Smallscreen News

Seth MacFarlane can sing us to the Moon, crooner and producer perfect for 'Cosmos' reboot

By April MacIntyre Aug 7, 2011, 17:55 GMT

Seth MacFarlane - "American Dad" 100th Episode Party - Arrivals - The Parlor - West Hollywood, CA, USA © Tommaso Boddi / PR Photos

One of the more interesting tidbits from FOX day at the Television Critics' Association press day was the news from president Kevin Reilly that all-around talent Seth MacFarlane, creator of the animated series "Family Guy," "American Dad!," and "The Cleveland Show," will use his honeydripper voice in a reboot of the Carl Sagan "Cosmos" series.

MacFarlane is a total package - scathingly funny, smart, photogenic and hard working. His side career as a singer, celebrating the classic standards of American music, is showcased on his upcoming "Music Is Better Than Words," an album of "hidden gems" from the Great American Songbook.

Now, the man who can sing Sinatra's "Fly Me To The Moon" will take Fox viewers deep into the great beyond in a remake of Carl Sagan's beloved PBS series "Cosmos."

The late Sagan is known for his televised explorations and musing of the solar system and deep space.  Sagan was a master at taking complex ideas and terminology and conveying to his television audience the majesty and mystery of it in layman's terms, without being condescending.

MacFarlane has made his fortune on the adult themed animated satire that is based in his home state of Rhode Island.  MacFarlane also voices several of the key characters.

Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly told the assembled TV critics that MacFarlane will be serious in his approach.

Reilly said, "First of all, this is a very unique property. It really doesn’t feel like a natural fit on FOX. This is something that really impacted a generation. It was a I think the most successful thing PBS ever did. And to this day, since we’ve announced this and this has got in the wind, I have more people come up to me and say, 'I love that show.' And not only do people love it as a show, the ancillary benefit is you had a whole generation of people saying, 'It made me actually want to study science. It made me more curious about those classes I had.' And in this day and age, that would be a nice benefit."

"But there’s something about that brand that I think is enduring. We just like the challenge of it. I think we have real estate on our schedule where the show is not going to be Thursday at 9 o’clock. We haven’t announced the time period yet. We have plenty of real estate that we can use this to seat it. We’re doing it in conjunction with our sister network, NatGeo. We are going to use a lot of resources at the company to get this out there. There’s talk about a feature component to it. So will it be our biggest rating? Probably not. I think we can have a real success with it and a long tail and a big cultural impact. And that would be a pretty cool thing to be a part of, to have that kind of cultural impact that the original did."

"Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey," will debut in 2013 as a 13-part "docu-series." Sagan's widow Ana Druyan will be writer/producer and others from the original series will be involved.

The original "Cosmos" debuted in 1980.