It's that time of year again! What new shows are you most interested in? What returning shows are you most excited to see more of?

This year, I've been surprised at how quickly shows are returning, as most of them are starting this month. My first returning show aired last Thursday (Supernatural, my favorite fall show by far), which almost took me by surprise. This week, four of my other shows return and a new one airs. At first I was excited by how quickly they were all coming back, but then I realized: the sooner they return, the longer the "break" in the middle of the season will be. For whatever reason, the networks seem to believe that nobody watches TV from around mid-December to February. I don't remember having this long mid-season break in the past, do you?

Anyway, my more immediate problem is this: I only have two tuners

A slightly smaller problem is finding time on Thursday night to watch everything that's on. Here's what I watch that's on just tonight:

Fringe
The Office
Parks and Recreation
Community [pretty funny]
Bones
Supernatural
30 Rock [next month]

My problem is that at 9pm there's Fringe, Supernatural, and The Office. What is it about Thursday? My TV schedule for Tuesday and Wednesday is almost empty, but now they've moved everything I watch to Thursday. Argh.


So what new shows are you guys interested in? I'm going to tune in for the following:

Community
Modern Family
V
Flash Forward (which I've heard bad things about)
White Collar

Last Chance To See -- really this is a returning show, but it's returning after 20 years and switched from radio to TV. Also, Stephen Fry isn't Douglas Adams, but then at least he's Stephen Fry.

Peter

I like Stephen Fry, at least as Jeeves, In fact I've got his signed photo in my downstairs loo - and Kingdom was quite pleasant and watchable.
But I can't do with "celebrities" giving us travelogues, natural history and documentaries on various subjects: presented with false passion. Why can't we have experts?

In general I think you're quite right -- except not in the case of Last Chance To See, as Fry's co-presenter (who also co-presented the original with Adams) is an expert, a zoologist.

Peter

Because the producers want more people than just you and Peter to watch?

Is he/she articulate, can't he/she present it?



You are quite right, but, in the past, we had presenters that were both expert and popular, I'm sure that there must still be some around - or up and coming.

Not exactly new TV, but Boom (an offshoot of Cartoon Network) has been reairing Samurai Jack episodes in order. I discovered Samurai Jack, on a lark, channel surfing in a hotel room somewhere. Rewatching it is just spectacular. They're able do so much with so little dialog.

Another recent discovery, also from hotel channel surfing, is Burn Notice, which airs on the USA Network, and which recently completed season 3 and should be back for season 4 at some unknown point. It's something of a spy show, with a hint of MacGuyver mixed in. That, and one of the main characters is played by Bruce Campbell so they occasionally make oblique references to Evil Dead and the like. I'm hooked.

I really wish there were decent SF to watch. I fear Heroes will be another great world of suck, and Fast Forward will get stuck in neutral.

WARNING: the Wikipedia page for Burn Notice has tons of spoilers in the first few paragraphs. Beware.

Burn Notice is one of my top 5 favorite shows on TV, I think. I freaking love that show. Didn't catch any of the Evil Dead references, though.

Samurai Jack was one of the best cartoon series ever made. It's a crying shame that it was cut down in its prime. That show deserved at least one more season. There are very few TV shows that I truly consider as art, but that show is one of them. Not only is the animation spectacular, but as you say it's amazing what they do with the dialog. There are several episodes with almost no dialog at all! I would have bought the DVDs for Jack, but I heard the quality on them is terrible.

Played a Robot Chicken episode yesterday offa the Tivo to see a trailer for their new series "Titan Maxium" which looks like it could be either extremely hilarious or fall completely flat. Not sure. Programmed a season pass for it, we'll see...

I'm not what you'd call a Bruce Campbell aficionado or anything. It just seems like there are random snips of dialog that seem intended to play to the Campbell fanboys. Maybe I'm reading too much into it sometimes.

Samurai Jack... at one point, they were thinking about doing a feature-length movie, but according to Tartakovsky that project is dead. He later worked on Star Wars: Clone Wars, but that's a different bag altogether.

It's hard to imagine anybody having the freedom to pull off Samurai Jack in the first place, much less to best it with something even more compelling.

We just watched Sons of Anarchy, Season 1 on DVD. It was excellent. Season 2 looks to be even better.

I think the theme for this year's schedule is "CSI" - CBS should in fact rename the network, because pretty much the only thing they have on the air other than CSI is "How I Met Your Mother" and the new sitcom that follows it. I mean, did NCIS need a spin-off? Really? Though I'm not knocking NCIS, I just don't think a network needs 5 or more shows with such a similar premise.

Now we have ABC trying their hand at their own CSI with the Forgotten. Just started watching a recorded episode from earlier tonight. 23 minutes in and I'm utterly unimpressed. Pretentious, stiff acting that sounds like the characters are delivering a speech and lighting that's just too creative and moody to be believable. Those same faults can be applied to all three CSI shows as well, but they still seem to pull it off. Too many derivative elements of Without a Trace, Cold Case and one or two more shows. Totally forgettable, bad script from top to bottom makes even the poor dialogue seem like Shakespeare.

Looks like it's going to be Dexter and Californication on top again this season. I caught yesterday's Heros season premiere. Wow, talk about stretched and contrived. Unless they have some amazing magic trick to pull, this year looks like it'll be its last. I can't even imagine it going the full season off that premiere.

I'm still watching Fringe on network. I have fears they're going to get more "X-FIles" though (wasn't terribly impressed by the premiere). They even mentioned the FBI's X files within the frame of a senate hearing in the season premiere. Fingers crossed it doesn't go to crap.

Maybe NBC knew what it was doing when it put Leno on five nights per week.

I'm pretty sure they even nodded to the X-Files in the first 5 minutes of the premiere. Feel free to correct me, anyone, but wasn't the TV in the man's apartment playing the X-Files on it?

Personally, I don't mind the X-Files elements of the show one bit. You seem to be forgetting what made the X-Files fail in the end, which was a general lack of cohesiveness and a clear "make it up as you go" philosophy. It's obvious that Chris Carter had no idea where the show would end up. The only reason it ran so long is because the show was so good in the beginning, seemed like it had direction, and was so different from anything on TV at the time.

Heroes, on the other hand, clearly has the same problem of aimlessness. I'm starting to think that the showrunners merely thought that they could throw a lot of cool comic book stuff on the screen, and if they didn't plan a definite story arc, they could keep the show meandering into repeated moneymaking seasons. Obviously that's not the case, and the ratings show it.

Ironically, though, I watched the premiere of Heroes. Yeah, I know, I said I'd quit the show, but after hearing all this stuff about how they were going to change everything I checked it out. Honestly? I was surprised that they were capable of making two cohesive hours of TV in a row. I'm sure that by episode two they'll directly conflict with something they did in episode one, but for now I'm cautiously optimistic. Maybe it's because I like the actor with the earth/tattoo powers. I liked him a lot on Carnivale (never watched Prison Break).

I can't remember, does anyone else here watch Castle? Clearly I started watching it because of Nathan Fillion (who I've liked in every single thing I've seen him in). The show is pretty generic overall, but he really gives it that extra something over the other dull police procedurals.

Too bad you didn't watch Prison Break, if only to notice that Robert Knepper was pretty much playing the character the same way he did his T-Bag. The Irish accent started out bad, but then it completely disappeared and was replaced by a southern drawl.

In every episode they pretty much step on some baseline they set up in a previous episode.

And what you pointed out about the X-Files is what I'm worried about happening to Fringe. That they'll lose direction. I suppose it could have just been the way they played out the first episode.

I started watching Castle for the exact same reason. I can't stand all the other crime dramas that are on, but the bit of comedic twist combined with Fillion's ability to deadpan lines so well keeps me coming back for more each week. I though the season premiere had some great LOL moments.

Don't dismiss the hotness of Stana Katic.

Indeed.

By the way, Heroes's product placement for Legal Sea Foods was one of the oddest I've ever seen.

Haven't seen the Heroes premiere yet. I can't wait. Oh, actually I'm pretty sure I can. Also queued up are the season premieres of Dollhouse and Community. I watched FastForward or whatever it's called. I'm not sure they're going to pull it off. They're following the standard "something really odd is going on and we're going to do a gradual reveal with our characters trying to get to the truth" plot arc. Next thing you know, it's midichlorians.

The season première of Dollhouse was kind of dull, lets hope the rest of the season gets better.

Just saw Dollhouse and Heroes. Dollhouse is still on the same tact as last season, setting up Echo as a harbinger of something or other big to come. You can already predict the end of the season, when her present employer self-destructs and she busts out and does her own thing. (The guest role for another Battlestar Galactica actor was nice, though.)

Heroes, sans spoilers, was really strange. They set up a whole lot of different threads, which means they're going to have an awfully difficult time keeping them all straight. As with prior seasons, though, it's difficult to have a lot of sympathy for any of the characters, nor to really buy into half of the premises behind why the characters are doing what they're doing.

Gaaah. I wish TV fiction was sufficiently self-consistent that you didn't have to put your sense of reason on hiatus to enjoy it. (Or, conversely, I wish TV fiction was sufficiently strange and twisted that I could just let go and enjoy the ride, as with the Pythons, among others.)

Hey now, I think you're just watching the wrong shows. Your post makes it sound like you're drawing that conclusion from Heroes alone, which is easily the worst show I watch. There's plenty of great, immersive TV shows out there.

I was pleased with the Dollhouse premiere. It was a little slow, but they brought up a lot of great philosophical questions, which is what I really dig about the show.

For far I'm liking the new ABC show Flashforward. It's sure to be canceled.