FALL TV GUIDE
FEW GEMS AMID COVID CHAOS
Fall TV is a mess this year.
The coronavirus pandemic has wrecked plans, causing a Hollywood shutdown that sent production screeching to a halt and leaving networks and studios stranded.
Broadcast networks have been hard-hit, as many spend the summer filming and editing their fall shows, leaving most of the new content to streaming services and premium channels. But there are shows coming — and here’s a glimpse.
Watch
“Away” (premieres Friday on Netflix)
Two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank has a new role that’s out of this world. In “Away,” Swank is the leader of an international space crew scheduled to be the first human beings to set foot on Mars as part of a three-year mission that forces her to leave her family and all their baggage behind. Don’t let Steve Carell’s “Space Force” scare you off; this one promises to combine escapism and reality in a sweet, tense drama.
“Ratched” (premieres Sept. 18 on Netflix)
Ryan Murphy has generally gone outside the box for his shows, such as “Nip/Tuck,” “American Horror Story” and “Pose.” For this one, he’s coming back in all the way to a padded room. “Ratched,” a prequel to Ken Kesey’s famous “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” sets the infamous nurse Mildred Ratched on the track to her cruel, twisted future. The cast includes a steady stream of old favorites (Sarah Paulson, Finn Wittrock) and familiar newcomers (Cynthia Nixon, Sharon Stone and Corey Stoll).
“Woke” (premieres Sept. 9 on Hulu)
“Woke” may be just the show for our time. “New Girl” alum Lamorne Morris stars as a Black cartoonist whose eyes are opened after an ugly run-in with the cops.
“Enslaved” (premieres Sept. 14 on EPIX)
Samuel L. Jackson is not only digging into his own genealogy, he’s laying it all out for the world. “Enslaved,” a six-part docuseries, promises a fascinating three-pronged story line about “the quest for a sunken slave ship, a personal journey by Jackson and a historical investigation led by investigative journalists,” all tied to the actor’s link to the Benga tribe of Gabon, secret ceremonies and 400 years of human trafficking.
“Filthy Rich” (premieres Sept. 21 on Fox)
Fox pushed “Filthy Rich” (below) back from the fall of 2019, an unexpected blessing. It’s a Gothic drama about the wife (Kim Cattrall) of an uberwealthy founder of an ultraconservative Christian television network who dies suddenly in a plane crash. His death causes a ripple effect including a will, three illegitimate children and a fight over his fortune.
“Soulmates” (premieres Oct. 5 on AMC)
In a show set 15 years in the future, scientists, who apparently have fixed everything else, devise a test to determine your ideal mate. Each of the show’s six episodes will focus on a different relationship, including stars Sarah Snook, Charlie Heaton, Malin Akerman and Betsy Brandt.
“The Right Stuff” (premieres Oct. 9 on Disney+)
Described as a “clear-eyed look at America’s first ‘reality show,’ when ambitious astronauts and their families became instant celebrities in a competition of money, fame and immortality,” “The Right Stuff” tracks NASA’s first astronauts at the height of the Cold War.
“The Undoing” (premieres Oct. 25 on HBO)
Fresh off “Big Little Lies,” David E. Kelley is reuniting with Nicole Kidman for “The Undoing,” a reckoning of the rich and entitled complete with Hugh Grant. The story, based on Jean Hanff Korelitz’s “You Should Have
Known,” starts in the middle of a mysterious “chasm” that involves “a violent death and a chain of terrible revelations.”
Try
“Raised By Wolves” (premieres Sept. 3 on HBO Max)
This alternate universe drama, much like “The Walking Dead,” feels squirmy in today’s ecosystem. A show about androids raising human children after the adults destroyed Earth with war, only to have the humans threaten to destroy the new planet, too, may be a little too on the nose.
“Power Book II: Ghost” (premieres Sept. 6 on Starz)
There’s a decent chance you didn’t even hear about “Power” before it wrapped its sixth and final season in February, but the 50-Cent-produced show was well enough received to warrant a spinoff, which will focus on Ghost’s son, Tariq, and his quest to escape his father’s shadows. Mary J. Blige will be there too.
“Julie and the Phantoms” (premieres Sept. 10 on Netflix)
A show about a high school girl who forms a band with the ghosts of her mom’s musicians seems sweet and just cheesy enough. Then you realize the ghosts are from 1995. Too soon.
“The Third Day” (premieres Sept. 14 on HBO)
Between “Lovecraft Country” and “I May Destroy You,” HBO is heading out of summer on an extremely high note, right into the muddled mystery of “The Third Day,” a limited series about a man (Jude Law) and woman (Naomie Harris) who, in separate times, find their way to an island off the British coast.
“NEXT” (premieres Oct. 6 on Fox)
Your enthusiasm may vary for the distraction of a futuristic tech drama about a rogue AI that appears to be learning beyond its parameters, but a robot uprising probably isn’t that far off given the current state of things. The cast includes John Slattery
(inset)
“No Man’s Land” (premieres Nov. 18 on Hulu)
From the tagline alone, “No Man’s Land” sounds fantastic, the story of a young French man who, while searching for his estranged sister, ends up joining forces with a unit of Kurdish female fighters and travels with them into ISIS occupied territory. It’s not clear why the series needs a man’s perspective to tell the women’s story.
Avoid
“The Comey Rule” (premieres Sept. 27 on Showtime)
Imagine reliving the 2016 election. Billy Ray has put together an enviable cast — Jeff Daniels as James Comey, Brendan Gleeson as President Trump, Michael Kelly as Andrew McCabe, Holly Hunter as Sally Yates, Steven Pasquale as Peter Strzok and Kingsley Ben-Adir as President Barack Obama — but take a hard pass on that walk down memory lane.
“Gangs of London” (premieres Oct. 1 on AMC+)
This British crime drama about the power vacuum that forms when the head of London’s most powerful crime family is assassinated feels like a retread of “The Sopranos.”
“The Walking Dead: World Beyond” (premieres Oct. 4 on AMC)
Raise your hand if you still watch the original “Walking Dead” series. Keep your hand up if you want to watch a series set a decade after a catastrophic, world-changing event that killed thousands.
“Helstrom” (premieres Oct. 16 on Hulu)
Marvel is burning off the last of the now dissolved Marvel Television shows, but you wouldn’t know it from early footage of “Helstrom”; Marvel’s logo is nowhere to be seen. Instead, this superhero show is about the children of a powerful serial killer who make up for their genetics by hunting the worst of humanity.
“Animaniacs” (premieres Nov. 20 on Hulu)
While Steven Spielberg’s name behind this reboot of Yakko, Wakko, Dot, Pinky and the Brain may be intriguing — and parents are getting desperate with kids home all day — stick with the old favorite.