TV Preview: Quick takes on what’s new for the fall TV season

Fall comes. Not such a big deal as it was back before there were 27 TV seasons in a year and a thousand new shows starting every week, but there are still something like a million series premiering on 6 billion channels between now and the end of the year. I think that’s right.

As is usual in the hall of mirrors called Hollywood, themes emerge. There are three new series (on three networks) made from DC comics; there are two whose protagonists are women highly placed in Washington; there are a couple of things about zombies; two comics-of-color-fronted sitcoms about culture and class. Shots are taken at social media in comedy (“Selfie”) and drama (“Stalker”) alike. NBC is fielding textbook rom-coms, perhaps to apologize to me for canceling “Bent” back in 2012; ABC is striking a blow for diversity; CBS is sticking with three-camera comedies and dark procedurals. And so on.

TV preview 2014: Full coverage

But let’s get particular, in chronological order. Here are some of the notable shows.

Already in progress

Utopia

Fox, Sundays

Yearlong bucolic flip on “Big Brother” in which participants are meant to cooperate with rather than destroy one another. Online, the cameras run around the clock, Gladys Kravitz.

Edge of 18

Al Jazeera

High school seniors, from here, there, up, down, in and out, document their lives and times. Alex Gibney (“The Armstrong Lie”) knits it all together.

Love Prison

A&E, Mondays

Online couples who have never met in person are left together on an island to decide whether that was such a good idea.

Z Nation

Syfy, Fridays

The Zombie-Apocalypse apocalypse continues with this knockoff of “The Walking Dead” from the network that brought you “Sharknado.” The usual bloody road trip, with Tom Everett Scott helping transport a possible cure cross-country. “God, I hate moral dilemmas,” someone says, setting a tone.

The Chair

Starz, Saturdays

Two first-time feature directors get the same script, a little money and Pittsburgh.

Henry Danger

Nickelodeon, Saturdays

Middle school kid works part time as the sidekick to a superhero.

Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn

Nickelodeon, Saturdays

Lizzy Greene is the only girl in a field of quadruplets. That is a funny word, quadruplets.

Sunday

The Roosevelts

PBS, Sundays

Ken Burns Ken-Burnses the Barrymores of American politics.

Wednesday

The Mysteries of Laura

NBC, Wednesdays

Soup-slurping supersleuth Debra Messing — or as someone calls her, “a middle-aged policewoman, just like Rizzoli” — largely gets the better of this half-comic cop-romp. Her children urinate on each other in public.

Red Band Society

Fox , Wednesdays

Teen drama translated from high school to hospital offers a Breakfast Club’s worth of types, now with disorders and diseases. Olivia Spencer is the nurse who knows what’s what; Griffin Dunne a rich hypochondriac who likes to party. Sample question: “How do you tell the girl who needs a heart that she never really had one to begin with?”

Thursday

Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories

Adult Swim, Thursdays

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim disturb your rest in the guise of guiding you to it.

Sept. 21

Madam Secretary

CBS, Sundays

Tea Leoni stays minty fresh in this tale of an ex-CIA agent who suddenly finds herself secretary of State, as tendrils of conspiracy knock at the window of your wish fulfillment. With hot-again Tim Daly and Keith Carradine, and Bebe Neuwirth, who never wasn’t.

Mr. Pickles

Adult Swim, Sundays

Secretly satanic bad-seed Lassie wreaks havoc on the less than picturesque inhabitants of a picturesque town. It’s a cartoon!

Sept. 22

Gotham

Fox, Mondays

Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is a clean cop in a dirty town in this Batman prequel set in a present-past where cellphones exist, but they’re still the flip kind. Soulfully weary Donal Logue is Gordon’s semi-dirty partner; future archvillains are easy to recognize. Is this canon? Who knows anymore.

Scorpion

CBS, Mondays

Elyes Gabel is the leader of a pack of socially inept genius weirdos recruited by G-man Robert Patrick to save the dumber, more outgoing rest of us. Yet no matter how smart you are, sometimes you have to drive a sports car real fast to get the job done.

Forever

ABC, Mondays

New York medical examiner Ioan Gruffudd can’t die, which is not the picnic you might think. He and police detective Alana de la Garza will solve other mysteries meanwhile. Judd Hirsch is here too, in all his Judd Hirschiness.

Celebrity Name Game

Syndicated, Mondays

Craig Ferguson hosts a game show, hopefully to subvert it.

Sept. 23

NCIS: New Orleans

CBS, Tuesdays

The procedural franchise expands into the land of the 30% film production tax credit. Scott Bakula and C.C.H. Pounder bring the beignets.

Sept. 24

Sports Jeopardy!

Crackle, Wednesdays

It’s “Jeopardy!” With sports.

black-ish

ABC, Wednesdays

Anthony Anderson’s sitcom about an executive-class black family in a white world. Field hockey-playing son Andre Jr. (Marcus Scribner) wants to be called not “Dre,” but “Andy.” Son: “I think it says I’m edgy but approachable.” Father: “I think it says I hate my father and I play field hockey.”

Sept. 25

How to Get Away With Murder

ABC, Thursdays

Shonda Rhimes fills out her ABC dance card with this companion to “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal.” Viola Davis, the scariest law prof since John Houseman gave up “The Paper Chase,” is also a knives-out defense attorney; her best students are also killers, which does not count as extra credit. Or does it?

Sept. 26

Transparent

Amazon, Fridays

Jeffrey Tambor is an L.A. patriarch who wants to live as a woman in this Amazon-produced series from Jill Soloway. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the title was a pun. With Judith Light, Gaby Hoffman, Jay Duplass, Amy Landecker.

Sept. 30

Selfie

ABC, Tuesdays

Karen Gillan is Eliza, a social-media flibbertigibbet in need of rebranding and physical-world friends; John Cho is Henry, determined to make her a lady, by George — changing himself in the bargain, I shouldn’t wonder — in an eventually charming riff on Shaw’s riff on the myth of Pygmalion.

Manhattan Love Story

ABC, Tuesdays

Courtship comedy with the characters’ thoughts audible to the audience suggests that telepathy is nothing you want to have. Jake McDorman and Analeigh Tipton are the potential couple who, from their end, can’t hear you screaming, “Run!”

Makers

PBS, Tuesdays

Comprising six documentary films on “Women in …” (comedy, Hollywood, space, war, business, politics). Because some of you still need to be told.

Happyland

MTV, Tuesdays

Behind-the-theme-park youth soap.

Oct. 1

Stalker

CBS, Wednesdays

More highly choreographed unpleasantness from Kevin Williamson (“The Following”). Dylan McDermott, who should book a comedy soon, and Maggie Q, whose conspicuously unbuttoned blouse is offered both as provocation and indictment, are cops with issues heading off (potential) perps with worse ones.

Oct. 2

A to Z

NBC, Thursdays

Sensitive Andrew (Ben Feldman) meets sensible Zelda (Cristin Milioti). The series will avowedly relate the whole of their relationship: “eight months, three weeks, five days and one hour,” suggesting no one’s banking on a long run. (It’s only smart, nowadays.) Katey Sagal narrates, as though it were science.

Bad Judge

NBC, Thursdays

Kate Walsh as a hard-partying, van-driving, rule-bending, rock-drumming, good-bad-but-not-evil, Solomon-wise jurist. (It’s a comedy, if that’s not clear.) Sue me, I liked it. Words to live by: “Do you have premium cable?” “I have a record player and books.”

Gracepoint

Fox, Thursdays

Angular David Tennant puts on an American accent to reprise his role as a big-city police detective working a small-town homicide in this overamped but textually close — redundant, if you like — American remake of the broody British “Broadchurch.” Anna Gunn is his partner; Nick Nolte personifies Old Salt.

Oct. 3

On the Menu

TNT, Fridays

Amateur cooks compete to create dishes that will be offered for sale at Denny’s, Chili’s and other dining establishments. With Emeril Lagasse, even.

Oct. 4

Survivor’s Remorse

Starz, Saturdays

LeBron James is an executive producer of this basketball comedy about getting rich and keeping it real.

Oct. 5

Mulaney

Fox, Sundays

Comic John Mulaney is relatively the straight man in a live-audience sitcom that surrounds him with quirky roommates Nasim Pedrad and Seaton Smith, high-maintenance boss Martin Short and oddball neighbor Elliott Gould, who has this to say: “Positivity is in. Jokes should be about wonderful things. “Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “A baby bird.”

Oct. 7

The Flash

CW, Fridays

Grant Gustin is one speedy dude in this “Arrow” spinoff. Jesse L. Martin is the cop who raised him, Tom Cavanagh the scientist whose fault it is. Key line: “I wasn’t the only one affected by the particle accelerator explosion, was I?”

Town of the Living Dead

Syfy, Fridays

Docu-series follows the people of a small Alabama town who have been making a zombie movie for six years. Actual zombies could get it done quicker.

Oct. 8

Cutting Crew

El Rey, Wednesdays

Workplace reality show centered on a Philadelphia-area barbershop. Expect nicknames.

Lucha Underground

El Rey, Wednesdays

Masked Mexican wrestling, from Boyle Heights.

Kingdom

DirecTV, Wednesdays

That Venice-set mixed martial arts family drama you have dreamed of is almost here.

Oct. 10

Cristela

ABC, Fridays

Mexican American comedian Cristela Alonzo plays a pleasantly snarky six-year law student living with family while she works as an intern in a big-deal Texas law firm. Insults abound, but it’s also more than usually About Something.

Oct. 11

Grounded in Seattle

WE, Saturdays

Hooters-style coffee chain pushes brand with sponsored reality soap built around foxy baristas. They have lives too, you know.

Oct. 12

The Affair

Showtime, Sundays

In which Dominic West unbelievably cheats on Maura Tierney and Ruth Wilson cheats (with

Dominic West) on Joshua Jackson. Set in the Hamptons, where these things happen, I guess.

Oct. 13

Jane the Virgin

CW, Mondays

Gina Rodriguez impresses in a telenovela-inspired melodramedy of accidental artificial insemination. Strangely delicate, within the nuttiness.

Oct. 14

Marry Me

NBC, Tuesdays

Breathless engagement comedy from “Happy Endings” creator David Caspe, with Casey Wilson a bull in an emotional china shop, Ken Marino more of a china shop.

Oct. 15

How We Got to Now

PBS, Wednesdays

Author Steven Johnson hosts a six-part series on technological innovation, what it’s done for us and what it’s done to us.

Oct. 17

Freestyle Love Supreme

Pivot, Fridays

Comedy improvised to the beat, y’all, yes, yes, y’all.

Welcome to Fairfax

Pivot, Fridays

Docu-series stalks young entrepreneurs making L.A.’s historic Jewish strip — where you might have taken your grandmother for borscht at Budapest even before the Wallflowers first played the Kibitz Room — safe for hipsters, hip-hopsters.

Oct. 24

Constantine

NBC, Fridays

From the comic “Hellblazer,” which would not look as good on this marquee. Matt Ryan hunts demons (some of them his own), which is just a thing people do now.

It Takes a Choir

USA, Fridays

Gareth Malone’s Americanization of his BBC series “The Choir,” in which plain folks are transfigured through community singing, finally debarks upon these shores. You will weep.

Oct. 26

Mystery: Death Comes to Pemberley

PBS, Sundays

P.D. James’ murder-mystery sequel to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” gets a high-class two-part adaptation indistinguishable from adaptations of actual Austen.

Oct. 27

Mike Tyson Mysteries

Adult Swim, Mondays

“Johnny Quest” and “Scooby-Doo” are the models for this animated series, which finds the tattooed ex-pugilist adventuring with the ghost of the Marquess of Queensbury (Jim Rash), his Korean adopted teenage daughter (Rachel Ramras) and a pigeon who drinks a little (Norm Macdonald). It is a work of fiction.

Oct. 30

The McCarthys

CBS, Thursdays

Sports-crazy, big Boston family with sports-illiterate gay son comedy, with live audience attached, sounds like a recipe for noisy annoyance, but isn’t. With Tyler Ritter of the Acting Ritters, Laurie Metcalf and other people you know.

Nov. 15

The Missing

Starz, Saturdays

James Nesbitt and Frances O’Connor are parents whose 5-year-old son disappears from a French holiday; Tcheky Karyo is the detective on the case. A limited series.

Nov. 17

State of Affairs

NBC, Mondays

Katherine Heigl is a CIA analyst with the president’s ear. (I am speaking figuratively.) Alfre Woodard is the president, which is as it should be.

Nov. 24

Ascension

Syfy, Mondays

Retro-contemporary murder mystery, set on a city-sized spaceship that set off secretly in 1963. Why was I not told?

Nov. 28

One Child

SundanceTV, Fridays

Katie Leung is the grown adopted child of Elizabeth Perkins and Donald Sumpter, traveling back to China to aid her birth mother, whose son has been accused of murder. A BBC co-production, written by Guy Hibbert (“Five Minutes of Heaven”).

Dec. 12

Marco Polo

Netflix, Fridays

The little rental company that could gets expensively epic with this 13th century adventure set in the court of Kublai Khan.

TBD

Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street

Amazon, November

Live-action kid show, developed out of Amazon’s open-door pilot program, goes to series. Pilot a bit wide-eyed and wayward, but the suburban milieu is pleasing and the kids are all right.

The Librarians

TNT, December

The Noah Wyle TV-movie franchise pluralizes its title and becomes a series with the addition of teammates Rebecca Romijn, Christian Kane, John Larroquette.

Over the Garden Wall

Cartoon Network, fall

Ambitious animated miniseries from “Adventure Time” vet Pat McHale. Two brothers try to find their way home from an enchanted land with the aid of magical creatures; you know the routine. Elijah Wood and Melanie Lynskey star.

Dig

USA, fall

Jason Isaacs, Anne Heche, Lauren Ambrose, Regina Taylor, Richard E. Grant in an ancient-conspiracy thriller set in the Middle East. Agents, archaeologists and evangelists mix it up.