Upfronts 2014: Fox

Fox also went today, and if NBC putting dramas before 10pm on Thursdays threw you, you may want to prepare for the new Fox Sunday.

What's Cancelled? Nothing surprising. Dads finally got the hook, as did mid-season comedies Enlisted and Surviving Jack. Almost Human got dropped a few weeks ago, everything else was known before that. And American Dad is moving to TBS.

Starting this fall

Monday - Sleepy Hollow returns (still kind of astounded that this caught on, but that's the risk you take when you snark on TV shows based on a PR blurb and nothing else), with the new show Gotham as its lead in. Gotham tells the story of the future police commissioner James Gordon, and his experiences fighting crime and corruption in a pre-Batman Gotham City. Hard to see this one failing, unless it pisses off the Batman fanboys in some way.

Tuesday - New Girl and The Mindy Project return, with new lead in Utopia, which takes 15 people and puts them in some isolated location to form their own society, and you can watch along both on the show and 24/7 online. I don't think I can quantify how disinterested I am in this show.

Wednesday - Hell's Kitchen leads into Red Band Society, about a group of kids who become friends while staying in the same pediatric ward. The narrator is in a coma. This can't be as depressing as I'm making it sound, can it? We should at least be happy Fox didn't pair this with Master Chef Junior.

Thursday - Bones returns for its 84th season, followed by Gracepoint, an American version of the British crime series Broadchurch. Kudos to Fox for getting David Tennant to star, but why not just seek out/Netflix the already excellent original series?

Friday - Master Chef Junior leads into more Utopia.

Saturday - sports

Sunday - Animation no longer dominates, as live action programming returns to Sunday night for the first time in forever. Brooklyn Nine-Nine moves in between The Simpsons and Family Guy, which is followed by Mulaney, a show about a stand-up comic who is trying to get his career going while also writing for an aging comedy legend played by Martin Short. Meh.

And then in midseason

We know American Idol will be back, as will The Following and Glee, which for the first (and last) time will start late.  Several new show are also available:

Backstrom - Rainn Wilson stars as a darkly comic detective who returns to Portland's major crimes division after being transferred as punishment for his ways. I'd be less optimistic about something that reads like House for cops if it weren't for Wilson and the possibility of channeling that odd Dwight Schrute energy in a new direction.

Bordertown - the latest attempt to examine Anglo-Hispanic relations in a comedic setting. This one takes place in a town near the US-Mexico border, which I suppose is better than the "there goes the neighborhood" vibe of some past shows. Still not that interested.

Empire - this drama set against the backdrop of a music label and the jockeying by the sons of its founder has a lot of big names attached - Lee Daniels, Timbaland, Terrence Howard, among others - could be the most promising of the bunch.

Heiroglyph - set in ancient Egypt, a convicted thief is plucked from his cell to find out who stole an important scroll - but to do so he has to navigate all of the palace intrigue, etc.  If nothing else the setting is original.

The Last Man on Earth - Will Forte is, literally, the last man on Earth. Watch him die of food poisoning in episode 4 when he eats some bad canned corn!

Whispering Pines- an FBI agent (Matt Dillon) is looking for a missing FBI agent (Carla Gugino) and after a car accident ("accident"?) wins up in the Whispering Pines hospital - from which he may never get out. A ton of big names (Melissa Leo, Juliette Lewis, Terrence Howard again, among others), and there's a lot of promise here. It also looks like a limited 10 episode run, which will keep things from getting too drawn out.

Weird Loners - four romantically challenged strangers wind up living in the same building and get involved in each others' lives. Sounds a little New Girlish to me, with less adorkability.

Outlook

Questionable. Not a fan of most of the new fall shows, but there's enough there between returning shows and some of the mid-season shows for Fox to not backslide. I think.