Poll: Which Fall 2016 New TV Shows Will You Check Out?

Now that September is here, the fall TV season is about to ramp up in earnest. Over the next few months, dozens of brand new, never-before-seen television series will vie for your attention. Which upcoming shows have caught your interest? How many of them will you give a try?

I’ve done my best to compile a list of all the new scripted dramas and comedies premiering through the end of the year. It’s possible I may have missed something. If so, vote “Other” and tell me in the Comments.

The list does not contain any returning series (well, technically, one is) or Reality shows.

Which Fall 2016 New TV Shows Interest You?

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I’ll wind up watching a lot of these for at least one episode. Some are more likely to be keepers than others. Of those I’m willing to sample, I’d group them into the following categories:

Shows That Sound Promising

‘Westworld’
‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’
‘Luke Cage’
‘Incorporated’
‘Designated Survivor’
‘The Good Place’
‘Atlanta’

Serious buzz is building for HBO’s Michael Crichton adaptation ‘Westworld’. The network no doubt wants it to be the next ‘Game of Thrones’. The early promos look mysterious and intriguing. I hope it can live up.

I’m a big fan of Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ books but somehow never got around to reading his two ‘Dirk Gently’ novels. This could be my entry point.

I’ve only watched the first season of ‘Daredevil’ on Netflix so far. I really need to catch up with the rest of that show and ‘Jessica Jones’ before I jump into ‘Luke Cage’, but I’m interested.

Shows That I’m Hoping for the Best With

‘The Exorcist’
‘Falling Water’
‘Frequency’
‘Son of Zorn’
‘Timeless’
‘Crisis in Six Scenes’

Even though more than half of its movies are pretty bad, I remain fascinated by the ‘Exorcist’ franchise. The TV show could just be another lame cash-in on a once-popular franchise, but I have to give it a look.

‘Falling Water’ is essentially ‘Inception: The Series’. With luck, the long-form serialized format (I’m assuming it’s serialized and not some ridiculous “Dream Cops” procedural) will let it break free from Christopher Nolan’s monotonous exposition dump. Admittedly, however, the ads don’t look great.

Woody Allen hasn’t had a much success with his last few movies, and he’s never tried his hand at television before. Will Amazon’s ‘Crisis in Six Scenes’ be a daring experiment or a waste of time?

Shows That Will Probably Be Awful but I’ll Watch for One Episode Anyway

‘Lethal Weapon’
‘MacGyver’
‘Van Helsing’

The ads for Fox’s long-belated ‘Lethal Weapon’ spinoff look incredibly terrible. The best I can hope for is that it will be a so-bad-it’s-hilarious guilty pleasure.

The new ‘MacGyver’ reboot looks like a disaster of ‘Scorpion’ proportions.

Show I’ll Have to Watch with My Wife

‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life’

Mrs. Z is a huge ‘Gilmore’ fanatic and has watched the entire seven-season original series at a minimum eight times from start to finish (not an exaggeration). In fact, she recently stumbled across reruns on an obscure cable network called Up and is currently in the middle of another marathon in preparation for the Netflix revival. I wouldn’t say that I’m anywhere nearly that devoted to it, but I’ll admit that it was a pretty good show and I don’t mind watching it.

Of the shows from the list I haven’t mentioned, some of them may wind up on my radar when we get closer to the air dates and I can watch some promos. Right now, I don’t know much about them.

34 comments

  1. Lord Bowler

    I’ll be checking out:

    ‘Luke Cage’ (Netflix, Sept. 30th)
    ‘Aftermath’ (Syfy, Sept. 27th)
    ‘Frequency’ (CW, Oct. 5th)
    ‘Van Helsing’ (Syfy, Sept. 23rd)
    ‘Incorporated’ (Syfy, Nov. 30th)
    ‘Timeless’ (NBC, Oct. 3rd)
    ‘Westworld’ (HBO, Oct. 2nd)

    I may drop these after a few episodes if they don’t hook me. Bull is only interesting because of Michael Wetherly in a non-NCIS show.
    ‘Bull’ (CBS, Sept. 20th)
    ‘Designated Survivor’ (ABC, Sept. 21st)

    These look good based on the promos, but could also get really bad really fast. Kind of like ‘Rush Hour’.
    ‘Lethal Weapon’ (Fox, Sept. 21st)
    ‘MacGyver’ (CBS, Sept. 23rd)

    • Lord Bowler

      I’m still waiting for the ‘Appomattox’ Mini-Series that was supposed to come out this year. And History Channel is doing a series based on Seal Team Six called ‘Six’!

  2. Josh Zyber
    Author

    I’ve added ‘Atlanta’ to the poll. It was on my list when I wrote it (and I mentioned it in the text), but it somehow got skipped over when plugging the list into the poll. Because people have already started voting, I’ll have to add it to the bottom. Sorry about the confusion.

  3. cardpetree

    Westworld is the show I’m most excited about. Seems like they announced that show a loooong time ago and I’ve been pretty stoked about it ever since. I’ll definitely watch Luke Cage. I’ll give The Exorcist and Lethal Weapon a couple of episodes to grab my interests but don’t have high hopes.

    On a slightly different side note. Josh, have you heard anything about a Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks collaboration for a new show on HBO about Warbirds and dogfighting set during WWII? Basically in the same category as Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      The new Spielberg/Hanks WWII miniseries is called Masters of the Air. Filming began a while back but no air date has been scheduled yet. Probably 2017. It’s reportedly the most expensive television series ever made.

  4. Paul Anderson

    Westworld and Luke Cage for sure. Actually going to print this list out because I honestly haven’t heard about most of these and I can use it for reference. Thanks.

  5. “In fact, she recently stumbled across reruns on an obscure cable network called Up and is currently in the middle of another marathon in preparation for the Netflix revival.”

    I would assume a huge fan like her would own the DVD sets for ages 🙂

        • Josh Zyber
          Author

          We have an extra Blu-ray/DVD player, but we don’t keep it in the living room where little hands can pull cords or break it.

          Mrs. Z has Netflix, Amazon, and a few hundred cable channels in that room. She can get by. 🙂

          • William Henley

            Maybe we should just get you a Plex account. 🙂 Rip the entire series, throw it on a NAS, then use your smart TV apps to watch the show.

            Actually, I think the entire series is available on Netflix, in HD.

    • William Henley

      Up isn’t that obscure if you are into shows such as Gilmore Girls, 7th Heaven, Bringing Up Bates, Ties That Bind, and The Holderness Family. However, they are a faith-based network that focuses more on shows than on sermons like other faith-based networks.

      Speaking of Up, I was actually on two episodes of one of their shows a couple of weeks ago. I was expecting to be on one episode, but it was a complete shock that I was on the other one – the one I was expecting to be on, you just see me in the audience, but in the other episode, they actually have me speaking. Total shock, I had the show on and was in the other room grabbing dinner, and all of a sudden I heard myself talking from the other room.

      • Josh Zyber
        Author

        Funny that a faith-based network would pick up a show that’s about a single mom who got pregnant in high school and has numerous storylines with characters having premarital sex.

        Also strange they’d continue to air a religious-themed “family” show after its lead star was outed as (and confessed to being) a child molester.

        • “In response to the allegations he was then fired from “Ted 2,” his scenes on ABC’s “Scandal” were cut, and reruns of “7th Heaven” were removed from TV Guide Network and UP TV’s lineup.” (The Wrap, December 17, 2014)

          After that, UP probably thought, “Well, let’s just rerun the show again!”

          I had never heard of ‘The Holderness Family’ (or the UP network, for that matter), but after a search I did remember seeing their ‘Christmas jammies’ clip. It’s amazing you can parlay an Internet video into a full series.

        • William Henley

          As to your second statement, you are confusing the Duggars with the Bates. Both are Christian families with 19 Kids, and Bringing Up Bates is KIND OF a spinoff, but trying to tie in UpTV and the Bates with TLC and the Duggars is the same as trying to tie you in with Blu-Ray.com and them reviewing discs before studios send out screeners just because a reviewer who used to work for HDD now writes for for them. UPTV is not owned or affiliated with Discovery Communications, and the only thing the two shows have in common is that they are both produced by Figure 8 communications, which pretty much produces every reality TV show in existance.

          Gilmore Girls still works because the show still deals with a family unity, and trying to make things work. Yeah, things are not perfect, and they are not the spit and polish Bible pushers you may be used to, but the show deals with life and trying to deal with and overcome obstacles no matter what cards you are dealt, or how badly you screw stuff up. Even 7th Heaven dealt with premarital sex, interfaith marriages, and one of their stars posing nude before she was 18 while she was still under contract with the show. These are real world issues, and shows how people over come them and try to carry on. As such, these shows are still appropriate for faith based television.

          Being religious or faith based doesn’t mean that everyone must act like Leave It To Beaver, have Ricky and Lucy beds, and watching Davy and Goliath while listening to The Gaithers all the time (Not that there is anything wrong with any of those). It is about overcoming problems and bettering yourself while pulling your strength and your faith in something bigger than yourself.

          • William Henley

            Wow, I completely missed that news story, I just looked it up. Well, as for that one, I’m stumped. I know Up was showing reruns of 7th Heaven way before that news story broke, though. As to why its still running, my only thought was that the network might not have enough original content to fill the space. Looking on the date of the article, the next season is when Up dramatically upped (no pun intended) the amount of original programming. But as to why it is still coming on, your guess is as good as mine.

  6. That High Maintenance show looks like a disaster. Like if Little Miss Sunshine lost the kids and Alan Arkin and dragged on for 10 episodes instead of 90 minutes.

  7. I look forward to Westworld, Dirk Gently and Luke Cage. I’m also hoping Frequency will work for more than a couple of episodes. I’ll also check out a couple of episodes of Lethal Weapon and MacGuyver, but from everything I’ve seen so far, they look horrible.

  8. “Designated Survivor” is the only “must-see” on this list for me. I’m not getting my hopes up about “Westworld”. I’m fearing that one might be a disaster. I’ll watch “Lethal Weapon” just so FOX can ruin my childhood. 😉

    • Timcharger

      Normal childhood memories are of things like:
      E.T., G.I. Joe, Transformers, TMNT, Jurassic Park…

      But for you Shannon, it’s Murtaugh and Riggs?
      🙂
      Rated R, buddy cop film with a suicidal protagonist,
      dealing with drug addiction and prostitution. I
      think your childhood innocence may have been
      ruined by your film selections.

  9. Bryan

    I’ll watch anything with time travel, so I’m really looking forward to “Timeless.” “Luke Cage” will be a must-watch as well, given how well Marvel has done with the other Netflix shows.

  10. William Henley

    These polls are getting harder and harder for me. Tivo has the “Press D to skip commercials” option, so the downside of that is that i see ZERO promos about new shows. The networks need to take out ad space on Hulu and YouTube promoting their new products – shoot, sometimes on Hulu, I may see the same car commercial twice in the same commercial break, and on Youtube, I see the same commercials over and over again. So I honestly have not heard of 99% of these.

    I have seen Dirk Gently (is it just now coming to BBC America? It’s been out a couple of years). I was disappointed – to me, it’s like they just licensed the name, and made another generic crime drama show. I saw nothing of the books that made its way into the show, but it has been about 15 years since I read the books.

    Gilmore Girls sounds interesting, I kinda sorta liked the original series. That is, I caught it when I landed on it, but the show never hooked me enough to watch it every week. I caught about three episodes a season. I figure its a show that, when I find a girl, its something we can watch together.

    Van Hesling and Leather Weapon sound interesting just from the names, but I honestly know nothing about the shows.

    MacGyver, I was never a fan of, until he started leading teams of scientists on offworld expeditions.

    None of the other shows have I even heard of.

      • William Henley

        LOL! I really shouldn’t write early in the morning before I had my coffee! I am sure it’s not the only typo.

        Sorry, I was up late last night studying Hebrew trying to trasliterate words into Hebrew, which came up in some unique words as not all letter sounds carry over, so you go with stuff that sounds similar. Then I had to be at work at 5. Bad combination!

    • Douglas Adams only wrote two Dirk Gently novels, so if you want to make a Dirk Gently series, you pretty much have to create original content inspired by the books.

      This is not the BBC UK-series, though. This is a brand new series created by Netflix and BBC America.

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