Reba McEntire is coming back to TV courtesy of a hot script from Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the story is a “Southern Gothic soap opera,” and the premise sounds like a doozy:
“After a suspected act of terrorism happens at a Fourth of July parade in the small town of Oxblood, KY, the FBI sends a cocky agent of Middle Eastern descent to investigate. He teams with the mercurial local sheriff to uncover secrets far darker than either could have ever imagined.”
Cocky! Mercurial! Terrorism! We’re in. Apparently the script, written by Cherry, was intriguing enough to set off a bidding war, which Disney-owned ABC won. This means both McEntire and Cherry will be returning to a familiar network: Cherry’s Desperate Housewives was on ABC (though his latest series, Devious Maids, ran for four seasons on Lifetime and was canceled earlier this year) and McEntire’s last ABC gig was Malibu Country, which ran from 2012 to 2013. At this early stage in development, there’s not much more info available on the promised series; however, casting McEntire as a “mercurial local sheriff”* should make proper use of her sass and country grit.
* This post originally stated that McEntire’s role was unspecified; it has since been corrected.
