The folks at TV Barn have written up a summary of the fall’s upcoming tv season. For some time now, critics have lamented the passing of drama on television (in lieu of reality shows) but it never really hit me until I saw “Wife Swap” listed among the Best Shows. Yikes.
The description for Complete Savages looked promising at first — “The season’s most above-average new comedy comes from one of TV’s funniest couples, veteran ‘Simpsons’ producers Mike and Julie Scully.” But, I then realized that it's airing on ABC and — not that it’s impossible to have a good sitcom on ABC — but I can’t even recall the last show of any kind that I watched regularly on ABC.
Another show which initially intrigued me was Quintuplets (Fox). It was listed in the Best category and the inclusion of Andy Richter (of Late Night with Conan O’Brien fame) was a good sign. But, a quick perusal of the show’s website dashed all hope.
In particular, I loaded up the link for “The Quintuplets Take America By Storm” video (which I would have linked to if it wasn’t Flashified). I was expecting a fluff piece, to be sure, but it was worse than I could have imagined: the video describes the shows mall tour (yes, mall tour) where the cast goes to malls to promote the show to potential viewers (which apparently consists mostly of screeching teenage girls).
When even the “Best” shows looking as mediocre they do, you can imagine what the rest of the list (“The Ok” and ”The Worst”) resembles. This just doesn’t seem to be a terribly strong fall season. Maybe it’s time to start that Greencine subscription (at least that way I can rent DVDs of some genuinely good shows).
Having horrible shows on the networks is a conspiracy (by Comcast et.al.) to push more people into (paying for) cable… IMHO…
Critical buzz is pointing towards “Lost” (ABC, premiering Wednesday at 7pm Central) as the best new show of the season.
If you aren’t watching Arrested Development, you should be. New season starts in November.