NEXT: John Slattery in the "File #2" episode of NEXT airing Tuesday, Oct. 13 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. © 2020 FOX MEDIA LLC. Cr: Jean Whiteside/FOX.

Best-bets for Oct.6: Sci-fi/monster tales start sharply

1) “NeXt” debut, 9 p.m., Fox. Science-fiction has long fretted about the day the robots – or cyborgs or computers – take over. Ken Jennings even borrowed a sci-fi line after losing “Jeopardy” to a machine: “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.” And in the start of this sharp, 10-week mini-series, that seems to be happening: A driverless car refuses to follow orders; an Alexa-type device whispers schemes to a little boy. The guy who created this chaos (John Slattery, shown here) scrambles to stop it. Read more…

1) “NeXt” debut, 9 p.m., Fox. Science-fiction has long fretted about the day the robots – or cyborgs or computers – take over. Ken Jennings even borrowed a sci-fi line after losing “Jeopardy” to a machine: “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.” And in the start of this sharp, 10-week mini-series, that seems to be happening: A driverless car refuses to follow orders; an Alexa-type device whispers schemes to a little boy. The guy who created this chaos (John Slattery, shown here) scrambles to stop it.

2) “Swamp Thing” debut, 8-9:30 p.m., CW. This is new-season week for CW, introducing a half-dozen debuts or season-openers. They give the mini-network a placeholder season, until the real shows return in January. “Swamp Thing” sounds silly, but it’s not. Originally made for the DC Universe streaming service, it’s a slickly filmed tale of two young scientists probing horrors in Louisiana. It gets way too cute at first, when one of them fails to explain himself (for no particular reason), but then starts to click.

3) “FBI” and “The FBI Declassified,” 9 and 10 p.m., CBS. First is a rerun, with a desperate father holding a billionaire’s daughter hostage until his own child is returned. Then is the debut of a show, hosted by Alana De La Garza of “FBI,” viewing real-life cases. In this one, a boy is held at gunpoint.

4) “Latino Votes: Dispatches From the Battleground,” 9 p.m., PBS. For the first time, researchers say, Latinos are the nation’s biggest ethnic voting bloc, nudging past Blacks. They can be potent; we see Bernie Sanders’ Latino surge in Nevada. Still, this documentary shows us, nothing is certain: Latinos may oppose Donald Trump on immigration, but many belong to evangelistic groups that lean conservative; Miami’s Cubans may be stridently Republican, but a new generation is emerging.

5) “Frontline,” 10 p.m., PBS. How did a wealthy nation lose lives for lack of medical equipment – including $1 face masks? This intensive report points a little at hospital penny-pinching and more at two administrations: Obama, it says, failed to extend the companies that rescued us during the swine-flu outbreak and failed to replenish the stockpile. Trump ignored that for three years, then failed to coordinate supplies or (generally) to trigger the Defense Production Act. The result was devastating.

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