Fall 2009 - New Shows

Premieres Sep. 23, 2009 ABC describes Eastwick, based on John Updike's novel and the 1987 movie, as "ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy." Stand aside, Desperate Housewives -- these ladies have magic! In fact, their magic is geared toward getting whatever they want out of the men in their lives, upending their small New England seaside town forever. Eastwick stars Lindsay Price (Lipstick Jungle), Rebecca Romijn (X-Men), and Jamie Ray Newman (Tess from Eureka), along with Ashley Benson (Days of Our Lives), Jon Bernthal (The Class), Veronica Cartwright (who was in the film), Sara Rue (Less than Perfect), Matt Dallas (Kyle XY), and Paul Gross (Due South) as Darryl Van Horne, the mysterious figure who opens the women up to their potentials.

Premieres Sep. 24, 2009 FlashForward asks the question, What would you do if you were given a glimpse of the future? Would you accept your destiny, or try to change it? In this case the whole world is being given a glimpse of their future, forcing everyone to face this choice for themselves and deal with what they've seen coming. FlashForward stars Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love), John Cho (Star Trek), Jack Davenport (the British Coupling), Zachary Knighton, Peyton List, Dominic Monaghan (Lost), Brían F. O'Byrne (Brotherhood), Courtney B. Vance (Law & Order: Criminal Intent), Sonya Walger, and Christine Woods. The creators include David S. Goyer (Batman Begins/The Dark Knight) and Brannon Braga (Star Trek series).

Premieres Nov. 2009 Few shows are more singular than The Prisoner, the 1967 British series in which Patrick McGoohan never quite knew what was going on or why. So it's a risky venture to remake it, but cable channel AMC saw an opportunity to further showcase a knack for innovation and detail suggested by Mad Men. The miniseries was filmed extensively on location in Namibia and South Africa, all as part of a skewed reality that the Prisoner is subjected to by the enigmatic Number 2 (Ian McKellen). What's odd is the casting of Jim Caviezel: The original series succeeded because McGoohan seemed wily enough to outwit his situation, and it's tough to see Caviezel projecting that type of innate resourcefulness. We'll see.

Premieres Oct. 2, 2009 Syfy hopes to make the third series in the franchise seem new and fresh: instead of being planet-based and hopping through stargates to random strange worlds, SGU strands its team on a spaceship built by the Ancients, far from human civilization. While this certainly provides new opportunities for storytelling for the Stargate creative team, fans were worried it sounded a lot like Stargate: Voyager -- and their fears were compounded by casting sheets that called for young, sexy stars. Since then the cast has been anchored by veterans like Robert Carlyle, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Ming-Na, along with the appropriately grizzled Justin Louis; the younger tier includes Brian J. Smith, Alaina Huffman, and Elyse Levesque.

Premieres Sep. 10, 2009 Is it really that shocking that the success of Twilight, which in itself is building a franchise, has led to a CW drama based on that other hot series of books about teen vampire romance? Not really. And true to form, The CW has assembled a beautiful cast to get all angsty about bloodsucking love: Paul Wesley (Fallen) is explicitly described as being an unbearably gorgeous 200-year-old vampire, but he's given stiff competition by the bright-eyed Ian Somerhalder (Lost). They star opposite Nina Dobrev (Degrassi: The Next Generation) as the girl who stirs things up in the vampire world. All the Moonlight fans who couldn't get into the bayou weirdness of True Blood have something to look forward to.