Fall TV Preview: 'Back in the Game'

Fall TV Preview: 'Back in the Game'

James Caan returns to series TV alongside Maggie Lawson, who plays his daughter, in Back in the Game. ET caught up with the two to hear all about the new comedy series.

In the upcoming ABC series, created by Cullen brothers Mark and Robb, Caan plays "Terry 'The Cannon' Gannon Sr," an opinionated ex-athlete who didn't exactly make the best father to his daughter, whom he named his junior.


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Caan says his return to series TV after six years of hiatus following the finale of Las Vegas was in part accidental, as there was a mispronunciation of names that initially piqued his interest in the project.

"Somebody said, 'The Coen Brothers wrote this thing and they want you to do it,' ... I said, 'Coen? Well, I got to read this.' I read it and I go, 'I doesn't say Coen! It says Cullen!'" Caan recounted. "...But [the Cullen Brothers] are better, they're funnier."

Due to a concoction of sour circumstances in her personal life, "Terry Gannon Jr." (Lawson) decides to move back in with her alienated father. That in itself is enough to field its own comedy series, but things get even more complicated when Terry Jr.'s son, "Danny (Griffin Gluck)," insists on playing baseball, a sport for which he proves to have not inherited his mother's natural skill.


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After Danny fails to make the baseball team, Terry Jr. decides to form her own team, which she'll manage, comprised of her son and a group of other nonathletic children who also failed to make the team.

"It's really the story about this family that [is] brought together: her son...the dad—who she doesn't like because of baseball, brought her up as a boy, called her 'Junior,'" Caan detailed of the show's premise.

"She just really didn't like him much, and she went off...got married and now she gets divorced with her son [with her] and has to move in with this grump. It's really...a very funny relationship."


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Back in the Game
premieres September 25 on ABC. Watch the video above for more from Caan and Lawson.