56 Time September 30, 2019
NANCY DREW
The CW’s dark,
contemporary
take on
the classic
children’s books
could be the
next Riverdale.The top 3
shows to
watch right
now
Network TV isn’t
exactly a fount of great
programming. But
here are this season’s
best bets:TimeOff Opener
TELEVISION
What’s left to watch
on network TV?
By Judy Berman
S
omeThing unusual happened aT This
summer’s Television Critics Association press
tour, an event where networks hype their upcom-
ing slates to the media. During Fox’s presenta-
tion, journalists voiced concerns about Almost Family, a
new drama that recalls several real cases of fertility fraud.
The show opens with the revelation that a doctor ( Timothy
Hutton) has inseminated dozens of women with his own
sperm, without their knowledge. Critics who had seen
the show detected an incongruously breezy tone for a
story of what several described as a medical rape. Seem-
ingly caught off guard, creators Jason Katims and Annie
Weisman promised to address Hutton’s character. But they
also insisted his actions were beside the point; the salient
theme, they said, was family.
I don’t think the show’s creators intended to make light
of rape. Yet at a time when such story lines invite close
scrutiny—and for good reason—Fox’s apparent failure to
foresee a backlash comes off as bafflingly clueless. It all felt
emblematic of a more general sense, in recent years, that
broadcast networks have grown out of touch.
Network prime-time ratings have been plummeting for
quite a while. In the 2000s, cable channels started pouring
money into the kind of original scripted comedies and dra-
mas that broadcast networks largely abandoned when the
reality- TV craze hit. More recently, juggernauts like Game
of Thrones and The Walking Dead have beaten out dozens of
network series as two of the most-watched scripted shows
among viewers ages 18 to 49; in that demographic last year,
Thrones outperformed even football.
Though streaming viewership is harder to measure,
there’s plenty of data to support the conclusion that
streaming is younger viewers’ medium of choice. In Janu-
ary, Ad Age reported that ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox had
seen a 27% drop since 2016 in “demographically desir-
able” adults 18 to 49. Lots of millennials, who now domi-
nate that demographic, wait to binge full seasons of prime-
time fare on Netflix—which, not coincidentally, has been
poaching star network creators like Ryan Murphy, Shonda
Rhimes and Kenya Barris. So, as TV grows more creative
and diverse in the aggregate, the networks that built the
medium look more like anachronisms every year.
It’s hard to ImagIne a crop of new scripted series less
inspired than the class of 2019. Which is not to say that every
show—yes, I screened all 16—is bad. I’ll be watching Nancy
Drew, an extremely CW take on the girl-detective books.
Unmoored in the wake of her mom’s death, this present-day
Nancy (Kennedy McMann, whose messy charm reminds
me of Greta Gerwig) has quit crime solving and skipped col-
lege to sling seafood in her Maine hometown. Of course, it
doesn’t take long for a murder to get her
back to sleuthing. Like Veronica Mars
meets Riverdale, with many intriguing
mini-mysteries, the show is pure fun.
Bless the Harts, Fox’s latest animated
family sitcom, also has potential. Set in
small-town North Carolina and centered
on the white working-class Hart clan, it’s
sure to invite King of the Hill comparisons.
But creator Emily Spivey (of Fox’s
wonderfully odd The Last Man on Earth)
and some stellar voice actors reinvigorate
the concept with fresh cultural references,
fantastical touches and a female-led cast
of characters: Jenny (Kristen Wiig), a
waitress who chats with Jesus (Kumail
Nanjiani); her artsy alternateen daughter
Violet (Jillian Bell); shady matriarch
Betty (Maya Rudolph); and Jenny’s
muscle-bound boyfriend Wayne (Ike
Barinholtz), a supportive surrogate dad.
A few other new series deserve the
benefit of the doubt, despite uneven
pilots , based on the personnel involved:
ABC’s mixed-ish is a sweet ’80s-set pre-
quel to Barris’ black-ish that finds a
young Rainbow Johnson (Arica Himmel)
acclimating to the suburbs after grow-
ing up on a commune. NBC’s Sunnyside
stars co-creator Kal Penn as a disgraced
Queens politician whose encounter with
a group of immigrants offers a chance at
redemption. Thrilling action scenes and
the tantalizing potential of Cobie Smul-
ders as a PI bode well for ABC’s Stump-
town. The Unicorn, a CBS sitcom in which
Walton Goggins’ widower status makes
him a hot commodity on dating apps,
rounds out its cast with comedy standbys