Hump day on Fall TV Premiere week brings us both the best new show of the season and the worst; one that makes some sense and another that doesn’t. Plus a whole lot of returning shows. We’ve been looking at the new season all week, day by day, and here’s what to expect from your Wednesdays.
NEW SHOWS
“Black-ish” (ABC, 9:30 p.m., starts today). The smartest new network comedy is the one that questions expectations in a sitcom that follows an African-American family – just about the only one now on broadcast TV. That is’s from former “Daily Show” “senior black correspondent” Larry Wilmore should be no surprise. But it makes it with its cast that includes Anthony Anderson (finally in a TV project that will stick), Tracee Ellis Ross and, in his most relaxed TV appearance since being Cowboy Curtis on “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” Laurence Fishburne. At last, a good capper to “Modern Family.”
“The Mysteries of Laura” (NBC, 8 p.m., started Sept. 17). Debra Messing is in what seems to be a mess of a series, on one hand another forgettable TV procedural in which a willowy woman is the toughest cop, and on the other a mom who can’t control her bratty kids. Oil and water mixes more easily than this crime story and “comedy.” And the kids are beyond bratty to be more like junior sociopaths.
“Stalker” (CBS, 10 p.m., Oct. 1). Network TV, and CBS in particular, has thrived on violence and threats to women in their crime show. This boils it all down to icky threats on women all the time from a supposed Stalker Unit of a police division that is about as creepy as the people they are depicting — or who are making this awful stuff. At some point, the makers imagined they were making “Dexter,” but this shows most vividly how wrong network TV gets it when it tries to imitate cable.
“Red Band Society” (Fox, 9 p.m., started Sept. 17). A series about a hospital floor where teens have serious illnesses by definition preys on the emotions, even as it brings together the usual teen movie stereotypes from mean girl, to cool guy to shy girl. Olivia Spencer is the best thing in it as a sympathetic nurse, but she’s hardly in it enough to be worth regularly watching.
RETURNING SHOWS
“Survivor” (CBS, 8 p.m., returns today), “The Middle” (ABC, 8 p.m., today), “Hell’s Kitchen” (Fox, 8 p.m., started Sept. 10), “Arrow” (The CW, 8 p.m., Oct. 8), “The Goldbergs” (ABC, 8:30 p.m., today), “Criminal Minds” (CBS, 9 p.m., Oct. 1), “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (NBC, 9 p.m.), “Modern Family” (ABC, 9 p.m., today), “The 100” (The CW, 9 p.m., Oct. 22), “Nashville” (ABC, 10 p.m.), “Chicago P.D.” (NBC, 10 p.m., today), “American Horror Story: Freak Show” (FX, 10 p.m., Oct. 8).