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 October 16 on ABC.
The Cast: John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert, Lecy Goranson, Michael Fishman
The Premise: You've seen Garfield Minus Garfield; now see Roseanne minus Roseanne.
The Outlook: Unexpectedly revived after over 20 years off the air, Roseanne wasn't just the most-viewed "new" show of the 2017-18 season; it was the highest-rated show, period. Then, with one tweet, Roseanne Barr forced ABC to cancel plans for another season just two months after the renewal was announced. But with a major hole to fill in its fall lineup, the network ordered this "spinoff"—which features the same cast, characters, set, and crew as Roseanne, but without Barr in any capacity—without a single script or any concept of what the show would be.
Even now, ABC still doesn't exactly know what it has on its hands (filming only just began a few weeks ago), and hasn't released any details about the new show—in fact, it is actively promoting they mystery as a selling point—though star Goodman has suggested that Barr's character will be killed off. How will viewers react to the loss of the original show's titular star? It seems a foregone conclusion that ratings will be lower for the new series, since viewers who were drawn to Barr's comedy and/or political leanings could tune out, and we can't imagine a show pulling in new viewers in what amounts to its 11th season. But starting from such a high level, The Conners could lose a lot of Roseanne's viewers and still be a modest success.
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