Coming This Fall

Illustration by Edwin Fotheringham

I’ve been in the television business for eleven years, long enough for people to start calling me “seasoned.” Seasoned means a cross between “old,” “disagreeable,” and “only wears slacks.” TV, like professional sports, is a young man’s game, and after eleven years you’re just the guy in the dugout talking about the old days and spitting into a tin can. That last part is the only part I actually do.

Each fall, the trade papers publish loglines of the upcoming TV pilots. As a seasoned pro, I can see certain tropes getting recycled. Not just familiar characters (“boozy mother-in-law,” “hyper-articulate child of dumb-dumbs,” “incomprehensible foreigner”) but also basic premises. Here are some of the kinds of shows the networks seem to be clamoring for lately.

Boy-Man Must Face the Adult World

Carter can’t keep a job. His girlfriend left him because he smoked too much pot. His dog ran away because he never took it outside. He lives in filth. He high-fives his African-American roommate while they play Xbox. He sometimes wears his pants inside out. This is the story of how he became the Attorney General of the United States.

The Staunch Oval Office Dame

Our heroine is a tough, well-educated woman. She is the first female President, surrounded by gross, sexist men. She is the very best person at her job. She is so moral that she would send her own husband to the electric chair if he were found guilty of shoplifting. But she harbors a humiliating dark secret: she’s dyslexic. And, in the world of this show, that could get her impeached.

Dad! Mom!

You know that thirty-eight-year-old guy in your office who falls to pieces when his seventy-year-old parents get divorced? Then Dad moves in and has to learn about Internet dating? And Son reverts to behaving like he did when he was ten? No? Well, you’re the only one, because there are usually five pilots on this subject at any given time being developed by every network.

The Abandoned-Spinster Club

A confident workaholic named Marcia or Alex comes home to find her husband cheating on her with his secretary. The discovery always occurs in the middle of the afternoon, and the adultery is always happening in her own bed, in view of photographs of her kids. The rest of the series explores her journey to a new life as a sex-positive fortysomething. She gets a really fun assistant who’s an expert on all the new, slutty dating protocols. Also, everyone on this show spends a lot of time drinking wine while sprawled on couches. And they’re always wearing jeans and are barefoot, sitting with one foot tucked under them.

Hot Serial Killer Who’s Kind of Literary

He leaves sonnets pinned to the corpses. The murdered prostitutes all have the first names of Jane Austen heroines. The kindly police commissioner’s name is Chuck Dickens. The whole thing takes place in a tough housing project in Newark, called Stratford-up-by-Avon. A melancholy English actor plays the lead in this mystery-drama, and he uses his accent no matter what country it takes place in. This is everyone’s mom’s favorite show.

Neurotic Sensitive Guy is Also Super-Unhappy

A half-hour cable comedy show about a wealthy L.A. or N.Y.C. man who makes his living doing something creative, and is miserable despite having suffered no traumas and having no immediate health problems. If he has kids, they are invoked only as impediments to his sex life. The pilot always involves a child’s birthday party with a bouncy castle, or a clown who breaks character when he’s not around the kids. Deemed brilliant and hilarious, this show usually has no jokes.

Remake of Gritty Israeli Show About Terrorism / Infidelity / Mental Illness

This well-produced and depressing show will be the one you know you should be watching but just can’t make yourself do it. Best-case scenario: you invest time watching the show, you mention it at a cocktail party, and some guy tells you how much better the original Israeli version was. Ditto for British comedies about the workplace.

Talkative Chubster Seeks Husband

A sexually unapologetic fashionista tries to find love in the big city. Wait, that sounds like the premise of “The Mindy Project.” Not many people know this, but “The Mindy Project” is actually based on a famous Venezuelan show called “Puta Gordita,” or “The Chubby Slut.” ♦