Too. Much. TV. That’s the saga plaguing the lives of even the most dedicated couch potatoes. So at the risk of turning ourselves into mash, we set out to watch all of this fall’s new series in the public service of determining which new offerings are worth taking up valuable real estate on your DVR. Using an inexact science taking into account buzz, talent involved, creativity, and our simple enjoyment of what we watched, here are the new series that you should actually check out—from Muppets to superwomen to Lea Michele in a neck brace.
Amazon/CBS
The variety show, once upon a time, was television’s most successful and popular form of entertainment. Of course, “once upon a time” was a long time ago, and in the years since pretty much any and all attempts to revitalize the retro genre, even by the likes of Rosie O’Donnell and Maya Rudolph, have failed. Given that track record, it’s no surprise that Neil Patrick Harris—a song-and-dance man to save the genre if there ever was one—is admirably passing off what is almost certainly a variety series—his new show Best Time Ever—as anything but: “Part Fear Factor, part primetime game show, part hidden camera, part SNL Digital Short, part Tony Awards,” he says. OK, Neil. The good news is that, given the fact that we’d tune in to see you do any of those things in a heartbeat, we’ll absolutely tune in for your new variety series, too.
Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris premieres Tuesday, September 15 at 10 p.m. EST on NBC.
NBC
The Bastard Executioner not only takes the crown for Most Badass Title of any new fall show, but it is also the bloodiest. Created by Sons of Anarchy mastermind Kurt Sutter, it’s a historical drama about, in the Anarchy vein, good (or at least empathetic) people doing ghastly things. Our (anti)hero is a 14th-century warrior and Welsh named Wilkin Brattle (Lee Jones) who escapes death by assuming the identity of a journeyman executioner, thus infiltrating the enemy. It’s gruesome, but the mindgames are as gripping as the frequent swordplay, especially as Brattle navigates the influence of a mystical healer (Katey Sagal) and a manipulating aspiring politician (Stephen Moyer). You might—and many people probably will—call this FX’s Game of Thrones, with its all grandness and graphicness. Given Sutter’s Sons of Anarchy track record, though, it’s no wonder FX execs looked at such ambition and said, “Yeah, sure!”
The Bastard Executioner premieres Tuesday, September 15 at 10 p.m. EST on FX.
Is Life in Pieces fall’s best new comedy? That depends on how you characterize Scream Queens. But it is definitely the strongest and easily the most entertaining half-hour sitcom. Like the second coming of Modern Family, the series offers up four intertwining vignettes depicting moments both extraordinary (the birth of a child) and mundane (a first date) in the lives of various members of an extended family. Dianne Wiest and James Brolin are the matriarch and patriarch, and based on the pilot alone should reserve the date of the 2016 Emmy Awards on their calendars. The rest of the family is populated by an absurdly talented ensemble that includes Thomas Sadoski (The Newsroom), Colin Hanks (Fargo), and Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad), all of whom help the show nail the same balance between heartwarming and ribald that’s kept Modern Family ticking for all these years without veering off into schmaltz or smut. CBS isn’t exactly known for comedies this... smart, which is why we implore everyone to watch.
Life in Pieces premieres Monday, September 21 at 8:30 p.m. EST on CBS.
The Muppets, all these decades later, are more popular than ever. ABC is wisely striking while the puppet fabric’s hot and producing what it has labeled a “docucomedy” following Kermit, Gonzo, and the gang’s professional and personal lives as they put on a new late-night talk show, Up Late With Miss Piggy. The Muppets will stick to the brand’s heady grand tradition of skewering both show business and its characters’ own legacies, though a mini-controversy is brewing over the decision to break up Kermit and Miss Piggy for the series—he’s already moved on to a new hot swine named Denise. Kermit himself refers to this as “sort of an adult Muppet show,” which is reflected in a polarizing promotional campaign that maybe matured the iconic characters a bit too much. (Miss Piggy wants to pork Nathan Fillion? Gross.) Such ickiness aside, all previews thus far have been not only hilarious, but unmistakably Muppet-esque. As far as we’re concerned, they can’t start the music and light the lights fast enough.
The Muppets premieres Tuesday, September 22 at 8 p.m. EST on ABC.
“What fresh hell is this?” Well, the most quotable pilot this year is Scream Queens, a pitch-perfect tonal mash-up of Glee and American Horror Story, the two tentpoles from creator Ryan Murphy. With all the quippy, catty dialogue of Mean Girls and all the winking macabre of Wes Craven’s Scream, the show, as is Murphy’s way, serves as both a perfect satire of slasher movies and an homage to the genre. In the most genius casting of the fall, original Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis plays the dean of university where a serial killer is after the members of a cursed sorority headed by Emma Roberts, turning the entitled-bitch stereotype into a masterclass of a comedic performance from her very first words: “Good morning, sluts.” Toss in Lea Michele slaying an against-type performance as a neckbrace-wearing nerd and Niecey Nash reliably murdering every scene she’s in, and you’ve got what just may be the year’s most entertaining new show.
Scream Queens premieres Tuesday, September 22 at 8 p.m. EST on FOX.
Given the recent ho-hum history of beloved movies being translated into meh TV series, it’s a bit surprising that TV execs haven’t abandoned the practice. For every M.A.S.H. or Friday Night Lights there’s about a dozen The Firms—in fact there were two attempts at making The Firm into a TV show; both failed miserably. In any case, this fall sees two more attempts at movie-to-TV success with Minority Report and Limitless, and the latter is actually a pleasant surprise. To begin with, its concept is far riper for a procedural TV treatment than most films: there’s a drug that allows a person’s brain to operate at its entire capacity, which is as dangerous as it is cool and useful. The series is set after the 2011 film in which Bradley Cooper was the dude doing badass things while on the drug. Cooper, to a supreme ratings advantage for CBS, shows up in limited capacity in this TV version while Jake McDorman gamely takes on the heavy lifting as the Everyman-turned-Supereveryman. Quite simply, though, the pilot is fun.
Limitless premieres Tuesday, September 22 at 10 p.m. EST on CBS.
Quantico looks and feels like an ABC drama. Given the addictive nature of the channel’s wildly popular series—How to Get Away With Murder and Scandal, for example—that’s the biggest endorsement the new series could receive. But unlike those two shows, this isn’t from the creative utopia of Shondaland. Created by Joshua Safran (veteran, of all things, of Gossip Girl and Smash), it’s an even glossier, and perhaps more combustible, cousin to Shonda Rhimes’s zeitgeist-seizing programming. There are hot young things fumbling their way through a high-pressure career; in this case it’s FBI recruits training at Quantico. And it’s twisty enough to make Scandal’s plotting seem reserved and controlled. The big “OMG” here: The most likable recruit, and the show’s lead, is suspected of orchestrating the most devastating terrorist attack on the United States since the 9/11 attacks. #Drama.
Quantico premieres Sunday, September 27 at 10 p.m. EST on ABC.
John Stamos, in the biggest stretch of his acting career, stars as a spectacularly handsome playboy named Jimmy. The twist? A son (Josh Peck) he never knew he had shows up with a life-altering bombshell: The man who seems to have spent a life sipping from the Fountain of Youth is now a grandfather. It takes all of a pilot episode for Jimmy to come around to the idea of two generations of progeny, and to become a Hitch-style suave mentor to his new sadsack of a son. The plot points are woefully predictable once you learn the show’s conceit, but the writing crackles with unexpected sharpness. There’s whiplash-fast banter between rotating pairings of characters, most of which are hysterical—though the relentlessness of it borders on exhausting. But, for the love of god, scenes in which John Stamos plays with a baby are enough to melt my ovaries, and I don’t even have any.
Grandfathered premieres Tuesday, September 29 at 8 p.m. EST on Fox.
The biggest tragedy of the fall TV season is that the Rob Lowe comedy called The Grinder is not, in fact, about Hollywood’s most enduringly beautiful man’s sexual exploits on the infamous gay hookup app, which spells itself Grindr, sans “e.” Alas, tragedy begets the best comedy, and this is a very good one. Lowe does that thing he’s gotten so good at—playing an Adonis verging on a narcissist, but tempered with enough good intention to skirt “douchebag” territory—as an actor who just finished his run portraying a lawyer on a hit TV series called, yep, The Grinder. He returns home to his small town where his brother, played by a bumbling Fred Savage (The Wonder Years) as Lowe’s perfect foil, is an actual lawyer who, despite his book smarts, lacks the charisma needed to win cases. Because he played a lawyer on TV, Lowe thinks he has the knowledge, and certainly the confidence, to take over the family practice, ruffling Savage’s feathers. Hijinx ensue!
The Grinder premieres Tuesday, September 29 at 8:30 p.m. EST on Fox.
Perhaps nothing elicits a yawn like the idea of yet another CBS medical drama. Admittedly the genre is tired by this point, but there’s enough good in Code Black to keep it from flat-lining. Chief among them is Marcia Gay Harden, who plays the role of the Tough As Nails ER Director with far more nuance than the stock character may even deserve. The show is inspired by a documentary of the same name, which followed the doctors at the busiest ER in the country, L.A. County Hospital, where “code black”—when the number of emergencies outnumbers the resources available to treat them—is a frighteningly common occurrence. Blessedly, Code Black is more like ER shot with adrenaline than it is another Grey’s Anatomy retread, and the gripping medical cases in the pilot (which are far more interesting than the personal problems of any of the characters we meet) certainly benefit from that. But the "next ER"? There could never be one. Still, it’s got enough of a pulse to keep our interest.
Code Black premieres Wednesday, September 30 at 10 p.m. EST on CBS.
Not content to rest on its laurels while competitor streaming sites Netflix and Amazon continue to churn out original content at an almost unsustainable pace, Hulu is ramping up its slate of original series, counting The Awesomes, Difficult People, and new episodes of the rescued Mindy Project as the most noteworthy on its roster. Joining that list now is Casual, which spikes interest on the brand of the talent involved alone. Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno) executive-produces the series, which is right up his “endearing dysfunctional family” wheelhouse. Tommy Dewey plays a doofy bachelor and Michaela Watkins is his newly divorced sister, the pair of which are now living under the same roof while navigating the dating world and raising her teenage kid. Michaela Watkins, it should be said, may be the most underrated comedic actress working (check out her brief tenure on SNL, her Emmy-worthy work in Trophy Wife, or her recent scene-stealing cameo in Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp as proof), so her involvement in this alone makes Casual a must-watch.
Casual premieres on Hulu Wednesday, October 7.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is so, so weird. And because of that, it’s so, so wonderful. The logline: A musical comedy—yep, there’s singing!—about a woman named Rebecca who, inspired by a particularly profound commercial for butter spread, looks for a fresh start for her life by moving from New York to a small California town in pursuit of her boyfriend who dumped her in high school 10 years ago... the last time she felt truly happy. It’s from the writer of Devil Wears Prada and the director of (500) Days of Summer, so it’s brimming with glamorous quirk, but it’s all orbiting the kooky genius of star and co-creator Rebecca Bloom, a comic and YouTube phenom famous for subversive, wacky music videos like 2011’s “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury.” With so much regurgitation of familiar conceits this year—doctor shows, family comedies, and series based on movies—something as creative and fresh as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend deserves an endorsement belted by a Broadway-worthy chorus doing a kick line and raising bedazzled top hats.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend premieres Monday, October 12 at 8 p.m. EST on The CW.
No new show was subject to more scrutiny sight-unseen than Supergirl—a TV show featuring a female superhero is bound to be examined with bionic focus—nor was more picked apart when its trailer was released. (Supergirl teetering around in heels and mousy glasses, really?) The good news is that this show—about Superman’s cousin, Kara, who, while working as an assistant at a newspaper, decides to stop hiding her superhuman abilities in order to save both her floundering publication and, you know, lives—is much better than the trailer suggests. There’s much meta conversation about whether the idea of Supergirl is good for women within the show as there is in the blogosphere, and creators Greg Berlanti and Andrew Keisberg, the team behind Arrow and The Flash, hit on a clever comic-book tone that manages to be as tongue-in-cheek as it is dark. Strangely, Supergirl’s kryptonite is the sleepy performance by Melissa Benoist as the title character; its real superpower, however, is Calista Flockhart's ka-pow scene-stealing as her own kooky version of Miranda Priestly running the newspaper.
Supergirl premieres Monday, October 26 at 8:30 p.m. EST on CBS.
Your tolerance for Jane Lynch’s hammy good-natured sarcasm on Glee should dictate whether the Emmy winner’s new sitcom is TV heaven or hell. From where we sit, Angel From Hell is a one-joke concept—Jane Lynch plays a Guardian Angel who is boozy, crass, and vaguely irritating—that pays off far better than it probably should. It helps that Lynch could play a character like this with her eyes closed, giving the sitcom a breeziness that escapes so many new comedies. Also in its favor is Maggie Lawson as Allison, whose winning skepticism of her Guardian Angel’s plausibility is a perfect mirror to our own raised eyebrow over whether this series should work. It’s not fall’s best new comedy by any means, but with so much mediocrity out there, a family-friendly, perfectly amusing offering like this truly is heaven-sent.
Angel From Hell premieres Thursday, November 5 at 9:30 p.m. EST on CBS.
Ever since Transparent announced the arrival of Amazon as a legitimate purveyor of original television, the streaming service has struggled to offer up an hour-long drama series that measures up to the accolades given to its critically hailed Jill Soloway comedy. The Man in the High Castle could be just the drama series to do it. Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s novel, it’s an alt-history saga that imagines what the U.S. would be like if the Axis Powers had won World War II. Based on pure concept alone, this is fascinating: America was beat in the race for the bomb and Washington, D.C., is the major world city that gets nuked. It’s 1962, and the country is split much like Berlin was, with the Nazis controlling the East and the Japanese the West. There are rebel operatives, oppressed citizens, and morally conflicted anti-heroes, all of whom are explored against a gorgeous whiskey-colored, sepia-like backdrop that suitably evokes prestige drama in the same vein as House of Cards or Mad Men. To boot, Ridley Scott is executive-producing—piquing our interest even more.
The Man in the High Castle will premiere Friday, November 20 on Amazon.
