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BEST AND WORST OF THIS SEASON’S TELEVISION OFFERINGS
Fall keeps giving us fewer and fewer original stories debuting on broadcast television. If you’re a fan of one of the many iterations of FBI, NCIS, Law & Order or the apparently endless tragedies to befall the Windy City — requiring the services of Chicago Fire, Chicago Med or Chicago P.D. — the networks have got you covered.
Here are our recommendations — and rejections — of some of fall TV’S best and buzziest:
BEST NETWORK DRAMA The Big Leap (Fox)
Fox has gone all-in on gimmicky reality shows like The Masked Singer and its new hologram-based singing competition Alter Ego, but fall TV’S most promising original series is a somewhat gooey take on such programs. Unreal meets So You Think You Can Dance in The Big Leap, a behindthe-scenes drama about the making of a dance reality series in which the participants will take part in a live production of Swan Lake.
OK, so the premise doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the lively assemblage of characters — the amateur dancers who see their time on the show-within-theshow as a long-shot second chance, as well as the reality TV producers and judges who have their own reasons for being there — more than make up for the fanciful concept.
Scott Foley won’t stop chewing the scenery while playing the Machiavellian mastermind of the Swan Lake series. Winsome newcomer Simone Recasner steals every scene as a single mom and heavier dancer who grounds the tartly sweet drama with her hope America can finally see someone who looks like her as a star.
BEST NETWORK COMEDY
The Wonder Years (ABC)
The series is the best of a small batch of new fall comedies, especially with Don Cheadle in voice-over as the grown-up Dean. His 12-yearold self, played by Elisha (EJ) Williams, is caught between the relative innocence of coming of age in the middle-class suburbs as a Black preteen, and the larger backdrop of the civil rights movement and more radical liberation struggles.
Gentle but probing, the show captures the historical mundanities of Dean’s life, often to point out that many of the dilemmas he faces are with us today. If it doesn’t sound laugh-out-loud funny, well, it seldom strives to be. But this nuanced reconsideration of Americana from the perspective of a Black family feels urgent and relatable.
BEST OVERALL SERIES Maid (Netflix)
If the ultraviolence of the South Korean high-concept drama Squid Game isn’t for you, try the unfairly underrated limited series Maid, adapted from Stephanie Land’s memoir. Margaret Qualley stars as the title character Alex, a 20-something single mother of a toddler struggling to make ends meet while re-examining her last relationship, which ended when her ex (Nick Robinson) punched a hole by her head in their trailer. Forced to rely on her mentally ill mother (Andie Macdowell, Qualley’s real-life mom) for child care, Alex must also reckon with the traumas of her unstable childhood.
It’s an exquisitely sensitive series, but perhaps its greatest achievement is how matter-of-fact and slice-oflife it feels, despite its heavy subject matter.
MOST WELL-INTENTIONED DRECK Dopesick (Disney+)
The too-sprawling limited series Dopesick (debuting Wednesday) is a star-studded retelling of the origins of the opioid crisis from within the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma that also encompasses Oxycontin’s pivotal role in the unravelling of communities across the country and the many obstacles that stood in law enforcement’s way in combating the epidemic.
Performances by Michael Keaton as a West Virginia physician, Kaitlyn Dever as an injured miner who develops an addiction and Michael Stuhlbarg as former Purdue president Richard Sackler can’t distract from the clumsy manipulations and confusing time-hopping.
BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME
Ordinary Joe (NBC)
Perhaps the highest-profile new show, Ordinary Joe hopes to replace This Is Us as the one household-name network drama that isn’t about cops, detectives, lawyers or doctors. But this Sliding Doors for the world’s most boring guy keeps adding up to less than the sum of its parts.
James Wolk stars as a blank slate named Joe who, depending on a fateful decision he makes on the night of his college graduation, ends up a cop (oops), a nurse or, LOL, a rock star. The drama is mildly clever in how it reutilizes its supporting characters in different roles — as a cop, Joe saves a politician from an assassin’s bullet — but has nothing to say other than “bad things and good things happen no matter what career you choose.”
There’s no real core to the main character to care about. Joe feels weirdly remarkable: No ordinary person is so unsettlingly vacant.