This could turn into a strange fall season: There are shows to love, for sure, but so far none of them are on NBC, CBS or FOX. Huh! —Tom Gliatto
1. Dirty Sexy Money (ABC)
Premieres: Thursday, Sept. 26 at 10 p.m.
A campy primetime soap opera about a filthy rich Manhattan family and their new adviser (Peter Krause). He’s a decent, civic-minded lawyer, and one hopes he’ll be quickly overwhelmed by their glamour, their egos and their blatant malice. Otherwise, frankly, he’ll just seem like a killjoy and maybe even a jerk. It’s a big cast, and a good one, that includes Donald Sutherland and Jill Clayburgh.
2. Gossip Girl (CW)
Premieres: Wednesday, Sept. 19 at 9 p.m.
Something like The OC on the Upper East Side, only with Blake Lively instead of Mischa Barton gazing out on the world with that beautifully styled air of distracted tristesse. You want to bring her an antidepressant and maybe a new lipgloss—anything to make her happy. She’s a one-time high-society wild girl who vanished from Manhattan and now returns, just as mysteriously, claiming she was off at boarding school. The Upper East Side kids, by the way, are even cattier and more savage than the Darlings of Dirty Sexy Money.
3. Pushing Daisies (ABC)
Premieres: Wednesday, Oct. 3 at 8 p.m.
Think Amelie as directed by Tim Burton: This is a show that gathers up romance, death and mystery in one eccentric embrace. Lee Pace plays a piemaker with the miraculous ability to revive the dead with a mere touch of his finger. Unfortunately, when he touches them again, they die again, and stay that way. This leads him into an odd side-career of solving murders—dead men do tell tales—and it also presents him with a potentially heartbreaking challenges.
4. Samantha Who? (ABC)
Premieres: Monday, Oct. 15 at 9:30 p.m.
Christina Applegate stars in possibly the fall’s most promising new sitcom. She’s a Manhattan woman, an accident victim who wakes up from a coma with amnesia. Gradually, as she gets reacquainted with her environment, it dawns on her that she was mean and self-centered, surrounded by mean and self-centered people. How’s she gonna fix her life? A question, by the way, we should all ask ourselves every single minute! Only not when watching television.
5. Reaper (CW)
Premieres: Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 9 p.m.
The first episode of this supernatural action-comedy was directed by moviemaker Kevin Smith, which may explain why it feels like Ghostbusters reworked with a little Dogma: Shaggy, smark-alecky and breezy in a what-the-hell kind of way. Literally, what the hell. Bret Harrison plays a dude with a nothing job at a home-improvement store who now goes to work capturing souls that’ve escaped from Satan’s domain. Ray Wise (Twin Peaks) plays the Prince of Darkness with cold, snarky pleasure.
So which new shows will you be tuning into this fall—tell us!
Photo: ANDREW MACPHERSON/ABC
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