Fall TV SitComs Start Tonight on NBC & CBS: Which will you Watch?

ARCADIA, CA — The new fall programming is set to start, and in Orange County, San Gabriel Valley area residents are wondering what to set the DVR and which to skip.

For Fall of 2016, comedies rule the television waves, with the new "Kevin Can Wait," and Kirsten Bell warms with "The Good Place."

Is it a clerical error? or does someone up there have a sense of humor after all? NBC has bet on Ted Danson and Kristen Bell who star in this year's new comedy, "The Good Place" (10 p.m. NBC with the first of two back-to-back episodes), about an ordinary woman who enters the afterlife and, thanks to some kind of error, is sent to the Good Place instead of the Bad Place, which is where she belongs.

Meanwhile, CBS has backed an old fan favorite, funnyman Kevin James with his return to family television in "Kevin Can Wait" (8:30 p.m., CBS).

This is James' return to television after a nine-season absence. James portrays a recently retired police officer whose retirement plans don't go exactly as planned.
James said the series was inspired by people he and fellow executive producer Rock Reuben knew growing up on Long Island.

"They kind of go all into the academy together, they put their time in together, and 20 years later they were done," James said last month during CBS' portion of the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour.

"These guys are in their 40s, and they're home, and they had this dream of what they're going to do together every day. We'll race go-carts. We'll go to Mets games and and spend time with the family.

"But it doesn't go that way. Life doesn't go as you plan it, and that's what makes it so much fun that we have all these characters to interact with."

To Reuben, "Kevin Can Wait" has "some familiar notes" to fans of James' last series, "The King of Queens," which ran on CBS from 1998-2007, but "also mixes in a whole bunch of new things and takes them to places that they haven't been with Kevin before."

One difference from "The King of Queens" is that James' character is a father. His oldest daughter Kendra (Taylor Spreitler) is dropping out of college so she can support her unemployed fiance Chale (Ryan Cartwright) while he designs the next big app.

His teenager daughter Sara (Mary-Charles Jones) has anger-management issues and youngest son Jack (James DiGiacomo) is a bit of a hypochondriac.

The cast also includes James' real-life brother Gary Valentine as his brother Kyle, Leonard Early Howze who had been the partner of James' character when they were police officers; and Lenny Venito as the oldest friend of James' character.

Erinn Hayes, who received an Emmy nomination in July for outstanding actress in a short form comedy or drama series for her work on the Adult Swim comedy "Childrens Hospital," plays the wife of James' character.

Will you watch one, or both? Let us know in comments!

Photo, Screenshot of Youtube Video, City News Service contributed to this report.