Fall’s New Shows Seem Awfully Familiar (and Awful): New at Reason

Television critic Glenn Garvin is not terribly impressed with what the major networks are tossing out as the new fall season fully launches. They all seem to be reboots (like the new Magnum P.I.) or derivative and predictable (like FBI and New Amsterdam):

Hollywood has always robbed its own graveyards, of course, though rarely with such profligate abandon. The really appalling thing about the 2018 fall season is how stupidly tepid most of it is. Shows about neurotic moms and grumpy dads are not just clichés but clichés old enough to be closing in on Social Security.

Overall, this is the worst lineup of new shows since 2008, when a long strike by the Writers Guild led to a schedule so dismal that when CBS canceled one (The Ex List, in which a woman, on orders of her psychic, systematically re-dates all the guys she’s dumped over the years) after four episodes, it went ahead and made six more because there was nothing to replace it with.

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