Our first take on the fall TV lineup
Offerings include revivals, remakes and knock-offs
This fall on broadcast TV, everything old is old again. If ever you were searching for proof that the broadcast networks had run out of ideas, this year’s “upfronts” — where the networks pitch their new schedules to the advertisers — would appear to provide it. You’re getting revivals of Will & Grace on NBC, Roseanne on ABC, S.W.A.T. on CBS and Dynasty on CW. There’s a Big Bang Theory prequel, a CBS Star Trek streaming series and a Grey’s Anatomy spinoff on ABC.
Were that not enough, there are three new superhero shows and three new military dramas.
It’s like the entire industry stopped trying, all at once. Nor is it a particularly great year for inclusion. Of 19 new fall shows, the five networks have three with African-American leads: Fox’s Ghosted, with Craig Rob- inson; CBS’ S.W.A.T. with Shemar Moore; and ABC’s The Mayor, starring newcomer Brandon Micheal Hall.
All we’ve seen so far are brief clips. In the weeks ahead, there will be more time to come to a more informed judgment on the new shows. But for now I’ll pick the new shows that look most promising — and most puzzling — for each network.
ABC
You can usually count on ABC for quantity, if not always quality.
No network does a more thorough job of introducing its new series, which works in ABC’s favor when the shows make a favorable impression, and can cut against it when they don’t. MOST PROMISING: THE GOOD DOCTOR This series, from House creator David Shore, stars Freddie Highmore ( Bates Motel) as a savant doctor with autism. The combination helped turn him into a great surgeon, while limiting his ability to connect with people. You can spot a lot of House in that professionally perfect/personally flawed character, but Highmore appears to be disarming rather than abrasive, so that’s a switch. And House was a very well-made series with an easily understood premise designed to support selfcontained episodes — and those are in short supply at ABC this season. MOST PUZZLING: THE GOSPEL OF KEVIN Aside from Doctor, three other fall ABC dramas were puzzling. Clips
from Marvel’s Inhumans gave no clue as to what the show was about. Ten Days in the Valley has a great star in Kyra Sedgwick, playing a TV producer whose daughter goes missing, but it’s hard to see how that story supports a continuing series. But both seemed to have a better shot at survival than Kevin, which stars Jason Ritter as a selfish, self-centered guy chosen by an angel to help save the world. It’s possible, of course, that ABC has found the next Touched By An Angel, but the clips made Kevin seem like one of those shows network executives pick up to cater to middle America, even though they have no use for it themselves.
CBS
You can usually count on two things with CBS series: Critics will ignore them, and viewers will watch them — and more often than they watch anything else. There are exceptions: The
Good Wife and Mom won over critics, and like every network, it has a few that viewers instantly reject, like last season’s bomb
Pure Genius. But CBS makes crowd-pleasing, undemanding (and profitable) mass-market entertainment. This is a network that knows its audience. All we ask is that its shows lean more toward The Big Bang Theory and Elementary than Man With a Plan, which has been benched until midseason. MOST PROMISING: STAR TREK: DISCOVERY OK, I’m cheating: Although the first Discovery episode will air on CBS, the rest of the series will only be available on CBS All Access. Still, the beautifully produced Discovery clip was the only one from CBS — or any network so far — that resembled a show people might be excited to watch. Among series produced for the network, go with the Big Bang prequel Young Sheldon. It was more sweet than funny, but Chuck Lorre’s shows tend to get better as they move past their pilots, as Big Bang did. MOST PUZZLING: WISDOM OF THE CROWD This season, CBS failed with Pure
Genius, a high-tech medical show about a rich genius savior. Then Fox failed with APB, a high-tech cop show about a rich genius savior. Now CBS is trying Crowd, starring Jeremy Piven as — a rich genius savior. This time around, the tech whiz creates a crowdsourcing app to help find his daughter’s murderer, and then employs it to solve other crimes. So you get the required scenes of people starring at see-through computer screens, as well as a show in which smartphone vigilantes are encouraged to record strangers’ conversations and follow them around, shooting video. Even in a country that cherishes law and order, Wisdom is bound to strike some as bit too creepy.
CW
Eventually, all streaks end. CW has been on a roll these last few years, trotting out some of the best, and best-received, clips — including The Flash, Jane
the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — while generally avoiding most of the why-did-they-pick-that? pitfalls befalling other networks.
Then came this fall’s pair of new shows, Dynasty and Valor, disappointing despite the two shows coming later, Life Sentence and Black Lightning, ranked with the year’s best. MOST PROMISING: VALOR The military drama stands out among two others planned for fall by centering its story on a female soldier and giving her a conspiracy mystery to solve while carrying out her main mission: the rescue of two captured comrades. Between the battles, the conspiracy, and the added spice of soap-opera infidelity, there’s a lot going on, but the main problem is trying to imagine why CW’s audience would want to watch. MOST PUZZLING: DYNASTY And then there’s this reboot of Aaron Spelling ’s monument to 1980s excess, updated by the makers of Gossip Girl and The
O.C. — which by this point feel just about as ancient as the original Dynasty. The names in this saga of the Carrington family are the same, but Fallon is no longer a “nice” girl, and the formerly saintly Krystle (now Cristal) has elements of villainous Alexis. But, alas, there is no actual Alexis and worse, no Joan Collins. And that’s a problem, because the original didn’t kick into high ratings gear until she joined the cast in the second season. If this Dynasty lasts that long, it might want to check on Collins’ availability.
FOX
The network’s goal was to remind ad buyers that Empire is a hit (and hope they haven’t noticed that it’s a much smaller one now) while promoting its three new fall shows. MOST PROMISING: THE GIFTED Fox teams with Marvel for this proto- X-Men story about a family (led by Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker) forced to go on the run to protect their super-powered children. If there’s one thing TV really doesn’t need, it’s another superhero show, but as there’s no way to stop them from coming, be grateful that this one, at least, has an emotional hook that may help it stand out.
MOST PUZZLING: THE ORVILLE
Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane created and stars in this Star
Trek- inspired drama about the adventures of an exploratory vessel 400 years in the future. MacFarlane is a talented writer and voice artist, but his attempts to move in front of the camera as an actor, singer and host have so far met with less success.
NBC
Most of the networks make some time in their presentations for news and sports, but NBC brought its entire cable family along for the ride. So in a 2-hour stretch, we also got E!, Bravo, Oxygen, Telemundo and a few dozen others, or at least so it seemed.
The result was that the few NBC shows were buried under a cascade of crap. Were I an NBC producer witnessing my show sandwiched between E’s latest Kardashian self-indulgence and Bravo’s latest dating show, I might have been tempted to throw myself off of the top of 30 Rock. MOST PROMISING: WILL & GRACE Revivals are, in general, a dreary idea, and there’s a very good chance that reviving a show that was risqué and groundbreaking when it premiered 19 years ago is going to leave you with a return that feels old and stale. And yet, sometimes nostalgia overrides common sense. The cast looks great, and it was undeniably fun to see them falling back into the same rhythms. And a filmed presentation came across well. MOST PUZZLING: LAW & ORDER TRUE CRIME: THE MENENDEZ MURDERS It’s easy to see why NBC would want to stay in business with producer Dick Wolf — his Chicago shows are the network’s bread and butter — and why both yearn to recapture the glory days of NBC drama. But why try to do so with a project that is so blatantly a copy of FX’s American Crime
Story? This project sounds like a shoddy knock-off, despite the presence of the redoubtable Edie Falco.