NBC snags JJ Abrams’ new series

Looks like a winner has emerged in that bidding war I told you about yesterday for JJ Abrams‘ next hour-long series. NBC will work with Abrams for the first time, along with Abrams’ co-creator Josh Reims, airing the yet-to-be-titled show probably in the 2010 fall season (just my guess, no evidence on that last part).

Personally, I don’t have a ton of faith that this is good news. NBC does not have a solid track record when it comes to genre television. This new show is described as something akin to Mr. & Mrs. Smith, with a husband & wife duo who work together as secret agents, and this is very similar territory to what Abrams mined for his modest ABC hit, Alias. Alias managed to stick around for five seasons — mostly due to Abrams’ name being attached and Jennifer Garner’s starmaking role as the main character — but ABC has always shown a bit more willingness to stick with less popular shows if the demographics and critical buzz are strong enough.

NBC doesn’t have those kinds of credentials. Sure, they’ve stuck with Heroes a lot longer than another network might have, and Chuck has managed to survive for three seasons despite hanging by a thread, but NBC’s handling of these two shows does nothing to instill confidence. And another recent attempt by NBC to jump into the super-spy end of the pool — the Christian Slater vehicle My Own Worst Enemy — lasted all of nine episodes. Plus, there’s the troubling news from just this week that NBC has decided to rebrand the very promising-looking Day One as a “miniseries” — aka, backpedaling with “we planned this show as a short-term thing all along” — when that isn’t what it is.

The one good thing about this news that comes to mind is that NBC Universal is also the owner of numerous cable networks, including Syfy, USA, Chiller, and Sleuth, which could lend itself to some useful cross-promotional opportunities and maybe even repeated showings of the new show on one or more of these other networks.

So what do you think? Is NBC a good home for the next show from the creator of Alias, Lost, and Fringe?

Image: NBC Universal.