Robin Williams returns to prime-time with CBS' 'The Crazy Ones'

Robin Williams, who will return to network TV this fall in his first live-action comedy in 31 years, took to the stage at the TV critics' summer press tour Monday to explain why:

"It's great to have a steady gig after so long," he said, "It's wonderful."

Not that steady work had been exactly hard to come by after "Mork & Mindy" ended in 1982.

Williams has worked continually -- and with reasonably good success -- ever since. He returns to TV in CBS' "The Crazy Ones," which co-stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as his daughter, who works with him in a Chicago advertising agency.

The show is produced by David E. Kelley, one of TV's leading drama producers since "L.A. Law" days. Kelley said he had approached Williams about joining the show about an adman whose creative impulses are occasionally of the lunatic variety "and I think [Williams] connected over who the character was, not just with his comedic sensibilities but his personal flaws."

"One of the biggest challenges is to get people to watch and not watch tomorrow" on the web. "The challenges are gigantic right now [but] there's a huge audience out there that doesn't have a late-night show." Hall's syndicated show will air locally on WPIX/11.

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