Nellie Andreeva

UPDATE 1:40 PM: After just picking up a period soap, Pan Am, ABC has also greenlighted a period PI show. In its second drama pilot order today and fourth overall, the network has picked up Poe, a crime procedural following Edgar Allan Poe, the world’s very first detective, as he uses unconventional methods to investigate dark mysteries in 1840s Boston. Chris Hollier (Kyle XY) penned the project for Warner Bros. TV and Lin Pictures. He will be supervising producer, with Dan Lin executive producing. It has been a very intriguing pilot pickup day at ABC with two pretty bold drama choices — unconventional takes on familiar franchises: soap, detective show — and two more conventional multicamera comedy picks.

UPDATE 12:40PM As expected, it is a busy pickup day at ABC. The network just gave the green light to period drama pilot Pan Am, from Sony Pictures TV and ER alum Jack Orman. Orman penned the script and Thomas Schlamme is on board to direct the pilot, described as a sexy soap set against the Jet-Age about pilots and flight attendants working at the iconic Pan Am airline in the 1960s. Executive producing are Orman, Schlamme and producer Nancy Hult Ganis, a former Pan Am flight attendant and the driving force behind the project. Ganis’ husband, fellow producer Sid Ganis, will co-executive produce.

ABC also just picked up a second comedy pilot for today, Lost and Found. Like Andrew Reich and Ted Cohen’s Work It, it is multicamera and comes from the same studio, Warner Bros. TV. Written by Marisa Coughlan, who will serve as supervising producer, Lost and Found centers on a narcissistic New York City bartender and party girl has her life turned upside down when the conservative 18 year old son she gave up for adoption shows up on her doorstep.

PREVIOUS 11:40AM: ABC is very high on Andrew Reich and Ted Cohen this season, greenlighting a second comedy pilot from the Friends alums. In what I hear is the first of several orders expected at ABC today, the network has picked up Reich and Cohen’s multicamera project Work It, from Warner Bros. TV. The comedy, which has a Bosom Buddies vibe to it, centers on two out-of-work car salesmen who realize that it is now a woman’s world and decide that in order to find work again and succeed they are going to have to dress as women to get jobs as pharmaceuticals reps. Doing this inadvertently makes them better men, husbands and fathers but also makes them appreciate the sanctuary of their nights at the local bar where they can really be themselves. Work It joins Reich and Cohen’s comedy Smothered, also from WBTV, which was picked up to pilot by ABC earlier this month.

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