Sunday, June 9, 2013

The 2013 fall TV season: initial impressions

After reading up on the fall 2013 TV season and checking out many of the trailers, here are some of my impressions:
  • ABC’s “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” looks like a surefire hit. A spin-off of the hit superhero movie “The Avengers,” the show was developed by Joss Whedon of “Firefly” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame. 
  • There are going to be way too many vampire shows on TV this fall. We already have “The Vampire Diaries,” “True Blood” and “Being Human.” This fall, we’ll also get “The Originals,” a spin-off of “The Vampire Diaries”; and “Dracula” from the producers of “Downton Abbey.” 
  • The Robin Williams sitcom, “The Crazy Ones,” on CBS looks wretched. So it’ll probably be a big hit. 
  • We’ll see no shortage of shows that would work better as feature films. These include CBS political conspiracy drama “Hostages,” NBC’s action thriller “The Blacklist,” and ABC’s racy girl comedy “Super Fun Night.” 
  • Literature in the public domain is the source of many shows this fall. New shows based on off-copyright works include “Sleepy Hollow,” a modern-day retelling of the 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving; “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,” based on the 1865 novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll; and “Dracula,” based on the 1897 Gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker. They will join returning shows “Beauty and the Beast,” based on the traditional fairy tale first published in 1740; “Grimm,” inspired by “Grimms’ Fairy Tales”; “Once Upon a Time,” based on assorted fairy tale characters; and “Elementary,” based on the Sherlock Holmes detective stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 
  • The new fall shows I’m most interested in watching are “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “The Tomorrow People,” which looks like “The X-Men” mixed with “Heroes” and cast with CW pretty people. 
  • A few midseason replacement series look intriguing as well. They are Fox’s “Almost Human,” the CW’s “The 100,” NBC’s “Crossbones” and “Believe.”

Photo: Promotional art for ABC’s “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” (top) and Fox’s “Almost Human.”


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