New fall TV: Slim pickings around the dial

The fall television season, just a few days into September, has begun in earnest. New series have already premiered on some of the networks, while others will be rolled out gradually over the next few weeks.

Hear that clamor, that rush of excitement, that hue and cry of greatness being birthed?

No?

You aren't the only one.

The three month-long writers' strike bears the brunt of responsibility for the lack of excitement surrounding the new crop of fall wannabes. It was still in its full throes when the networks were supposed to be reading new pilot scripts, so the pickings were painfully slim. The broadcasters have tried to put their best foot forward, but it's not difficult to see the effects of not having the usual truckload of material to sift through - it seems this year that an abnormally high number of fall shows were either based on old or non-American series concepts, and/or picked up after being rushed through production, which led to much rewriting, recasting, and reshooting.

NBC used their time with a record-breaking Olympic audience to push a swath of new hourlong action dramas -- including a reboot of the '80s David Hasselhoff vehicle "Knight Rider" and a hyper-hyped spy thriller called "My Own Worst Enemy" (which could also be known as "Christian Slater's Last Chance") -- but none of them seemed nearly as compelling as spending a few minutes with Michael Phelps or a few seconds with Usain Bolt.

ABC has exactly two new series coming to their schedule -- game show "Opportunity Knocks" and rejiggered British cop show concept "Life on Mars" -- and both of them have undergone alterations so significant (for "Mars," that meant doing the whole first episode over again, from script to setting, and replacing everyone involved, save the lead actor) that the pilots are as of yet unavailable for preview, and of the two, only "Mars" appears remotely interesting.

CBS added new hours of crime dramas -- "The Mentalist" and "Eleventh Hour" -- which have striking similarities to all their other hours of crime dramas, plus a non-crime hour (how'd a romantic dramedy get through the net there?) called "The Ex List."

FOX has the most-buzzed-about show of the fall in "Fringe," which comes from "Lost" co-creator and executive producer J.J. Abrams, but more closely resembles a bigger budget, more action-packed version of "The X-Files."

The CW's new version of "90210" hit the air on Sept. 2, and helped the network finish in third place for the night, ahead of CBS and ABC. (I assume that a sizable chunk of the audience was made up of critics who had been denied their screeners, and were breathlessly glued to their sets in anticipation.)

It's also worth noting that most of the networks have continued to order new scripts and pilots through the summer -- ABC, for example, has committed to no fewer than six new series before their first fall premiere this year, while NBC pledged three months ago to constantly roll out new programming throughout this year and next.

But there really isn't much changing on the landscape. Most of the network lineups, in fact, have stayed the same as they were. Last year's strike-interrupted season meant sudden stops for new shows that were building momentum: for example, ABC's whimsical romantic comedy "Pushing Daisies," NBC's surprisingly sharp and funny action series "Chuck," and FOX's highly-rated sci-fi thriller "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles." All three of these series will be back this fall, along with a large number of other shows that the broadcast networks decided to give the benefit of the doubt. There will be heavy promotional pushes for these series from their networks, but will it be too little, too late in terms of grabbing hold of an audience that had just begun tuning in when the shows went away? It's safe to guess that the odds are stacked against more than a few of these "like new" series. Viewership for these shows will have to hold steady if any of them are going to survive.

Next week, I'll take a more in-depth look at the returning shows, and tell you what I'm looking forward to -- and away from -- this season.