The highs are high (Scream Queens!) and the lows are low (Dr. Ken!). Here is the fall’s best and worst television — and what’s in the middle too — in handy chronological order.
Give It a Chance: The Bastard Executioner
FX, Tuesdays at 10 p.m. (In progress)
A writer like Kurt Sutter is going to tell you what his show is in its first hour. And The Bastard Executioner, which had its two-hour premiere this week, does indeed do that. The show, set in 14th-century Wales during the reign of Edward I, drops the audience into a complicated, fully formed world. Its hero(ish) is Wilkin Brattle (played by Lee Jones, an Australian theater actor), the executioner of the show's title — but at first, he is a man with a pregnant wife and a violent past who is determined to live a stable life. When that proves to be impossible, The Bastard Executioner unleashes violence that makes Game of Thrones look like an episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood on PBS Kids. Seriously: I couldn't believe what I was watching, and if you saw the premiere, you know what I mean. But that's what Sutter — the Sons of Anarchy creator who has hundreds of hours of television on his résumé — does, and his ardent fans will expect as much. You're either here for this, or you're not. In the same vein, Sutter's wife, Katey Sagal, who played Gemma, the Lady Macbeth of Sons of Anarchy, co-stars in The Bastard Executioner as Annora, the witch who tells Brattle that he has a secret destiny. (Annora is always trailed by a character called "The Dark Mute," who is masked and yes, mute, and is played by Sutter. These scenes are delightfully WTF, actually: Your move, Melisandre!) The only other familiar face is Stephen Moyer (True Blood) as Milus Corbett, a scheming, power-hungry, and gay adviser to the baron who holds his bloody thumb over the countryside rebels. But did I mention The Bastard Executioner's shocking violence? I can't overemphasize it. Sons of Anarchy was polarizing; this show takes the pole and stabs you with it from the start.
FX
Give It a Chance: Life in Pieces
CBS, Mondays at 8:30 p.m. (Starting Sept. 21; this show will move to Thursdays after CBS's football broadcasts end in November)
As TV critic Willa Paskin pointed out in Slate, times are tough for the network sitcom, and all the broadcasters are flailing about for solutions. Fox's strategy during this fallow period is to go broad with tested stars. But CBS — which is broad already with its hugely popular The Big Bang Theory, but really with all of its returning comedies — has gone a different route this season with Life in Pieces and Angel From Hell. Both are single-camera shows (which have never worked on CBS), and they also are tinged with a yearning for meaning. Life in Pieces is the more successful of the two. Its pilot almost deconstructs Modern Family's first episode from 2009 when it's revealed at the end that these disparate characters are all in the same family. Life in Pieces comprises four separate short stories and, in the pilot at least, each adult sibling (Thomas Sadoski, Colin Hanks, and Betsy Brandt) is featured separately, then the whole family comes together in the last story. There are very good actors here (Dianne Wiest and James Brolin play the parents), and there are some funny and even lovely moments in the pilot. Assuming it’s representative of the show’s weekly format, it would be a nice thing for the world if it didn't die immediately.
CBS
Give It a Chance: Minority Report
Fox, Mondays at 9 p.m. (Starting Sept. 21)
Very little thrills in the pilot of Minority Report, but it’s pretty spectacular looking, and I hope the show can gel because I love the Philip K. Dick short story and the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie that serve as its source material. The series is set in 2065, some years after the movie's ending: When we last saw the precogs — the three freakish psychics who could foretell the future, including crimes — they had been left in a bucolic, isolated spot to try to live their lives in peace. And the idea of "PreCrime," trying to prevent criminal activity that had not yet happened, was deemed too sinister and was put to a stop. Fox's Minority Report shows the aftermath of all of that: Crime is back in society, there is a continuous ripple effect from the PreCrime program, and two of the three precogs have gotten bored by country life and have come to D.C. to look for action. Stark Sands (from Broadway's American Idiot and Kinky Boots) is the precog Dash, who has been unsuccessfully trying to stop murders himself until he joins forces with Lara (Meagan Good), a skilled detective. In theory, this setup is rich. In practice, I felt like I was watching boxes being checked during the pilot, and I'm worried that Good isn't a charismatic lead. There's enough here, though, that I will keep watching until this show declares itself as irredeemably boring or superior, twisty sci-fi. (Also, I like making jokes about "precogs" and "precogging" things, so I want this show to work so I can start doing that again.)
Fox
Give It a Chance: Blindspot
NBC, Mondays at 10 p.m. (Starting Sept. 21)
Jaimie Alexander plays an amnesiac Jane Doe who’s found in a duffel bag in Times Square. When she emerges — naked, and tattooed on nearly every inch of her body — she is soon put at the center of a number of (absurd) FBI operations. They're led by Agent Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton, from Animal Kingdom and Strike Back), whose name is ominously tattooed on her back, though she's a stranger to him. As Jane Doe's skills are revealed during moments of stress, we find out (and she finds out) that she speaks an obscure Chinese dialect, kicks ass in martial arts, and can thwart terrorism through the clues inked on her body. This is all to say that this show makes no sense! None! However: Alexander is good, and the pilot's action was top-notch. Stapleton as a square-jawed G-man feels generic, but that's not a bad thing in something so…well, generic. (I would tell him to pick an American accent that works for him, but I'm too freaked out still by his crazed Animal Kingdom character, so I will simply whisper it here.) I hope that Blindspot leans into its most promising aspects — Jane as a confused yet capable person, as well as the show's impressive, cinematic pacing and set pieces — and stays away from its obvious pitfalls. If it takes the second path, it will soon turn into the mirror image of The Blacklist, except that at its center will be a woman whose body knows every secret instead of a man whose mind does.
NBC
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