New season: small and slow, but promising

By American tradition, there are three big events each September.
It’s the start of the school year, the football season and the TV season.
Now the first two are here and in full form. But the TV season?
Most years, each big, broadcast network has about five new, scripted shows, most of them starting in September.
This year, there are four on CBS (including “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” shown here), three each on NBC and Fox, two on ABC, one on CW. Seven start in September, five wait until October, one until Nov. 12.
Certainly, there’s some room for excellence among the new shows. The mysteries – CBS’ “Matlock,” ABC’s High Potential,” Fox’s “Murder in a Small Town – are especially promising … NBC’s “Brilliant Minds” tries a deep dive into psychodrama … CBS’ “Georgie (etc.)” continues the splendid “Big Bang”/”Young Sheldon” story.
And other parts of the TV world are going strong. There are smart new comedies on FX (“English Teacher,” at 10 p.m. Mondays) and Hulu (“How to Die Alone,” starting Sept. 13). PBS’ “Moonflower Murders” is both early (9 p.m. Sept. 15) and brilliant. Streamers are busy; “Interior: Chinatown” (Nov. 19 on Hulu) is particularly well-crafted.
But that still leaves the question: What happened to the big, broadcast networks? Why are their new seasons so small and so slow.
The darkest suggestion is that their time has passed. As the streamers (and a few cable channels) thrive, the old networks will fade away or settle for specialties, like AM radio.
A better one involves the strikes. When they ended (Sept. 27 for writers, Nov. 9 for actors), the networks had to scramble to piece together a half-season; they had less time to prepare for this fall.
The most extreme moves were by ABC. For this fall, it’s repeating emergency measures it took during the strikes and pandemic – sharing “Monday Night Football” with ESPN, sharing “Dancing With the Stars” with Disney+ and making Sunday a movie night, now focusing on Disney films.
Other networks try varied steps:
— Renewing shows that might have been canceled in a stronger year. NBC’s “The Irrational” and “Found” did fairly well against weak, strike-time competition; now they’re back. So, oddly, is “Lopez vs. Lopez.”
— Using more unscripted shows, which can be cheaper and quicker to launch. Outside of cartoons, Fox has only four scripted shows this fall. ABC hasonly five stranding its only comedy (“Abbott Elementary”) between a reality show (“The Golden Bachelorette”) and a docu-drama hybrid, “Scamanda.”
— Using shows from other countries. Fox has a particularly promising one, the Canadian “Murder in a Small Town.” CW, which often goes with Canadian shows, has an involving, six-week British crime show, “Joan.” PBS stuffs its Sundays with British dramas; this year, if follows the clever “Moonflower” with the amiable “Marlow Murder Club.”
The one network that seems fairly immune to trouble is CBS. Its viewers tend to be older and less likely to switch to streamers; they also like the fact that most CBS shows are case-of-the-week.
When the strikes ended, CBS launched one show that was a ratings hit (“Tracker”) and another that was a hit with critics (“Elsbeth”). Now they’re back and “Elsbeth” is paired with a similar show, the deceptive “Matlock.”
That’s on Thursdays, which will also have the “Young Sheldon” sequel and “Ghosts.” For that night, broadcast-TV will be alive and well, albeit tardy:
With one exception (an early start for “Matlock”), CBS’ new Thursday line-up won’t be here until Oct. 17.