5 TV Shows to Fall for

BY: Zak Wojnar

Summer is almost over, and you know what that means: Fall TV season is starting up! While the television landscape has changed, with new shows being launched all year round, that September-October sweet spot is still a special time for tube addicts. Let’s take a look at five hotly-anticipated new shows, across traditional television and streaming giant Netflix, which will have our attention when they launch before the end of the year.

Law & Order: True Crime – The Menendez Murders

The franchise has had its ups and downs, but Law & Order has a legacy which dates back 27 years. At its height, the L&O brand had multiple shows airing simultaneously, from the Dragnet-styled dry procedural of the original, to the emotionally-charged Special Victims Unit, and the Sherlock Holmes-esque adventures of Vincent D’Onofrio in Criminal Intent.

Today, only the first spin-off, Special Victims Unit, remains on the air, but NBC is looking to give the franchise a shot in the arm with Law & Order: True Crime. Taking inspiration from fellow “true crime” anthology series like FX’s American Crime Story, this revival of the Law & Order brand is based on the Menendez case, in which the two twenty-something brothers murdered their parents.

The show stars The Sopranos’s Edie Falco as Defense Attorney Leslie Abramson, and it’s clear that she’s already gunning for Emmy recognition. Should the show prove successful, it’s a sure bet that further seasons of Law & Order: True Crime are bound to follow.

Law & Order: True Crime – The Menendez Murders debuts September 26 on NBC.

Dynasty

Back in 1981, Dynasty was created to steal viewers from CBS’s iconic Dallas series, and both shows enjoyed long and prosperous lives. In 2012, Dallas was revived by the TNT network, where it enjoyed three fantastic seasons full of nods to the original series and fun new characters for J.R. to manipulate.

Now, nearly 30 years after it first went off the air, a reboot of Dynasty is being made for the CW network. Unlike Dallas, which was a sequel to the original series (and starred Larry Hagman as his legendary alter ego, J.R. Ewing), the new Dynasty is a straight-up reboot, jettisoning the original storyline and cast in favor of new versions of the Carrington family, including Elizabeth Gilles (Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll) as Fallon and Grant Show (Melrose Place) as patriarch Blake.

Dynasty premieres October 11 on The CW.

The Punisher

While the multiplex is exploding with the larger-than-life adventures of The Guardians of the Galaxy and New York City’s friendly-neighborhood Spider-Man, the Netflix corner of the interconnected Marvel Cinematic Universe shows off a darker, more violent side of the city – the rotten, worm-ridden core of the Big Apple.

While Jessica Jones and Luke Cage had their fair share of violent moments and family-unfriendly villains, Frank Castle, AKA The Punisher, is the most unhinged of them all. After making an explosive debut in season 2 of Daredevil, Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead) won rave reviews for his portrayal of the shell-shocked veteran and trigger-happy vigilante, and a spin-off series was quickly green-lit. Punisher‘s solo show looks to be taking heavy advantage of the works of Garth Ennis, in which the character is uncompromisingly brutal in his methods, ruthless in his rage, and dangerous in his charisma. Frank Castle spends all night, every night, looking for criminals to murder in cold blood. Just don’t call it justice; it’s punishment.

The Punisher debuts in 2017, sometime after the August 18 premiere of fellow Marvel Netflix series, The Defenders (in which The Punisher may or may not make a guest appearance). Presumably, Marvel will release a trailer as soon as The Defenders launches, so the clip above is from one of Punisher‘s scene-stealing appearances in Daredevil Season 2.

Ten Days in the Valley

Kyra Sedgwick is one of our all-time favorites thanks to her role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on TNT’s seminal procedural cop drama, The Closer. We’re still hoping she’ll make a scene-stealing appearance on the Mary McDonnell-led spinoff, Major Crimes. Until then, however, we can watch her on Ten Days in the Valley, coming this fall to ABC.

Sedgwick stars as Jane Sadler, a television producer of a violent cop show and single mom whose daughter suddenly disappears from her home, causing her day job and her personal life to collide in unexpected and terrifying ways. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (OZ)co-stars as the detective, John Bird, in charge of the case. Based on the trailer, the show looks to be a spellbinding mystery with more twists and turns than you can shake a missing child at!

Ten Days in the Valley premieres October 1 on ABC.

American Vandal

After the nail-biting tension of Ten Days in the Valley, the cathartic film noir violence of The Punisher, the soap opera antics of Dynasty, and the heavy, dialogue-based drama of Law & Order: True Crime, only one question remains:

“Who drew the dicks?”

American Vandal uses this question to poke fun at the “exploitative crime documentary” genre popularized by recent hits like The Jinx, Making a Murderer, and Serial (remember Serial?) The show, told in the style of a “true crime” doc, examines the hilarious (and fictional) case of Dylan Maxwell, who is accused of vandalizing 27 cars with phallic graffiti, and the student documentarian who sets out to uncover the truth behind the mystery. It looks like an irreverent spoof which sets out to deflate the self-serious nature

American Vandal goes live on Netflix on September 15.