As promised, Mockingbird Lane - Bryan Fuller's modern take on The Munsters - will air. But rather than going forward with a full series, NBC is opting to air the pilot as a one-hour Halloween special.
Mockingbird Lane has been in development at NBC for the better part of two years. When Bryan Fuller took on the project, and cast it with big names like Eddie Izzard, Portia de Rossi, and Jerry O'Connell, it seemed pretty fail-proof, other than the reported $10 million price tag for the pilot alone. Maybe NBC has finally realized that The Munsters is not something that can be rmade - especially not in a serious way - because there have been lots of rumors about the fate of the troubled show.
According to Hollywood Reporter (and backed up by some previous off-the-record comments made to me) Mockingbird Lane will air as a Halloween special on Friday, October 26th at 8pm, just before a special Halloween episode of Grimm. While I am very eager to see the pilot, airing it as a one-off in the hopes of recouping some of the money seems like a bad idea. If it is great, people will be disappointed when they don't get a full series (because one airing of one episode will not generate the ratings and interest to take it to series.) If it is terrible, it is just another failure in a long line of NBC fails that they will never live down.
I just really hope there are no cliffhangers.