Which of These New Fall TV Shows Will Fail First?
We're going to go out on a limb and predict that not every new television series this season will be a success. While recent years have brought new ratings hits in the form of This Is Us, The Good Doctor, and Young Sheldon, there have also been plenty of failures. At some point in the coming months, one show will be the first to go.
Which newcomer will be the first cancellation victim of the 2018-19 season? In the gallery above, we discuss the outlook for each of the 18 first-year shows headed to the five broadcast networks this fall. Note that this year (unlike in past years) we don't have quotes from critics' first impressions of the new fall pilots, since several networks have issued new guidelines to reviewers prohibiting such early reviews over the summer. (But over the past week several reviewers have started posting their evaluations of all the new fall shows, so we have summarized those where applicable.)
Debuts September 24 on NBC.
The Cast: Melissa Roxburgh, Josh Dallas, Athena Karkanis, J.R. Ramirez, Luna Blaise, Jack Messina, Parveen Kaur
The Premise: A flight from Jamaica to the United States experiences a bit of turbulence but otherwise lands without incident, with the passengers noticing nothing out of the ordinary. There's just one problem: The plane took off in 2013 but lands in 2018, and the passengers had long since been presumed dead by their friends and relatives. (Oh, and they all have ESP now.)
The Outlook: Lost (and, to a lesser extent, The Leftovers) are obvious reference points for this serialized mystery, though it's unclear whether the numerous comparisons will help or hurt Manifest, and even the critically acclaimed Lost ultimately proved how hard it is to come up with a compelling explanation for mysterious events.
While the David Frankel-directed pilot would seem to have a strong initial hook, it's impossible to predict how the story will develop, and shows in this genre (dramas with a mysterious sci-fi twist) haven't performed well in recent seasons. (See, e.g., The Crossing, Alcatraz, The Event, Resurrection, etc.) Critics don't seem to love the pilot (Lost benefited from initial acclaim), and series creator Jeff Rake (The Tomorrow People, The Mysteries of Laura) hasn't exactly had a hit yet. But with 191 passengers on the plane, think of the storytelling possibilities!
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