SERIES IN THE WINGS

Keeping up with the network replacements ain’t easy. CBS has “The Cavanaughs” skedded for Wednesdays beginning Dec. 1 in place of “Designing Women,” which moves with “Twilight Zone” to Thursdays, where “Kay O’Brien” was surgically removed. “The Cavanaughs” casts Christine Ebersol as a twice-married L.A. showgirl who returns to Boston to live with her crusty father (Barnard Hughes) and her widowed brother (Peter Michael Goetz) and his four children.

ABC’s got “Dads” and “Gung Ho” set to debut Dec. 5 in place of the suspended “Ellen Burstyn Show” and “Life With Lucy.”

But don’t worry--there’s plenty more replacement fodder in the vault, like . . .

ABC: Alan Arkin is “Harry,” whose adventures as head of a hospital supply department will provide laughs for 30 minutes a week (or maybe not). . . . Pat Morita is “Ohara,” a Japanese-American police detective in L.A. who moonlights as an instructor at a police academy. An hour dramatic action series.

NBC: In an as-yet-untitled sitcom, Lisa Bonet (“Cosby”) goes off to a black college--and a white roommate. . . . “The Tortellis,” a spinoff from “Cheers,” features Dan Hedeya and Jean Kasem as a couple who try to make it as a TV repairman and a showgirl in Vegas. . . . “Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” stars Blair Brown as a single woman trying to survive in the ‘80s. . . . Mark Blum and Dana Delany are a young suburban couple who raise two children in a contemporary family. It’s called “Sweet Surrender.” . . . Rich man Joseph Bologna takes in six orphan girls in an hour musical comedy drama set in the early 1960s--”Rags to Riches.” . . . Ed Asner is a progressive principal of a large high school in an unnamed Eastern city in an hour drama with comedy entitled “The Bronx Zoo.” . . . Nick Mancuso returns as “Stingray,” Pierce Brosnan’s back as “Remington Steele” and so is “Me and Mrs. C,” a series with a brief summer tryout about what happens when a streetwise black girl moves in with a motherly eccentric white woman.

CBS: “Houston Knights,” an hour drama, stars Michael Pare as a Chicago policeman threatened by the Mob who goes to Houston and becomes partners with good ol’ boy Michael Beck. . . . Lindsay Wagner shows her flair for sitcomedy as a woman in her 30s who gives up her law practice to become an artist. You might call the ex-Bionic woman a “Late Bloomer”--which is the name of the series. . . . MTM Prod. presents “The Popcorn Kid,” about five Kansas City teens holding down after-school jobs in a local movie theater. . . . Con artist Margot Kidder goes to work for TV producer James Read and they become investigative reporters in “Shell Game,” a half-hour comedy-drama. . . . The news magazine “West 57th” will return for a regular run. . . . George Hamilton is a burned-out James Bond type in an hour comedy/drama entitled “Spies.” . . . Four bandits and a pursuing sheriff are transported from the 1800s to modern-day Houston, where they team to open a private detective agency in an hour drama called “Outlaws,” with Rod Taylor, Richard Roundtree, Christina Belford, Charles Napier, Bill Lucking and Patrick Houser starring. . . . “Hard Copy” finds Fionnula Flanagan in the LAPD as a press liaison working with a strange gang of police reporters including Michael Murphy.