CBS doesn’t typically cultivate daring in its fall schedules, but this year it’s making one exception.  Here’s a quick look (new shows are in ALL CAPS, new timeslots are in italics): MONDAY Sept-Oct 8PM:  The Big Bang Theory 8:30PM:  LIFE IN PIECES Nov 8PM:  SUPERGIRL 9PM:  Scorpion 10PM:  NCIS: LA Running Supergirl against Gotham isn’t as […]

  STAR-CROSSED:  Monday 8PM on CW – Change the Channel If aliens are in high school, we must be on CW.  The network’s midseason entry STAR-CROSSED plays as a clip reel of CW’s greatest hits, from the supernatural teen romance of The Vampire Diaries to the forbidden love of Beauty and the Beast to the […]

  WAYWARD PINES:  Midseason TBD on FOX THE FACTS:  M. Night Shyamalan is the marquee producer of this neo-Twin Peaks-ian limited series.  (He also directed the pilot.)  It concerns Secret Service agent Ethan Burke, who travels to the small, strange town of Wayward Pines in search of two missing agents.  The people he encounters there […]

  FOX announced most of its midseason decisions today, and there were a few surprises.  Biggest was the reduction of AMERICAN IDOL‘s Thursday night results show to 30 minutes, with the new sitcom SURVIVING JACK at 8:30PM, and the Greg Kinnear vehicle RAKE following at 9PM.  We’ve come a long way from the days when […]

  AMERICAN CRIME:  Sunday 9PM Midseason on ABC THE FACTS:  John Ridley, this year’s Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar winner for 12 Years A Slave, has written a serialized crime drama very specifically about race, in which a Latino teen is arrested for the murder of the son of Timothy Hutton and Felicity Huffman. WHAT IT’S […]

  UPDATED with reactions to FOX trailers, which are available here:   The FOX fall schedule is a puzzlement. FOX seems to have done little to help itself with its fall 2016 line-up, leaving two of its weakest nights unimproved, and burying one of its highest-profile projects on low-rated Friday.  The network will be more […]

  EMPIRE:  Midseason TBD on FOX THE FACTS:  Think Nashville, but with a hip-hop beat and an A-level pedigree.  Music tycoon Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) is dying–although not just yet–and has to decide who between his two sons will inherit his giant company, causing all manner of family scheming.  Complicating things further:  his ex-wife (Taraji […]

  THE NIGHT SHIFT:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel It’s as though NBC and series creators Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs (they were among the showrunners of the 90210 reboot, and wrote the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie) deliberately set out to make the least distinctive series possible with THE NIGHT […]