Taking on contemporary economic issues, Kelsey Grammer returns to the small screen with Hank, an upcoming comedy on ABC centered on a Wall Street executive who loses his job and has to reconnect with his small-town family. Hank, set to premiere on late September and occupy ABC's Wednesday timeslot, follows Hank Pryor (Grammer), a successful businessman and Pryor Sports CEO, who used to enjoy all the perks of his enormous paycheck - "the yachts and the maids" - until the day when he loses it all.
Jobless, savings dried up, and trying to start over, Hank heads from New York to the site of his first store-turned-global empire River Bend, Virginia after 17 years, but everyone in the family is not exactly amenable to the change in lifestyle, including his wife Tilly (Melinda McGraw), spoiled daughter Maddie (Macey Cruthird), and his son Henry (Ryan Wynott). Hank is not fazed, however, as it is his first real chance to reconnect not only with his roots, but with the rest of his family as well - if only his son knew how to catch a baseball.
Things aren't as peachy for Hank as he hoped, as he finds out that his children don't listen to him, his wife told him she wanted to work, and his redneck brother-in-law Grady (David Koechner) moves in and is a compulsive hugger.
Grammer, 54, is of course best known for playing psychiatrist Frasier Crane on NBC sitcoms
Cheers for nine years and his own
Frasier for another eleven. His last television gigs had mostly been directing, with a 2007 episode of the comedy
My Name is Earl and
Out of Practice among the most recent ones. On the big screen, he appeared as, coincidentally, Hank McCoy or Beast on the 2006 blockbuster
X-Men: The Last Stand.
- Glenn Diaz, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: ABC
(Image courtesy of ABC)