In what has become something of a tradition, I have talked with friends and family about what’s coming up on television in the new Fall season. The media landscape is under radical change but the television networks still hold big preview presentations for their deep-pocketed advertisers.
These tend to happen in May or June. At that time, for viewers, we still don’t know which of our favorite shows have been canceled.
By the middle of August, everything is pretty solid and we know what’s coming. In the past, the best shows would return or premiere sometime in September or October. Anything else was a “mid-season replacement” which was a euphemism for “second-rate”. Now, throughout the year, you can hear stories and rumors about really good shows. I feel that this time of year remains the time when the networks are willing to confirm or deny many of these rumors because they are making promises to their advertisers.
So here’s a rundown of some promising escapist fare that I intend to watch when it airs:
- Dollhouse (25 September 2009 on Fox) – survived for a second season by the skin of its teeth but this is the brainchild of Joss Whedon of Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame.
- Flash Forward (24 September 2009 on ABC) – Canada’s own sci-fi novelist extraordinaire, Robert J. Sawyer, is the creative force behind this new one. I trust ABC to completely screw it up, but I still have my fingers crossed.
- Fringe (17 September 2009 on Fox) – returns for a second season after a really cool first one.
- True Blood (still airing its second season, but returns sometime in 2010 on HBO) – this adult fare has been renewed for a third season and provides an alternative to the well-laundered supernatural tales like last year’s Moonlight and this season’s The Vampire Diaries.
I’ll be watching lots of other shows, but very few deserve special mention. Glee (Fox) was much anticipated and really isn’t all that good. NBC, after taking the risky foray into sci-fi with Jericho and Heroes (which is actually returning for a fourth season if anyone still cares) is sticking to Biggest Loser reality, wall-to-wall Law and Order, and not one but two medical dramas to try to fill the space left by ER (Trauma and Mercy). CBS is donning a similar bland franchise suit with CSI-o-rama and NCIS (now with two flavors of its own). I am at least grateful to CBS for having more scripted dramas than reality shows (Survivor is back and remains one of the better reality shows if you simply must watch that kind of crap). CBS also resurrected Medium after NBC canceled it, but honestly that show is running out of legs anyway.