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 30 on CBS.
The Cast: Brandon Micheal Hall, Violett Beane, Suraj Sharma, Javicia Leslie, Joe Morton
The Premise: A lighthearted drama that centers on an outspoken atheist podcaster who receives a friend request on social media from God. Still skeptical, he starts investigating God's friend suggestions, who turn out to be people in need of assistance, conveniently at the rate of about one per week.
The Outlook: Producer Greg Berlanti had been on a winning streak, but earlier this year he had one of his shows (Deception) canceled in its first season for the first time in four years. And this season he will have a record-setting 14 (!) shows on the air, including seven newcomers. They can't all possibly survive, can they?
And if one is going to go, could it be the one with the ridiculous premise (or, at minimum, the worst title)? It probably doesn't help that the biggest name in the cast is Hall, whose previous show (The Mayor) lasted just nine episodes before being pulled. And CBS already tried to launch a religion-adjacent series (Living Biblically) earlier this year, but with no success. That said, the network is giving the new series an extra promotional push by streaming the debut episode a month early (on social media, appropriately enough), and the pilot seems to be making a decent impression, coming across as pleasant if unremarkable.
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