Entertainment

"Prime Time" is returning to prime time.

Former Cowboys superstar Deion Sanders and his wife, Pilar, will be the subject of a new Oxygen network reality series, tentatively titled Deion and Pilar Sanders: Prime Time Love. The eight-episode series is currently filming in and around Dallas and will debut in February.

EVANS CAGLAGE / DMN

Pilar and Deion Sanders

Mr. Sanders joins Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former teammate Emmitt Smith (Dancing With the Stars) in the parade of Dallas sports figures to make the jump to reality television.

Prime Time Love will follow the couple and their five kids, focusing on former model Ms. Sanders' desire to do something bigger with her life than the family's tiny town of Prosper can offer. Meanwhile, Mr. Sanders is content to stay home with the kids and enjoy his retirement.

Debby Beece, president of programming for Oxygen, says the couple's personalities and the challenges they face together should resonate with the network's mostly female audience.

"I think he's a great dad and a very caring husband and a big iconic character," she said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "And he's not like one of these bad boy, idiot husbands that you see on TV. He's very centered and real.

"And she is very bright and creative and wants to shake things up and do things differently. It's a little bit of a romance and a little bit of a battle of the sexes. And so I think for our audience, which loves romance and fun and comedy, I think it will be really appealing and kind of a nice romantic comedy."

Ms. Beece says that Tori & Dean: Inn Love, a reality show that follows Tori Spelling and her husband, Dean McDermott, has been a success on the network, and so when the Sanders pitched the show to Oxygen's West Coast office, the project seemed like a natural fit.

So, any chance that Prime Time Love could resemble that most famous of family-based realty shows, MTV's The Osbournes?

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," Ms. Beece says. "We're talking about a big heart with a smile on it."