New Genre TV for Autumn 2016

Deja Vu All Over Again

♦ Here are the new broadcast television shows from the networks in 2016-17. Obviously, there will be cancellations and mid-season pickups to come, but your overwhelming impression will be of familiarity – so many remakes, so many…

ABC

Drama

Conviction: Hayley Atwell, late of Agent Carter who is the daughter of a former U.S. president, is blackmailed into heading up LA’s new Conviction Integrity Unit. She and her team investigate cases where people may have been wrongly convicted.

Designated Survivor: Kiefer Sutherland becomes President after  a “catastrophe” in Washington. Catastrophe unspecified, but I’m betting on Trump.

Notorious: More Law/Media nonsense – very Shondaland sounding. Possibly it is. J. August Richards is in it and Daniel Sunjata and Piper Perabo star.

Time After Time: From the 1979 movie about H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper through time. Kevin Williamson (The Following, The Vampire Diaries) takes responsibility. And the remake horror begins…

CBS

Drama

MacGyver: And the remakes continue. At least Patti and Selma will be happy. Lucas Till as MacGyver starts a group dedicated to preventing disasters – with paperclips and inner tubes.

Training Day: Poor Bill Paxton gets involved in revisiting the 2001 movie. CBS obviously really working hard this season.

Doubt: This Katherine Heigl vehicle reputedly won over Drew, a contemporary update of Nancy Drew starring Sarah Shahi (Person of Interest) as a 30+ Nancy, now an NYPD detective. Which sounds like CBS (i.e., a remake). Instead, we have “A successful defence lawyer at a boutique firm becomes romantically involved with a client who may or may not be guilty of a brutal crime.” Drew may be the remake CBS should have made then…

The CW

Drama

Frequency: More remake jollity revisiting the 2000 movie following a young detective (Peyton List) who discovers she can communicate with her now-dead father (Riley Smith) 20 years in the past via ham radio. They solve mysteries together (I’m guessing). IMDB: “Only by working together they can prevent a murder. The use of a female only increases the danger and suspense.” Which is simultaneously stupid and poor grammar.

Riverdale: A“subversive” take on Archie comics characters, set in the present day and exploring the “darkness and weirdness” under the surface of the town where they live. I’m guessing Twin Peaks + nostalgia. To be fair The CW seem to have the touch for teen-oriented weirdness, so this could be good. Or not. I’d stump up for an Afterlife with Archie show though.

No Tomorrow: Not actually sure this is a genre show, but the premise sounds like it could be genre drama or a comedy. The  buttoned-up Evie (Tori Anderson), a risk-averse quality-control assessor, falls for thrill seeker Xavier (Josh Sasse), only to find out he lives his life that way because he believes the apocalypse is coming. I guess the drama – comedy – genre doubts will be resolved if the apocalypse arrives.

Supergirl: Migrating to The CW after its first season on CBS, where it was probably too modern and cutting edge.

FOX

Drama

24: Legacy: The remakeasaurus lumbers on with this Jack Bauer-free series featuring the same real-time format and a new set of CTU agents played by Corey Hawkins, Jimmy Smits and Miranda Otto, and a cast of millions.

APB: “A tech billionaire purchases a troubled police precinct in the wake of a loved one’s murder, but can this eccentric and enigmatic figure’s cutting edge approach fix the broken ways of these blue-blooded veterans?” For some reason, I find this synopsis hilarious. It sounds awful. Justin Kirk stars.

The Exorcist: Arghhhh! Geena Davis lends her career to this as the mother of a possessed girl. “A modern-day reworking of the classic horror film,” it says here – to be fair it doesn’t say which classic horror film though. I jest. The world is divided into those who think The Exorcist is the scariest movie of all time, and those of us who hoot and laugh at the thought of it. Alfonso Herrera and Ben Daniels are the priestly Starsky & Hutch working the case.

Lethal Weapon: No one needs this TV version of the movie franchise. Really, no one. Clayne Crawford as Riggs and Damon Wayans Sr. as Murtaugh. Recall when Mel Gibson was a loved actor, not an anti-Semitic loon?

Making History: “History and pop culture collide as three friends find a way to travel through time.” Big Bang Theory + Time Travel is my guess. Three friends (Leighton Meester, Adam Pally, Yassir Lester) from different centuries have time-travel adventures and stress.

Son of Zorn: “Animation and live action collide when a cartoon Barbarian dad leaves his war-torn village to re-connect with his moody, non-animated teenage son in suburbia.”  Jason Sudeikis voices said Barbarian, who moves to Orange County, with Cheryl Hines as his ex, and Johnny Pemberton as their son.

NBC

Drama

Chicago Justice: The fourth prong (and I do mean prong) of NBC’s Chicago franchise – beating Law and Order for both lack of resemblance to reality and quantity of tedium –  focuses on prosecutors in the State’s Attorney’s office. Thrill an hour (I’m guessing) action with Philip Winchester, Carl Weathers, Nazneen Contractor, Joelle Carter and Ryan-James Hatanaka.

Emerald City: Wizard of Oz yadda yadda, 20-year-old Dorothy (Adria Ajorna) swept into Oz yadda yadda, a lot more than Munchkins and wicked witches await her yadda yadda. NBC, where your childhood memories go to die. That’s the new corporate logo. Goes beneath the peacock.

Midnight, Texas: Charlaine Harris (True Blood) is three novels into the Midnight Texas series set in a small Texas town where there’s supernatural skullduggery a-goin’ on. This could be good, but they’re selling it as “Twin Peaks meets True Blood” which is not a good sign.

Taken: What we all wanted: a prequel to the interminable Liam Neeson movie series. Bryan Mills (Clive Standen of Vikings) stars, as many, many people are taken. Or perhaps not – if it’s a prequel that would imply no-one has been taken – YET! Possibly it’s Neeson’s character sitting around, drining coffee, just waiting…

Timeless: More time-travelling: revisiting the past seems to be a season theme. A professor, a scientist and a soldier team to catch a criminal who wants to destroy America by altering its history. Abigail Spencer, Malcolm Barrett and Matt Lanter star. Man In The High Castle + Time After Time is my guess.

The Good Place: Here simply because of Kristen Bell, who plays a woman who tries to make up for not being a very good person and tries to make up for it by giving the newly-unemployed Ted Danson work after CSI Cyber. Well, that’s my version anyway.

Powerless: DC Comics tale of insurance adjuster (Vanessa Hudgens) handling the claims of  people impacted by superhero damage.

Well, me hearties, a bit of a shower of shit, but somewhere in there may be a glimmer of treasure. Do you want to get your hands dirty looking for it though?