The 5 Most Intriguing TV Shows Starting This Fall

The start of the new television season makes everything okay again. All your problems evaporate on contact with it – being stuck at work while a heavenly Sunny D advert plays out outside, having a miserable holiday with your family, being too poor to afford to go on holiday. Nothing is too stubborn that it can’t be wiped away by the promise of glossy new TV shows. All the TV shows you could want! All at once! Give them to me now! Nom nom nom.

Witnessing the fall television season is a little like watching a sinister version of the Hunger Games, with many shows given only a handful of weeks to collect the biggest audience they can and cling to them like pieces of flotsam in a stormy river. Already, dozens of television trailers are vying for your attention. “Please, pick us!” they plead. “Look at the main character! Look at the sexual chemistry! Wasn’t that a funny joke? How about that chase scene?”

Frankly, it’s exhausting. That’s why you need me – your old pal Chris is here with his picks of the most intriguing new shows on the horizon. Get strapped in for everything new in the wacky world of prime time television.

 

StartUp

The initial pitch for this one probably went something like this: hey, Bitcoin’s a thing, let’s do a show about that. Fortunately, StartUp looks like it has more seams to pull on than being a fictionalised version of the digital currency. When a young hacker pitches her phone-to-phone currency to investors, only a young maverick banker shows any interest. The two quickly team up and find start up money – from the leader of an inner city gang.

Naturally, this draws the eye of FBI agent Phil Rask, played by Martin Freeman (oh, yes, did we mention Martin Freeman’s in this?). The cat-and-mouse premise set up in the trailer, along with the idea of a truly unregulated global currency, could give free streaming service Crackle its first home made hit.

Premiere Date: September 6 on Crackle

 

Atlanta

If you’ve been waiting for comedian Community‘s Donald Glover to return to television, your long vigil is over. Atlanta looks like something quite different from Glover’s previous acting fare, however. Set in the titular city, Atlanta follows Glover as the young manager to his rising rap star cousin. The series feels distinctly like a comedy drama, with a tone that Glover has indicated as pivotal to the show.

Exactly where Glover intends to take the show is still largely under wraps, but his stated M.O is to give us an idea of what it is to be black in modern America. It’s a lofty ambition for a half hour comedy, but the thing about Donald Glover is he’s one of the cleverest and most natural comedians of his generation. If the early reviews are any indication, this might be one of 2016’s Zeitgeist setting pieces of pop culture.

Premiere Date: September 6 on FX

 

Better Things

You probably haven’t heard of Pamela Aldon, but you’ve almost certainly seen something she’s been in. In fact, her long and varied career in such shows as Recess, King of the Hill, Californication and Louie might be about to become fuel for her latest series. Better Things follows the same semi-autobiographical formula as Louie by Louis CK (who is co-creator here with Aldon). Aldon plays a former child actor, now single mother of three, balancing her home life with continued acting work in Hollywood.

The premise could come off as either too derivative or too insider-Hollywood, but Aldon’s sharp writing and acerbic delivery should alleviate our worries. Parenthood is a well mined source of comedy for good reason. Done well, as it appears to be here, it’s practically a universal comedic language. Expect a certain sort of television critic to be gushing over this for months.

Premiere Date: September 8 on FX

 

Pitch

The only show on this list set to air on what’s commonly termed ‘network television’, Pitch earns its place on your watchlist with one big idea. The fictional (for the time being) story of the first woman ever to play for a Major League Baseball team has the potential to influence the real world of the sport itself. We say potential since this is on Fox, a network renowned for an itchy trigger finger when it comes to cancelling shows too soon (Firefly, we still miss you).

Ginny Baker, a female baseball pitcher, faces massive media scrutiny and even open hostility from certain players as she joins the MLB. From the trailer we get a sense of spectacle as she walks out on the field to the throw. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of human and family drama going on, with the show placing Ginny’s relationship with her dad at its heart. If it pitches things right, this one could become a major trailblazing crowd pleaser.

Premiere Date: September 22 on Fox

 

Channel Zero

If you’re looking for quality television, Channel Zero isn’t a sure thing just yet. With very little by way of trailers, the real story here is the origins of its first season. See, Channel Zero is an anthology series in the same vein as American Horror Story and season one is based on a very well known Creepypasta called Candle Cove. If the words you just read don’t make any sense to you, I’ll do my best to fix that.

On the old interwebs, Creepypasta has sprung up as a catch-all term to describe weird and creepy stories which circulate online. Candle Cove is one such story, presented as an online message board discussing an old kid’s TV show of the same name. Without spoiling things, it turns out something sinister and unexplained was going on the whole time. The question is, can an internet meme about a fictional children’s television programme succeed as a TV series in its own right?

Premiere Date: September 27 on SyFy