Now THIS ought to be reaaaaally interesting

Editor and Publisher is reporting that ABC will be debuting a TV show this fall about a fictional conservative radio talk show host-turned TV pundit:

NEW YORK ABC reportedly has huge hopes for a new series to air this fall called “Brothers & Sisters,” which will follow the hit “Desperate Housewives” on the schedule. Calista Flockhart, best known as Ally McBeal, plays a conservative radio host turned TV pundit. Others in the high-powered cast include Patricia Wettig, Rachel Griffiths, Ron Rifkin and Sally Field.

[…]

Asked to describe the pundit, producer Ken Olin (formerly a star of “Thirty Something’) said, “She’s not Ann Coulter. She’s not insane.”

Writer Jon Robin Baitz added, “No, I think she’s a thoughtful conservative. She’s ideologically, in some respects, very much in mind with the older parts of the party, the sort of Eisenhower Republican, the William Buckley conservative. She’s also a humanist.

“She’s not someone who is apologetic about being a conservative. But it’s very, very interesting and compelling to us to try and understand this, to leave behind some of the smug presuppositions of the two coasts, . . . to look at evolving patriotism and evolving traditionalism,” he said, according to an article by Dave Walker of New Orleans’ Times-Picayune.

“For years and years, the left has looked at the right in complete incomprehension and felt, ‘We just can’t connect.’ And maybe there’s an effort in the show to try and bridge that in some way.”

John at Powerline has taken a decidedly negative view of what Olin says about the show, but I’m willing to give it a chance. I’m not so sure the Hollywood Left has a clue how to portray conservatives honestly, but I’m hoping this time they get it right by abandoning the stereotypes about conservatives they routinely like to push in shows like The Left, er, West Wing. It would be incredibly refreshing.

Here’s ABC.com’s preview of the show. From the looks of things there, the show is not going to focus totally on Flockhart’s character’s conservative attributes … which might be a good thing, because the producers of the show could probably only stand so much of it per episode