Welcome to the 2016 Fall TV Season, your gateway to Peak TV for the year. At this year’s Summer TCA Press Tour, FX CEO John Landgraf put up some frightening numbers about how many series are premiering or returning this year (over 450) and how many are projected to premiere in the next year (over 500), thanks particularly to expanding online content from Amazon, Netflix, Crackle, and many, many more.
We’re here to help. Each week during this premiere season, we’ve updated this guide with another round of reviews for series premiering or returning soon, from pilots to full seasons. The list includes broadcast, cable, premium networks, and streaming. Admittedly, we’re not going to get to everything, but with 65 shows reviewed below, this should certainly get you started.
The final round is below along with our star ratings and reviews from earlier rounds including Atlanta, Better Things, Fleabag, Gotham, Quarry, Luke Cage, The Exorcist, Son of Zorn, This Is Us, The Good Place, Westworld, Transparent, MacGyver, Pitch, Black Mirror, Poldark, Blunt Talk, Conviction, Ash vs Evil Dead, Divorce, Frequency, Rectify, Good Girls Revolt, Chance, & and many, many others. (Note: you may need to scroll slowly to ensure each review loads).
For even more, check out the cancelled and renewed status of over 150 scripted shows with our TV Lifeline, and for an expanded list of what is premiering when, head over to our TV Premiere Dates calendar.
The Crown
Premiere: Friday, November 4th on Netflix
Cast: Claire Foy, Matt Smith, Jared Harris, John Lithgow
For a certain kind of Anglophile, there may not be a more anticipated series this year than The Crown, which examines the early reign of England’s Queen Elizabeth II. From the looks of the first two episodes (out of the first season’s 10), it won’t let its supporters down. The Crown is beautifully directed in sumptuous yet staid tones, as young Elizabeth (Foy) — newly married to Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh (Smith) — first lives as a privileged princess before having to transition into the position of Queen. From there, as her grandmother cautions her, there will be two Elizabeths at odds with one another: one who is a young woman with her own hopes and dreams, and one who is a royal, whose life will be full of duty and sacrifice. “But the crown must always win.”
Foy is again exceptional, as she always is (we last saw her as Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall, a far cry from the kind of monarch she plays in The Crown). Her huge blue eyes and placid, doll-like features can easily go from a questioning innocence to a stern acceptance of duty in a moment, and she imbues Queen Elizabeth’s story with striking warmth and humanity (something that can be forgotten when regarding someone who has been a monarch for over half a century). The excellent casting extends to every role, from Smith’s take on the handsome but irreverent Philip to Harris’ anxious, measured King George VI. Perhaps most inspired of all is Lithgow as an aged Winston Churchill, whose story is reaching its twilight as Elizabeth begins her rise.
The Crown is a fascinating and easily engrossing portrait of a young monarch in a fairly modern age, and benefits from having one writer (creator Peter Morgan) to lend it narrative continuity. The story, which offers a glimpse of many familiar faces associated with government at the time, glides through history and crosses the globe, yet is most effective when its examining the nuances of Elizabeth’s life and the lives of those around her who must change the way the regard her (from a wife, sister, and daughter, to a monarch they must defer to at all times). The trappings of power, such as they are, are shown here as being claustrophobic and wearisome, even though the lavish lifestyle it seems to offer is also seductive. And that is why, once you enter into the regal world of The Crown, you will not want to leave. It always wins. — Allison Keene Rating: ★★★★
Good Behavior
Premieres:Tuesday, November 15th on TNT
Cast: Michelle Dockery, Juan Diego Botto, Terry Kinney, and Joey Kern
Considering her character in the immortal Downton Abbey, it makes sense that Michelle Dockery's first major role following that show's end would be, well, different. Where Lady Mary Crawley took a bit to warm up and was proper to say the absolute least, Dockery's Letty Dobesh, the central character of TNT's Good Behavior, is exactly the opposite of prim and mannered. An ex-con who makes her change by robbing hotel rooms, Dobesh is the main protagonist of Blake Crouch's series of novels and she's the sort of character that could carry a movie franchise under the right direction. And though Dockery doesn't evoke the character's intelligence and skill as often as one might hope, the talented actress nails her sense of humor, her regret, and her ability to perform at will.
In the series, she's paired with Juan Diego Botto's handsome, good-humored hitman for much of the story but the pull of TNT's latest comedic drama remains largely with Dockery and Dobesh. The problem is that, even when Dockery's performance holds the line, the series pivots almost exclusively on plot points and details that will inevitably be called back later. Dobesh is a messy but lovable character, someone with lots of charm and talent but short on focus, goals, and self-confidence, even as her job is in the confidence game. As such, the long-form storytelling feels weirdly antithetical to the perspective and very persona of the character as she was originally conceived. Of course, Crouch and the rest of the creative team on the series are under no realistic obligation to replicate the material in its adaptation, but the issue doesn't touch merely on the narrative. The visual temp of the series
Of course, Crouch and the rest of the creative team on the series are under no realistic obligation to replicate the material in its adaptation, but the issue doesn't touch merely on the narrative. The visual tempo of the series plays like a movie, meaning that the opening 50 minutes feels as if they're setting up a story and character that will end within 200 minutes. Because of this, the pacing comes off as egregiously safe and familiar in how it times out each plot twist or turn to arrive exactly when you expect it to happen. The show ultimately feels like a kind of meager mechanism, fine-tuned to deliver jolts, laughs, and maybe even tears, which is the exact opposite of who Dobesh is in the pages of Crouch's books. -- Chris Cabin
Rating: ★★
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Premiere: Saturday, October 22nd, BBC America, 9 p.m.
Cast: Samuel Barnett, Elijah Wood, Hannah Marks, Fiona Dourif, Jade Eshete, Miguel Sandoval, Richard Schiff, Neil Brown Jr., Dustin Milligan, Michael Eklud, Mpho Koaho, Aaron Douglas, and Christian Bako
Max Landis certainly doesn’t make it easy for you to like him. At a time when most of the world was celebrating that sitting through Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a joy rather than a chore, Landis was nitpicking storytelling elements that he found unbelievable in a movie about another galaxy where laser swords are a common weapon and aquatic creatures the size of Texas roam the alien oceans. He’s opinionated to a fault and even when he can’t explain his perspective totally, he assumes he’s right and you’re wrong.
What’s most annoying about all of this, however, is that Landis is a talented screenwriter as well as being a pompous, under-watched enfant terrible. Chronicle is a minor miracle, while less satisfying works like American Ultra and Mr. Right still have ample wit and simple, involving stories, as well as exquisite performances from the likes of Jesse Eisenberg, Anna Kendrick, and Kristen Stewart. There’s a similar feeling at the center of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Landis’ adaptation of the Douglas Adams novel of the same name for BBC, which is top-lined by the immediately ingratiating Elijah Wood. Wood plays Todd, the depressed, hesitant right-hand man to the titular, bizarre investigator, played by Samuel Barnett, who you probably remember best as Renfield in Penny Dreadful. As Dirk suggests when they first meet, amidst a number of deeply odd occurrences, they were meant to work together on at least one case, one that involves a missing teenager and her wealthy and apparently quite dead father.
The story proper isn’t really of much interest early on in the series, though that changes to increasingly pestering effect. The show’s “charm” is in Wood and Barnett’s playfulness with one another, the well-oiled engines of their comedic diptych when their characters are faced with a cadre of violent heathens, a homicidal landlord, several governmental agencies, and a cute, stray corgi. And to be fair, that alone does make the series enjoyable for most of the premiere, but soon enough, the weirdness and enigmatic nature of the world feels more entertaining for Landis than it is for the audience. The problem here is the writing, which consistently feels belabored and overtly complicated while the show itself remains largely just about Dirk and Todd and their adventures. A procedural show with Wood and Barnett solving supernatural crimes may have done well, but the closer we get to an explanation for all this nonsense being required, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency grows more and more innocuous in its effects. -- Chris Cabin
Rating: ★★
People of Earth
Premiere: Monday, October 31st on TBS
Cast: Wyatt Cenac, Ana Gasteyer, Michael Cassidy, Alice Westerlund, Brian Huskey
Though TBS has long been known as being a place to catch classic comedy reruns, it hasn’t had much success with its original series lately (aside from its cutting edge late-night series Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, that is). With People of Earth, that has a chance to change. The comedy, created by David Jenkins with Conan O’Brien and Greg Daniels serving as EPs, focuses on a small-town alien abduction support group. The conceit is one that could easily dismiss its characters as cranks and yahoos, but People of Earth instead delivers a story that is sincere, layered, and funny.
People of Earth stars The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac as a sardonic journalist, Ozzie, who is assigned to cover the support group as a fluff piece, but ends up bonding with them as he begins to recover his own memories of an abduction. The series smartly builds its foundation on stereotypical alien conspiracy touchstones, including the look and behavior of the aliens, but subverts expectations by making it all real. And yet, it doesn’t allow all of its characters’ paranoias and theories to be true — many are just the projections of lonely, broken people looking for a sense of community.
People of Earth is a very, very strange series, and not all of it works (including a recurring talking deer). But it has a surprising amount of character development, a great cast, and a low-key, almost indy approach to humor (“There is dickery happening in Beacon”) that makes Ozzie’s transformation from skeptic to believer one that is both silly and sincere, and worth watching. — Allison Keene Rating: ★★★
Chance
Premiere: Wednesday, October 19th on Hulu
Cast: Hugh Laurie, Gretchen Moll, Ethan Suplee, and Clarke Peters
Hugh Laurie owes his fame outside of England to his work on television in the addictive medical-drama procedural House M.D. on Fox. His attempts to break out in movies over the years has not been particularly fruitful, though his presence in Tomorrowland and the Flight of the Phoenix remake was crucial to those movies not being complete wastes of time. Regardless, his return to TV was not inevitable but likely and following a great guest-starring run on HBO's Veep, he's back in front in Chance, Hulu's latest attempt at a genuine hit with a big leading man and a major director behind the camera to set the table.
In this case, that director is Lenny Abrahamson of Room and Frank, and he evinces a distinct vision of San Francisco, the city where Laurie's Elden Chance works as a psychiatrist and a detective of sorts. It's here that he not only begins a kind of partnership with a local antique furniture store run by a formidable, suave dealer, played with menace and gravitas by the indispensable Clarke Peters, and his right hand man, D (Ethan Suplee), but also begins investigating Gretchen Moll's Jaclyn, a complicated patient. These two elements are what lead our melancholic, sardonic hero down the primrose path toward possible oblivion and inevitable physical pain.
Abrahamson's stylish lensing, framing, and overall aesthetic gets the shadowy, overcast visual timbre to match the angry, enigmatic, and somber undertones of the characters in the scripts, but he never gets too ambitious. The result is a classic, handsomely shot mini-series, in the vein of those 3-4 episode series that the BBC specializes in, such as Wallander or Broadchurch.The show teases a fascination with psychological behavior and violence but about halfway through the series, nothing particularly insightful comes of this thematic interest. So, though the series remains entertaining, attractively moody, and sensationally well-acted, there's a lack of urgency and personal import that can be felt throughout that keeps this inarguably good show from being a great one. -- Chris Cabin
Rating: ★★★
Rectify Season 4
Premiere: Wednesday, October 26th on SundanceTV
Cast: Aden Young, Abigail Spencer, Clayne Crawford, Adelaide Clemens, J. Smith-Cameron, Luke Kirby, Bruce McKinnon, Jake Austin Walker
For fans of Ray McKinnon’s devastatingly good drama series Rectify, there is good and bad news. On the positive side, the series returns as beautifully nuanced and casually devastating as ever; the bad news is these are the last episodes we’ll get to spend with the Holdens and Talbots. As Rectify makes the turn into its final run of episodes, the family is fractured. Daniel (Young) is in Nashville in a halfway house, alone even while he is among people. In the raw and emotional premiere, Daniel is challenged to answer the question of whether or not he believes he deserves to have a life, regardless of his past. It points towards a hopeful ending for the series where we see Daniel embracing a life among others after completely losing his sense of self while in solitary confinement for 19 years.
In the second hour, things return to Pauly, and catch up with the rest of the family, and how they are moving on without him. For most, it’s back to a Daniel-less normalcy, but for his mother (Smith-Cameron) — who mirrors her son in so many ways — it’s a daily struggle to understand life with him out of jail but also not with the family.
No show understands the South or portrays it with such a beautiful intimacy as Rectify, which continues to be an extended reverie and a meditation on the richness of our inner lives. What ties it so perfectly to the South is how the characters struggle to be open and honest and “real,” and to not just sweep things under the rug, smiles pulled tight across their faces, faking it to one day make it true that things are ok.
Rectify has never answered the question of whether Daniel committed the crime he was convicted of and told to confess to, even though at times (particularly in Season 3) it seemed determined to focus on wanting us to know the truth without ever revealing it. In Season 4, viewers should (at least initially) feel at peace with the uncertainty regarding Daniel’s story — even if we do want to see Trey brought to justice. But that’s exactly what makes Rectify such a rich series, and so rewarding as a viewing experience. It allows us to know and care for these characters even when they try to hold us at arm’s length, by embracing their truths in quiet moments that connect us to their loneliness, uncertainty, and ultimately their hope. — Allison Keene
Rating: ★★★★★
Good Girls Revolt!
Premiere: Friday, October 28th on Amazon
Cast: Genevieve Angelson, Anna Camp, Erin Darke, Chris Diamantopoulos, Hunter Parrish, Jim Belushi
Picking up more or less where Mad Men left off for characters like Joan and Peggy, Good Girls Revolt takes place at a time where women are accepted into the newsroom, but only as researchers. Heaven forbid a woman write! That is what led to the first class action lawsuit by female journalists against an employer, a real-life event that took place among Newsweek employees in the late 60s and early 70s. Good Girls Revolt fictionalizes a lot of the details (here it’s called “News of the Week” and the leads are all new characters, save for Mamie Gummer as Nora Ephron and Joy Bryant’s ACLU lawyer Eleanor Holmes Norton), but the themes remain intact, and sometimes uncomfortably relevant.
Though the 60s have become a wearily overused setting for movies and TV series (you can guess the soundtrack before it even begins), Good Girls Revolt is bolstered by a strong cast and a unique take on newsroom culture, one which includes some of the vile “locker room talk” that’s been in heavy media rotation lately, but also in more nuanced ways as well. At News of the Week, women are often paired with men and given a facade of power and influence, but they must ultimately be deferential to those male counterparts. The culture is sexist and patronizing, but the strong women at the center of the series — Angelson is a pushy, counterculture broad, Camp is sly with a bouffant style, and Darke is a repressed wife who longs for options — have very different responses to it.
Good Girls Revolt is careful to not demonize anybody; both the men and women have copious flaws. And though the cultural touchstones may feel a little tired at this point given its setting, what the show does do well is create a workplace atmosphere that feels both contemporary and retro, a sometimes startling commentary on how far we’ve come, yet how far we still have to go. As Mad Men’s Joan said, “no dull times or dull men tolerated.” — Allison Keene
Rating: ★★★★
The Great Indoors
Premiere: Thursday, October 27th on CBS
Cast: Joel McHale, Stephen Fry, Christopher Minz-Plasse, Christine Ko, Shaun Brown, Susannah Fielding, Chris Williams
The most offensive thing about The Great Indoors, which prides itself on making light of Millennials, is that Stephen Fry is so wasted in a show like this. And yet, Fry is of course utterly charming and makes the best of the time and material he has, something the star Joel McHale attempts to do as well. The problem is that the show and its humor are relics of an increasingly unsuccessful formula for TV comedy.
The Great Indoors is based on one stale joke: McHale’s character Jack Gordon has been pulled from the wilds to run his adventure magazine’s publishing department, which is now solely online and populated by 20-somethings. There’s not much more to the series than that, as Jack dismisses things like dating apps and balks at the over sensitivity of his young co-workers. In typical CBS form, it’s a show about a grumpy middle-aged man who is confounded by the changing world around him (See Also: Man with a Plan).
The bottom line is that if you’re interested in a show that deals with a Gen X-er navigating a workplace run by Millennials in a smart and even emotional way, check out Younger on TV Land instead (you can find that review from Kayti Burt below)— Allison Keene
Rating: ★
Eyewitness
Premiere: Sunday, October 16thon USA
Cast: Gil Bellows, Warren Christie, Julianne Nicholson, James Paxton, Tyler Young, Amanda Brugel, Mercedes Morris, and Rainbow Francks
USA’s latest interwoven crime drama is almost remarkably unremarkable. The series opens with a series of “provocative” acts, ranging from a risqué rendezvous between two young men exploring their sexuality to genuine murder. The characters that are introduced don’t come off as individuals even for a moment, but rather, as simply functioning as elements of a dramatic mechanism, creaking and whirling in repetition. Talented actors like Gil Bellows, Julianne Nicholson, and Warren Christie fit into the central murder investigation, but creator Adi Hasak drains the action of all personality, and of all idiosyncrasies and consuming passions. Each action only seems to push on to keep the multifaceted plot moving on but there’s nothing even remotely intimate or substantive in a way not pointedly aimed toward mustering the bare minimum of familiar action-based drama. Even if one were to exclusively count the procedural thrill of such murder-centric stories, Eyewitness comes up staggeringly short of what it’s going for. — Chris CabinRating: ★
Berlin Station
Premiere: Sunday, October 16th on Epix
Cast: Richard Armitage, Richard Jenkins, Rhys Ifans, Michelle Forbes, Tamlyn Tomita, Leland Orser
Feeling rather reminiscent to Homeland Season 5, Epix’s first drama series (set to run for 10 episodes) follows a CIA agent (Armitage) who is tasked with an undercover operation in Berlin to find out who is leaking intel to the press, Assange (or Snowden) style. Armitage leads a truly great cast, all of whom are nuanced in their approach to characters with both known and unknown agendas, each one layered in their personal and professional lives which often intertwine.
Filmed in Berlin and Spain’s Canary Islands, Berlin Station has the right look and feel of a great spycraft series, but it lacks the drive or urgency of a show like Homeland, or even The Night Manager. It’s very slow, dense, gray, and measured as it unfolds its tale of state secrets and treachery (much of which is too easily telegraphed). But for fans of spy series in general it may serve as a particular kind of catnip. However, for casual viewers, it has trouble catching fire — even though it’s worth tuning in initially for Armitage’s performance alone. — Allison KeeneRating: ★★
Channel Zero: Candle Cove
Premiere: Tuesday, October 11th on Syfy
Cast: Paul Schneider, Fiona Shaw, Natalie Brown, Shaun Benson, Luisa D’Oliveira
In an October surprisingly bereft of scary movies in theaters, SyFy's Channel Zero appears like a terrifying bat in the night, crashing through your subconscious to creep under your skin. The series promises to be an anthology, switching stories each season similarly to American Horror Story's modus operandi. This season revolves around "Candle Cove,” a tale that features a twisted children's puppet show that seeps into the small town that was unfortunate enough to see it. Channel Zero feels like a combination of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Twin Peaks, constantly playing with the reality of the story while offering grotesque visuals (such as a boy made out of teeth) and leaving viewers with a sense of unease, which can seem so difficult for horror to pull off in this day and age. As a huge horror fan myself, I can assure you that Channel Zero creeped me out unlike anything I've seen for some time, even causing me to jump at shadows long after I finished watching.
Channel Zero takes its inspiration from the online phenomenon called "Creepy Pasta,” homemade online horror stories that practitioners submit to put a fright into other readers; if "Candle Cove" is any indication, it's an avenue rife with possibilities for future entries. The series runs like clockwork in that nearly every five minutes, in the episodes we were presented, there is a legitimate unsettling scary moment to whet your whistle for terror. The series is sure to go down as a horror classic, so prepare yourself and enter Candle Cove. You won't regret it. — Evan Valentine
Rating: ★★★★★
Man with a Plan
Premiere: Monday, October 24th on CBS
Cast: Matt LeBlanc, Liza Snyder, Kevin Nealon
Occasionally CBS will surprise with a comedy series that is not a smorgasbord of lazy stereotypes, but Man with a Plan is not that series. The multi-cam comedy full of audience laughter focuses on a Pittsburgh contractor, Adam (LeBlanc) who starts to spend more time with his kids (the horror!) after his wife Andi (Snyder) decides to go back to work. The premise is actually not all that different that FX’s Better Things; Adam is an affable dad who doesn’t want to be the warden, but steps into the role to pitch in and support his family. And yet, the execution of these two series could not be more different. In typical form, Adam is a goofy guy with a good heart and a pretty simple mind, while the women around him (his wife, his daughter’s kindergarten teacher, his sister-in-law) are all shrewd, stern buzzkills. Better Things gives the alternative view of strong women with their own uncertainties and insecurities, as do other great family comedies like Fresh Off the Boat.
But Man with a Plan is very much in the vein of ABC’s Last Man Standing, where Adam — now in the role of stay-at-home-dad — is seemingly alone in a world that for a white, working-class man is rapidly changing. There are opportunities here for something more interesting than what develops, which is laced with needlessly crass jokes (and no real humor), but Man with a Plan clearly has no plans to explore that. — Allison KeeneRating: ★
Falling Water
Premiere: Thursday, October 13th on USA
Cast: Lizzie Brochure, David Ajala, Yun Lee, Zak Orth, Anna Wood
File this one under "The Mr. Robot Effect." Looking to imitate the visual formula of its breakout hit, USA’s Falling Water features a cast of sullen characters being mysterious. But for those of us who are predisposed to like weird mystery series tinged with murder, Falling Water gives viewers enough in its premiere to want to see where it’s going.
The series is based on the premise that the dream world is a real, alternate reality that some are able to access. In this case, each of the main cast members dream one segment of the collective dream, and it seems that they’ll have to find each other (in the real world or the dream world, or both) in order to uncover larger mysteries that are cryptically presented. That’s really about all that can be gleaned from the first hour, which is full of style and slow-burn storytelling, with an ode to Jungian ideas of subconsciousness, Lynchian interpretations of a dream world full of horror, and the sense that there are larger forces at work that are in control of the flow of good and evil.
Falling Water feels ambitious and maybe even a little pretentious, but we’ll see if it ends up earning a full season of viewer attention. If you’re feeling burned by Mr. Robot’s ambling storytelling in the second season and TV series after TV series that plants a central mystery and then dances around it for too long to sustain interest, proceed here with cautious optimism. — Allison Keene Rating: ★★★
Graves
Premiere: Sunday, October 16th on Epix
Cast: Nick Nolte, Sela War, Skylar Astin, Chris Lowell, Helene Yorke
In Epix’s new half-hour original series, Nick Nolte plays former U.S. President Richard Graves, a kind of Regan-esque Republican who has retired to life on his ranch with his dysfunctional family. Tired of being paraded out to events to cut ribbons and gives speeches for things he doesn’t care about, Graves bashes up his presidential library, and takes a life lesson from a tattooed waitress he smokes pot with: to start living an authentic life. This change initially terrifies his wife (Ward), a polished former First Lady with political ambitions of her own, but the series treats Graves’ change of heart as the starting point for a commentary about political ownership and honesty.
That leaves Graves with a strange tone, one that both wants to embrace cynicism and the backroom dealings of Washington as well as one that wants to celebrate the triumphs and warm moments of a staunchly conservative family who starts turning increasingly to the left (or in a more generous interpretation, to modernize the party). The show doesn’t try and hide those politics at all — it also leans heavily on cameos by Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, Rudy Giuliani and more to create an authenticity to its world — but it’s still a kind of liberal fantasy (what if an iconic Republic president later publicly backtracked on his policies of immigration, preemptive wars, cutting disease research, and more?) that could prove to be polarizing.
Graves is more optimistic than Veep and far more low-key than Scandal, and its aided in its ambitions by a fantastic cast. Nolte goes back and forth from childlike delights to an embittered growl in a way that feels both truthful and endearing, while Ward is a charming but steely presence at his side. Astin, who plays Graves’ put-upon new assistant, is a great comedic foil, but in its first few episodes the series feels a little too boilerplate in its characters and plotting to feel like essential viewing. With a trim 10 episode season, though, it may be worth seeing what kind of legacy Graves — the show and the man — decides to leave, both as a comedy and as one of Epix’s first attempts at original scripted programming. — Allison KeeneRating: ★★★
Goliath
Premiere: Friday, October 14th on Amazon
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Maria Bello, William Hurt, Olivia Thirlby, Nina Arianda, Molly Parker, Tania Raymonde, Sarah Wynter, Britain Dalton, and Damon Gupton
If modern television was weighed solely on the strength of its cast, Goliath would stride out in front like some benevolent, mighty behemoth. Few character actors have been as reliable as Billy Bob Thornton, even in the most paltry of efforts, and pairing his drunk hero with a scarred, nefarious William Hurt and the great Nina Arianda already gives this legal drama a boost in respectability. Maria Bello, Olivia Thirlby, Sarah Wynter, and House of Cards standout Molly Parker also fill out a supporting cast of lost Angelenos who find themselves swept up in a major criminal case involving an explosion at sea and a corrupt corporation.
It’s great to see all this talent making the most of the meager material that David E. Kelley and his creative team have given them, but it’s equally frustrating to watch them kept on the leash by a mediocre, by-the-numbers narrative. Thornton’s McBride is a familiar archetype – the drunk genius as master lawyer – and the series makes little effort to expand the characters beyond your initial impressions. McBride is only rude and offensive up to a point, never going into the realm of the truly transgressive. The caricatures are pleasing and occasionally a nice zinger rears its head under the mountains of mundane, repetitive, and expositional talk. There’s no attempt to see these characters outside of their connection to a Grisham-esque legal thriller that comes off as so basic as to be copied from some kind of template. Even great casts have their limits, and in the case of Goliath, they give this shaggy drama just enough electricity to keep interest without offering a genuine reason to care about what’s going on episode to episode. — Chris CabinRating: ★★
Arrow Season 5
Premiere: Wednesday, October 5th on The CW
Cast: Stephen Amell, Emily Bett Rickards, Willa Holland, David Ramsey, Paul Blackthorne
The main takeaway from the premiere episode of Arrow’s fifth season is that the show is really trying hard to rectify the wrongs of the past. The result isn’t perfect, but it’s a strong start. The premiere, directed by the show’s stunt coordinator James Bamford, is violent and full of great sequences that occasionally even slow down enough to get a real sense of the action (instead of it being a cartoonish blur of fists and bullets). It is also, finally, giving Oliver some cool arrow-tech to play with, allowing him to seem supernatural without actually having to be so.
Also, in the wake of losing Laurel (Cassidy) Oliver (Amell) is no longer hesitant to take a life if he feels it’s justified. But with only Felicity (Rickards) and Curtis (Kellum) on his side after Diggle (Ramsey) has gone overseas and Thea (Holland) is interested only in helping Oliver with politics, the show is setting up a challenge for Oliver to train new recruits, something he’s deeply hesitant about.
The premiere’s greatest strength, though, is how it doesn’t burn through plot. Rather, it sets up its theme of legacy, as well as Oliver’s problem of being a political figure and a shadow operative. How does he reconcile those two disparate things? (Does he ever sleep?) And what are the consequences of these actions? Season 5 also manages to do something positive with its flashbacks, if you can believe it, with a wig for Oliver that doesn’t look like it has its own dark powers. A strong start to what feels like it will be a much more grounded season. — Allison KeeneRating: ★★★★
Divorce
Premiere: Sunday, October 9th on HBO
Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Molly Shannon, Talia Balsam, Sterling Jerins, Charlie Kilgore, Tracy Letts
In Divorce, two self-absorbed New Yorkers (Parker and Church) decide their relationship is over and so they want to — you guessed it! — get a divorce. That long and drawn-out process is chronicled in HBO’s new half-hour series, which is not really a comedy, but has an acid wit to it that (in the capable hands of Parker and Church) has its moments of charm.
It’s a fine line that characters can walk in a dark comedy series between being unlikeable but still watchable (see: Veep) and too unlikable to bear (see: Girls, at times). Divorce is stacked with a great cast, including some fantastic secret weapons in Letts, Shannon, and Balsam, but the show — which is peppered with ample smarts and low-key humor — lacks the heart of creator Sharon Horgan’s other current series, the excellent Catastrophe, which draws on similar relationship themes.
Like that series, Divorce can be raw, funny, and uncomfortable, but whereas Catastrophe has a warmth to it, Divorce ultimately feels hollow. Still, there’s enough of Horgan’s signature humor there to make Divorce worth wading into, even if ultimately you might want to settle on something else. — Allison Keene
Rating: ★★
Frequency
Premiere: Wednesday, October 5th on The CW
Cast: Peyton List, Riley Smith, Mekhi Phifer
Loosely based on the 2000 film of the same name, Frequency follows the story of a young NYPD detective, Raimy (List, a CW regular) who is suddenly able to connect through time with her deceased father, Frank (Smith) via his old ham radio. Through it, she’s able to warn him of his impending death in 1996, which he then narrowly avoids, but which also alters the present for Raimy in terrible ways.
For CW fans, the storylines will be very reminiscent to the way The Flash concluded its second season; for TV fans in general, it might be causing some time travel series fatigue. But don’t write it off just yet. Where Frequency succeeds and a series like Timeless fails is its scope. Timeless (and Legends of Tomorrow) use huge cultural touchstones and world events to show off their timey-wimey adventures, whereas Frequency is a much more contained and intimate story of one family’s journey through time. (That also helps with logic problems and time travel paradox issues). Further, it sets up a procedural aspect where Raimy helps Frank try and stop a serial killer who is still at large because of the timeline changes. (Plus, there are some rad moments of 90s nostalgia in Frank’s timeline).
Frequency feels a little darker and a little more grown-up than some CW fair, but it also has a clearer and more promising premise than most as they start out. List is earnest in her role, and manages to make the stranger aspects of the show’s time travel and inter-dimensional plot points feel grounded. — Allison KeeneRating: ★★★
Legends of Tomorrow Season 2
Premiere: Thursday, October 13th on The CW
Cast: Caity Lotz, Brandon Routh, Arthur Darvill, Dominic Purcell, Victor Garber, Franz Drameh
Like the Legends themselves, Legends of Tomorrow’s premiere is looking to reset its own timeline into what it was always meant to be — a fun, crazy, operatic journey through space and time with a team of super-powered rogues. Season 1 was dragged down by a weak villain and forced romances, but Season 2 seems ready to abandon those conceits and settle in to some whiz-bang comic moments, the very that made its initial premiere so entertaining.
The best thing about Legends of Tomorrow is the team itself and their snarky, witty interactions and one-liners. When the show forgets to let them have fun, it’s not fun to watch. The whole point of bringing together these secondary characters from The Flash and Arrow for their own show was to give them the opportunity for each to be more than a background character with a 3-episode arc. Now, the show has doubled-down on that premise by also expanding its villains into an entire Legion (of Doom), cobbled together from Flash and Arrow bad guys. The result, as the Time Lord stand-ins and the Time Bandits wrestle through history (rarely the future, because the costuming is easier if they stick to medieval or mid-20th century Western touchstones), feels much freer to be zany rather than serious this time around. We are thankful.
Season 2 also introduces a new character through a well-established one (if you haven’t read about the cameo I won’t spoil it), who happens to be a historian (Nick Zano) — you know, someone who can actually assist the Legends on the planning side of their quests rather than just running in, laser guns blazing (because as we know, Rip Hunter has always been a terrible leader). Though the show immediately jumps into battling Nazis, everyone’s favorite time-traveling starting point, it’s also glib about the choice. For those who gave up on Legends after its disappointing first season, take heart that the story might finally be getting the justice it deserves. — Allison Keene Rating: ★★★
No Tomorrow
Premiere: Tuesday, October 4th on The CW
Cast: Tori Anderson, Joshua Sasse, Amy Pietz, Sarayu Blue
Instead of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, No Tomorrow gives us a Manic Pixie Dream Boy in “Xavier with an X” (Sasse), who inspires an awkward and cautious young woman, Evie (Anderson), to seize the day. Xavier believes the world is going to be destroyed by an asteroid in 8 months, and he has the notebooks of scribbled equations and conspiracy theories to prove it. While that sends off alarm bells for Evie, Xavier is also totally hot, so, exceptions can and will be made.
No Tomorrow feels like a great premise for a movie about facing your fears, the arc of which its pilot essentially follows in condensed form. Where it goes from here is less certain. Still, Anderson and Sasse are exceptionally charming together, and the premiere has a fast-paced and quippy style that helps mitigate some of the grating nature of Xavier’s hippie / hipster-esque, no-responsibility fantasy living. By the end of the first hour, Evie has set up her own rules about how their commitment to carpe diem will work in a practical way that does suggest a path forward for the cute and fun series, one that will allow it to keep its silliness without going totally off the rails. — Allison KeeneRating: ★★★