirst for nostalgia. In 2023, the fall schedule was bare bones because of Hollywood’s labor crisis. Thankfully, things have bounced back in 2024, with network shows reclaiming their spot as a go-to for comfort TV viewing. Just look at CBS’s Matlock, which interestingly undercuts the notion of a gender-flipped reboot. In the show, Kathy Bates plays the folksy widow and lawyer Maddy Matlock, who’s making her way up in the corporate world. Except, as the premiere reveals, she’s neither of those things and is instead seeking revenge on a big law firm, using the Matlock name from the Andy Griffith-led series as her way in. Creator Jennie Snyder Urman has cooked up a surprisingly cunning tale here—and one that sates our appetite for legal sagas with all of their tried-and-true formulas. (It’s no wonder that Matlock just scored an early season-two renewal.)

CBS’s new sitcoms don’t hit such high notes, but they’re also tapping into an established well. Poppa’s House brings Damon Wayans Sr. and Jr. together, while Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage expands The Big Bang Theory universe even further. No one could’ve imagined the ratings juggernaut that Young Sheldon turned out to be, so let’s not dismiss his older brother’s spin-off just yet. Georgie & Mandy’s series opener on October 17 was watched by more than six million people, which almost matched some of Young Sheldon’s numbers. You apparently just can’t keep a Cooper sibling down, especially if a laugh track is involved.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Happy’s Place reunites Reba’s Reba McIntire and Melissa Peterman for an old-school comedy that’s also paying off, ratings-wise. The network has also debuted its own medical drama with a noticeably sobering tone. In Brilliant Minds, Zachary Quinto plays a rule-breaking neurologist with face blindness, which makes him the perfect fit for Bronx General Hospital, an institution sorely lacking financial resources. Brilliant Minds might sound mundane on the surface, but it sets itself apart because it’s loosely based on a real-life doctor’s disorder research and non-fiction books. By tapping into reality, the writing and Quinto’s performance get unexpectedly emotional despite a formulaic case-of-the-week structure, and this show could fill in the void left by the recently ended drama The Good Doctor.

To offer a different take on the genre, though, NBC is also gearing up for a 20-minute comedy that will inevitably be described as “The Office meets Scrubs.” The upcoming St. Denis Medical, which premieres November 12, is a lighthearted mockumentary set in an ER with a particular focus on the hardships of nurses. How will the cameras capture the tense environment of an underfunded Oregon hospital? Suffice it to say that series co-creator Justin Spitzer (Superstore) and an adept cast navigate those complexities well, bringing plenty of laughs to an otherwise dire setting.

While the mockumentary format still thrives on TV with Abbott Elementary and What We Do In The Shadows, it’s most closely associated with NBC hits The Office and Parks And Recreation. So it tracks that the network hopes to bring back a bit of that magic. From what we’ve seen, St. Denis Medical does fall in line with those iconic sitcoms, albeit with zanier energy and more jokes. And it helps that the ensemble includes Allison Tolman, Wendi McLendon-Covey, and David Alan Grier, with Superstore’s Kaliko Kauahi further adding to the nostalgia effect.

Let’s return to ABC for a minute. Doctor Odyssey isn’t the network’s only trip to the past, as Kaitlin Olson’s High Potential also recalls the glory days of delightful procedurals. (Think Castle, Elementary, The Mentalist, or any low-stakes crime series in which solving dark cases turns a bunch of people into a found family.) And once again, tapping into the familiar has worked: High Potential’s premiere was watched by 3.6 million viewers live, and that figure doubled by episode three. (Fox’s Murder In A Small Town is also reminiscent of the cozy procedurals of the early aughts.)

Viewers are evidently yearning for classic TV comfort food. And, as it turns out, network television is still cooking with gas, serving up newbies with old-school appeal, as well as returning hits like Elsbeth, Tracker, Found, and whatever Dick Wolf has got going on at NBC. Despite the rise of streaming giants, movie stars descending on the small screen, and the ability to binge-watch new seasons in a single day, there are apparently still reasons to not cut the cord to network TV just yet. After all, it seems like plenty of folks are willing to tune in live to watch Kaitlin Olson channeling Sherlock Holmes, a shrewd Kathy Bates pretending to be a naive old lady, or Joshua Jackson taking his shirt off during what Doctor Odyssey calls a “boys, butches, and bis” card game.