We know NBC has made some not-so-friendly decisions in the past with our favorite shows, such as their decision to jerk around the millions (thousands?) of Community fans out there until we got what we wanted. Now they’re trying to get us interested in a brand new slate of comedies, dramas, and alternative series this Fall.

Starting off with the brand new batch of comedies, here’s what the official press release had to show us.

The season’s new fall comedies are “Go On,” “The New Normal,” “Animal Practice” and “Guys with Kids.” Other mid-season comedies include “Save Me,” “1600 Penn” and “Next Caller.”

The new fall dramas are “Revolution” and “Chicago Fire,” while “Do No Harm,” “Infamous” and “Hannibal” also will join the lineup in mid-season.

In addition, new alternative series include “Stars Earn Stripes,” “Howie Mandel’s White Elephant,” “Ready for Love,” and “Surprise with Jenny McCarthy.”

“Go On” — Misery loves company. Unless you’re sportscaster Ryan King (Matthew Perry, “Friends,” “Mr. Sunshine”) who thinks misery should just be left alone. After taking some time off, Ryan – who recently lost his wife in a car accident – is now ready to get back to work. And while he seems like his same old charming, cocky self, his boss won’t set him back on the air until he seeks counseling. So, Ryan reluctantly joins a support group with one goal in mind: get in, get out and get back on the radio as quickly as possible.

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Bryan Fuller, the creative mastermind behind Wonderfalls, Pushing Daises and choice episodes of Heroes and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, might very well have two new shows on the air next season. We already told you about his two new projects likely to hit screens this season.

Now we are getting word from EW that the already greenlit Hannibal series will have a cable-esque 13 episode season one:

Hannibal, which has received a 13-episode series order, features Lecter solving crimes with empathic FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy). For the first time, viewers will spend quality time with Lecter while he’s at large and before the world knows his secrets, working side by side with a similarly brilliant man who is destined to catch him.

What we have is Alfred Hitchcock’s principle of suspense — show the audience the bomb under the table and let them sweat when it’s going to go boom. So the audience knows who Hannibal is so we don’t have to overplay his villainy. We get to subvert his legacy and give the audience twists and turns.

Sounds mighty interesting. If Fuller and company can pull of this tight rope we might have a pretty great show on our hands. Fuller is certainly very capable, but this year will see him tackle two very well known properties. It will be interesting to see how he handles each one.

It’s been no secret for quite some time now how much of a thorn veteran comedian Chevy Chase has been in the side of just about everyone working on NBC’s Community. From rumors of a drunken Chase showing up late to shoots, to his overall difficulty to work with from the rest of the cast, there seems to have been tension for quite some time.

Now, it looks like things have escalated even further as creator Dan Harmon and Chevy had it out at the season wrap party last weekend, which resulted in an angry (and relatively inebriated) message left on Harmon’s voicemail. Here’s a bit of backstory from Deadline.

The chronology of the events, corroborated to me by multiple sources, involves Chase walking off the set of the show on the last day of shooting last month without filming one of his scenes, which reportedly was to close out the season finale.

Then at the wrap party, Harmon got up and gave a “Fuck you, Chevy” speech in front of Chase and his wife and daughter, and encouraged the crew to join him in saying “fuck you” to the actor. Chase left immediately and later left Harmon a profane-laden voice message, a portion of which found its way to the Web after Harmon played it in front of other people.

We’ve got the audio below which you can check out. Who’s to blame for all of this? Nobody can really tell, but we certainly know that it’s going to effect next season on Community as to whether or not we’ll even see the return of Chevy’s Pierce Hawthorne.

Our bet? Bill Murray steps in to replace him and nobody mentions the incident again.

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NBC’s The Munsters reboot Mockingbird Lane is looking to score Eddie Izzard (The Riches, Ocean’s Thirteen) as part of the cast. Eddie Izzard is in final negotiations to star in and produce the series.

Izzard will be the first actor cast in the pilot, which was written by Bryan Fuller and is set to be directed by Bryan Singer (Superman Returns, X2). Mockingbird Lane is described as a re-imagining of the 1960s sitcom about a family of monsters. We can expect that the show will have striking visuals in the vein of Fuller’s ABC dramedy Pushing Daisies and his FOX comedy Wonderfalls.

Izzard will play Grandpa, the Munster family patriarch. Unlike the 1960′s original, Izzard’s Grandpa will be a powerful, ancient vampire with a suave, sexy womanizer type of personality. On top of your standard vampire powers, he will be able to shape-shift into rats, wolves, and other creatures at will.

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Even though it got off to a somewhat rocky start and maybe some of the acting wasn’t exactly the best, NBC’s Grimm has managed to transformed itself over the course of the season into one very enjoyable show. Apparently, we’re not the only ones who think so as NBC has just given the show a second season.

When it debuted, the show was stuck in what is often a pretty crappy timeslot, Friday nights at 9PM, but even with that and being pre-emoted on several occasions, the show’s ratings actually held steady and then increased. That, and the active fanbase for the show, was enough for NBC to give it the green light on season two.

In case you haven’t watched Grimm, it was created by David Greenwalt, Jim Kouf and Stephen Carpenter. It stars David Giuntoli as a homicide detective who is also a Grimm, as in the fairy tales, who works murders by day and also hunts supernatural monsters and such by night.

In addition to Giuntoli, Grimm stars Russell Hornsby, Bitsie Tulloch, Sasha Roiz and the awesome Silas Weir Mitchell. It airs Friday nights at 9/8C on NBC.

Check it out. You might enjoy it.

Even though things looked a bit dire last year when NBC put one of our favorite shows, the awesome Community, on extended hiatus, all now is well in the TV Universe again as the show is set to return tomorrow night. To commemorate this great occasion, we’ve got a ton of videos to share with you today.

Among them are vids where Gillian, Yvette, and Joel (who wants to make out with all of you) discuss the big return of the show. Plus, take an early look at Greendale with some sneak peeks and get your fix of the Dean and Jeff as Jim Rash joins Joel on the NBC lot. That’s Academy Award Winner Jim rash to you.

Check out all the videos (and a coupe extra pics) after the break. Look for Community tomorrow night (Thursday) at 8/7C on NBC.

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Community is known for its off the wall plot lines and clever marketing, and the new promotional campaign for NBC’s cult favorite will not disappoint. Your favorite characters from Community will be getting animated for three promotional shorts designed to drum up interest in the show’s March 15 return to NBC’s schedule.

The announcement was one of many made during Community‘s PaleyFest session on Monday. For those of you unfamiliar with PaleyFest, for a quarter century they have held a festival at the Paley Center for Media in LA, which celebrates the best of television with the creative teams who make the breakthrough programs. It allows for interaction between the creative television community, television stars and their fans in a panel type environment.

The shorts, titled Abed’s Master Key, will debut on March 7 on Hulu, Hulu Plus and NBC.com. They were written by Dave Seger (Channel 101) & Tom Kauffman (Lil Wayne’s Big House).

For those Community fans who can’t wait for March 7th, here’s a preview after the jump:

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To say that people love celebrity train wrecks would be a bit of an understatement. The existence and popularity of shows like Celebrity Rehab, Kim & Kourtney Take New York, and every other reality on VH1 should prove above anything else that schadenfreude is at an all-time high.

That means that when the mother of all modern celebrity horror stories, Lindsay Lohan, hosts a live, anything-can-happen style comedy show, people are bound to tune in to see exactly what would and could go wrong. It turns out enough people tuned in for the episode to break a few records for the year, sadly. From THR:

Despite critics ripping apart Lohan’s fourth time hosting the late-night comedy sketch show, last night’s SNL delivered the show’s highest-scoring regular performance of the season, with a 5.5 overnight household rating.

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While we count the weeks, days and hours until Community returns we can console ourselves a bit with some of NBC’s other programming. Case in point today is the brand new show Awake, which looks to be pretty interesting and features some actors we really like, and one of our long-time favorites, Parks and Recreation.

Starting us off is the new show Awake, starring Laura Allen of the seriously underappreciated Terriers and Jason Isaacs of Harry Potter movie fame as a man who seems to exist in two worlds and neither of them are an ideal place to be. We’ve got some previews for this new show for you today and from what we’ve seen so far, it looks pretty interesting.

Then, we turn our attention to the folks in Pawnee who, as the previews show, are having a bit of an issue with a drinking fountain. This is why I always bring bottled water wherever I go.

Parks and Rec airs at 8:30/7:30C followed by The Office, Up all Night and the premiere of Awake at 10/9C on NBC. Check out all the videos after the break.

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Human Beings everywhere rejoiced yesterday, as NBC released its spring schedule for its Thursday night programming, which included the triumphant return of the little show that could, Community.

Looks like we may get our six seasons and a movie after all. Hearlded by many as the funniest show on television right now, Community is on its third season and stars the likes of Joel McHale, Donald Glover, and Chevy Chase.

While its premise may be simple- the show revolves around a group of friends making their way through community college- the show has had episodes about parallel universes, paintball wars, zombie attacks, and D&D games.

After airing its Christmas episode in early December, Community was put on an indefinite hiatus. While the cast and crew actively assured fans via Twitter that filming was continuing, no one could really be sure whether remaining episodes would ever air. News of casting continued to flow in this week, and now with NBC’s announcement fans are most definitely relieved to have Community return to their televisions.

While Parks and Rec goes on a bit of a break until April 19th, Community takes that time slot and 30 Rock is bumped up to 9:30 PM. When Up All Night wraps up in April, Parks and Rec returns.

I’m always excited for NBC’s Thursday night comedy line-up, but lately something is missing. While Parks and Recreation has become one of the funniest shows on television, The Office just isn’t what it used to be, 30 Rock is winding down, and Community is on “hiatus” with no return date in sight.

However, the Community cast and crew is still hard at work filming. Joining the lineup of the already all-star cast and guest stars is Giancarlo Esposito, known best for his spectacular performance as Gus in AMC’s Breaking Bad.

In Community, Esposito will guest star as Gilbert, a long-time employee of Pierce’s deceased and super racist father Cornelius Hawthorne. Not much more is known except that Gilbert has some news concerning Pierce’s inhertiance, which should be sure to cause some hilarious hijynxs for our favorite students at Greendale Community College. Esposito is an amazing actor but we’ve only really seen him as super serious Gus, so it’ll be interesting to see him take on a more comedic role.

So far, there’s no concrete details on if, or when Community will return to NBC. And while it’s awesome that remaining epsiodes are still being shot and could just end up straight to DVD, I hope the show comes back on the air. In the meantime, we’ll just have to make do with little tidbits of news like this, as well as the rest of the Thursday night lineup, which is still pretty funny.

In an effort to raise awareness, NBC’s Awake is the latest series pilot to be put online ahead of the series premiere to drum up interest. In a part of a growing trend, the opening episode of the parallel universe drama starring Jason Isaacs is being made available 2 weeks before the series’ premiere on March 1.

This comes one day after the network put out the first seven minutes of the mid-season replacement series. The show is created by Kyle Killen (Lone Star) and also executive produced by Howard Gordon (24, Homeland).

A similar tactic was used for Smash, which premiered Feb. 6 to 11.4 million total viewers and a 3.8 rating following The Voice. NBC released the first episode for the “making of a Broadway musical” show beginning Jan. 16 via digital platforms, three weeks before it launched. The network also screened the pilot in select cities.

Awake makes its way to the small screen Thursday, March 1 at 10 p.m., taking over the slot previously occupied by Prime Suspect and The Firm, the latter now airing on Saturdays.

Awake centers on police detective Michael Britten (Isaacs) who finds himself living in two realities after a brutal car accident, one where his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) is alive and the other where his son Rex (Dylan Minnette) is.

Watch the full pilot after the jump.

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