Fall TV Preview » Drama

Ricochet

jpfeiffer — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:03:12 +0000

What’s It All About? Part of the TNT Mystery Movie Night series, this drama is about two homicide detectives who find their careers – and lives – on the line when they get caught up in a case of murder and betrayal in high-society Savannah. Based on the bestselling book by Sandra Brown.

Scott Turow’s Innocent

jpfeiffer — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:40:53 +0000

What’s It All About? TNT launches its new Mystery Movie Night series, a showcase of contemporary procedural dramas, with this film that is a sequel to Scott Turow’s bestseller Presumed Innocent. Bill Pullman stars as Rusty Sabich, a judge charged with the murder of his wife, a situation that comes 20 years after he was cleared in the death of his mistress. During this latest trial, a secret affair from Rusty’s recent past threatens to hamper his defense and fracture his relationship with his son.

Covert Affairs

jpfeiffer — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:43:52 +0000

What To Expect: New episodes of Season 2 pick up again starting in November. The summer’s mid-season finale was left with Annie finally forced to confess the truth of her job to her sister, Danielle, forever changing the balance of their relationship and threatening Annie’s hope of living a “pseudo-normal” personal life outside the agency. With Jai’s position in the DPD in flux, we’re left to question where his true loyalties lie. As the season returns, Annie continues to transform into a seasoned operative with more high-octane adventures spanning the globe. Guest stars include Oded Fehr, Gregory Itzin, Devin Kelly and Santiago Cabrera.

Terra Nova

jpfeiffer — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:58:33 +0000

What’s It All About? The long-delayed sci-fi epic finally makes its debut this fall, and audiences will get to see if the wait has been worth it. The Steven Spielberg-produced spectacular begins in a future where Earth has become virtually uninhabitable (think WALL-E, before all the people left on spaceships), and humanity’s only hope lies in finding a new home. Instead of looking to the stars, however, the answer is found in the past — 85 million years in the past, to a time when civilization didn’t exist and dinosaurs still roamed the earth. The special effects are as eye-popping as promised, and the drama manages to hold up, too. This is really good news, because the charm of watching dinosaurs chomping on people — enjoyable as it is — only gets you so far.

Paranormal Witness

jpfeiffer — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 18:52:05 +0000

What’s It All About? This drama-documentary series brings to life the stories of people who have lived through paranormal experiences. Using a mixture of intimate firsthand testimony, actual home video and realistic drama, the series enters a world turned upside down by extraordinary and terrifying events.

American Horror Story

sharrison — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:44:19 +0000

What’s It All About? Executive producer Ryan Murphy was feeling a little more Nip/Tuck than Glee this time out, having created what he described to The Hollywood Reporter as a “psycho sexual thriller,” in which McDermott and Britton play a Boston couple relocating to Los Angeles in an attempt to rebuild their relationship following a miscarriage and an affair. Problem is, the house they choose is, like, way haunted. Murphy is working with his Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk on this series, which promises to be one of the more intriguing takes on the horror genre in quite some time.

Boss

kpaloucek — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:38:58 +0000

What’s It All About? As mayor of Chicago, Tom Kane (Grammer) knows a lot about how to get to the top in the political arena, and is always aware of how easily one can fall. In a tough town with a history of political strife and adversaries who would assail his hold, secrets are a dangerous thing to have. Kane has one that could be his undoing, but how far will he go to retain the power he has worked so desperately — if not unctuously — to achieve?

Chicago has been at the heart of a lot of political drama over the last year or so, with Rahm Emanuel assuming the reins from his long-entrenched predecessor, Mayor Daley, and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s conviction on corruption charges, but this series’ star insists that audiences shouldn’t expect ripped-from-the-headlines action. “I would say it’s ripped from the pages of Shakespeare, honestly, more than anything else,” Grammer says. “And if that doesn’t sound sexy to people, well, they’ve just got to see it.”

The show’s creator, Farhad Safinia (Apocalypto), agrees, distancing Boss from other policy-based dramas like NBC’s long-running series The West Wing. “This is really about understanding the interactions of players within the political realm, and how twisted and dark that can get in order to achieve and maintain power,” he says. “It’s like taking the veneer of policy in public discussion and ripping the Band-Aid off it to really look at what’s underneath — to look at, sort of, the bloody pus of politics that exists underneath.”

The Secret Circle

kpaloucek — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:37:39 +0000

What’s It All About? For those hotblooded teens for whom vampires have grown long in the fang, here comes another supernatural series based on a series of books by Vampire Diaries author L.J. Smith. This time she’s focused on witches in a story that plays like The Craft meets Footloose. When Cassie Blake’s (Robertson) mother dies in a fire, she’s sent to live with her grandmother in a small Washington town, where she encounters a witchy group of teens who want her to join their ranks. This fits perfectly into the kind of show The CW is trying to make itself known for, and as long as audience fatigue for the supernatural doesn’t set in, it will probably gain a respectable following.

Charlie’s Angels

sharrison — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:31:16 +0000

What’s It All About? About as creative as this turgid update of the fun, sexy 1970s series gets is transforming the Bosley role from a cuddly teddy bear into a muscle-bound hunk (Rodriguez). Otherwise, for a show about a trio of babes who work as secret operatives for an anonymous mastermind, this version just can’t muster much in the way of fun. Maybe the supposedly cheeky humor would work better if it weren’t trying to coexist with a plot (in the pilot) that revolves around the trafficking of young girls as sex slaves. The show is silly, and is supposed to be, but only seems to know it half the time.

Homeland

sharrison — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:14:29 +0000

What’s It All About? When American POW Nicholas Brody (Lewis), captured in Iraq and held for years in Afghanistan, is located and returned to a hero’s welcome, CIA officer Carrie Anderson (Danes) becomes convinced that all is not as it seems, and that Brody may have switched sides, acting as a covert al-Qaida operative intent on carrying out a plot on U.S. soil. V’s Morena Baccarin costars as Brody’s wife, and Patinkin plays Carrie’s boss, who, for whatever reason, refuses to concede the possibility that she might be right. Someone is lying. And a lot of suffering and grief hangs in the balance. No screeners were available when we went to press, but the compelling teaser footage and the relevant premise alone make this a must-see.