More than a few TV viewers spent the middle of the 2024 TV schedule mourning the plethora of shows canceled this year, with one of the most debatable decisions being CBS’ move to end So Help Me Todd and its quirky legal dramedy. Even all these months later, fans still miss Marcia Gay Harden and Skylar Astin’s mother-son duo. While we can’t expect the network to reverse that decision suddenly, we can celebrate creator Scott Prendergrast landing a new small-screen project.
There are no punny titles this time, as Prendergast’s newest broadcast hopeful is going under the title Pennies, though it will indeed be another lighthearted hourlong procedural whose narrative is anchored by two family members. Rather than a mother and son, the balance will be shared between two sisters at this time.
Pennies will center on a forensic pathologist in San Francisco named Penny who would much rather hang out with and study the dead bodies that pass through her office than with any of the real people in her life. Naturally, Penny won’t be keeping her discoveries to herself, and she’s adept at solving mysteries tied to those studied corpses.
Not that she’ll be doing it alone. Penny will be helped in her efforts by a loved one in the form of her polar opposite sister, who is both outgoing and teeming with confidence in her job as an attorney working through the D.A. office. Bizarrely enough, the sibling’s name is also Penny. I’m gonna need somebody to explain that right there in the pilot, assuming we ever see it.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prendergast isn’t linking back up with CBS this time around, and it’s Fox that came out on top, landing Pennies in competitive bidding with others. Though the network didn’t put in a full series order, the project was given a script commitment plus penalty, which pretty much guarantees that the creator will get paid no matter what, with Fox having to pay out if execs choose not to move forward with it.
Though it’s unclear at this point when Fox would be aiming to get Pennies slotted in, Pennies would likely be showcased among other 2025 TV premieres, considering it doesn’t sound like a show that would need heaps of post-production and effects work. (Unless we find out later that both Penny sisters are actually anthropomorphic coins, but that seems non-cent-social. I’ll see my way out.)
