The 2016 TV Post

Are there any new shows people are feeling enthusiastic about? By "new" I mean launched in 2016 and it could include things that are basically a season long and won't necessarily continue.

I'm not sure I can quantify anything I feel for new shows (or longer running ones for that matter) as "enthusiasm." I have liked some but I'm feeling pretty meh about the majority of items on my DVR. Mike, due to his constrained schedule, has dropped virtually everything we used to watch together.

His continuing views include the return of Poldark, the Doctor Blake mysteries (which we've picked up this fall), Lucifer, and Brooklyn Nine Nine. He's also been watching Pitch and Dirk Gently with me.

The last two are the only two new shows I've tried and liked. (I also gave The Exorcist a whirl but I can't figure out if it's just not all that well done, or that the genre is simply not my cup of tea. Sadly though, it's still better than Damien). The humor and the slow coming together of the story in Gently got me hooked. All the crazy elements have indeed been shown to have a reason and there's been more than one surprise issue when it comes to the characters involved. Of course, Gently has the advantage of having been adapted from a book, which means that unlike a lot of shows that throw things at the screen only to have dangling plot threads at the end, it's a lot more certain that things will fall into some kind of order. I didn't realize there was more than one book until the finale when it was clear that the story wasn't completely done.

I actually like the fact that Pitch broadened out from its initial premise of a woman's experience in a previously all-male top-level sport. It's not that I think plenty couldn't be said about that, but unless it was handled well it could end up being pretty didactic, and I would rather it become a secondary topic than for that to happen. What's more there are a lot of characters involved in the show, so I was glad to see that they were all going to be given storylines that explored the challenges of this particular business. Knowing very little about the sports world, I've found that pretty interesting, (especially watching with Mike, who corrects anything that's been changed for dramatic purposes).

But then, my favorite type of story involves workplaces and industries so it's really targeting my wheelhouse. For example, I was deeply disappointed when Sports Night practically abandoned workplace and business issues in pursuit of romantic storylines, and quickly tired of Scandal when it was clear they weren't going to do any kind of realistic approach to government and media insiderism.

It looks like Pitch is not going to have a full season, and I don't know if Dirk Gently will return. Both have certainly had big cliffhangers in their finales.

I've continued to watch a number of shows more for filling time than any real interest. These include Gotham, Quantico, Agents of SHIELD, The Flash, and Supernatural. There have been things about all of them that have kept the series on my queue -- Penguin's storyline this season, curiosity about how S2 will differ from S1 of Quantico, Fitz and Simmons, and curiosity about Mary's role in SPN.

Despite increasing overlap in the DC shows, and, I gather, some major changes over at Supergirl, I just don't feel tempted to pick any of that up. I dropped Arrow last season, Legends lost me halfway through its run, and I don't know as I finished watching Supergirl's season. I'd found all of them tedious (in different ways). And just like Felicity alone couldn't keep me watching Arrow (especially because the teammates angle with her and Diggle had never been developed the way it was between Cisco and Caitlin), I've found that Cisco has not been holding things together for me on Flash.

However, I was surprised to realize that I quite liked Julian's addition to Flash. I'm still 2 episodes behind there so things may have changed considerably by now, but I watched the episode where Julian reveals his background and I felt hopeful he might add some new life to the show which, despite an increasingly cluttered character roster, is actually less interesting to me now than when it started.

So I'm giving Flash some more time, especially because it's my remaining window into the DC crossovers and I'm kind of curious about that. But if it doesn't grab me by season's end I think it's going to get ditched too.

Shows that are not new but which I did really enjoy in 2016 were Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and Cranford. In fact everyone I've recommended Miss Fisher to so far has loved it. Cranford was one of those things waiting around on the Netflix queue because it only became available recently. Mike and I laughed a lot and ended up really enjoying it.

We're currently watching Wives and Daughters, which is by the same author and same production team adapting it, and which also uses a number of the same actors. So far it hasn't been as appealing. The first episode was rife with weepiness and melodrama. There was some more humor in the second episode and we'll give episodes 3 and 4 a try as well. We'll see how it ends up.