The custom long known as the Fall TV Season was born of a bygone era when fall signaled all things important in America: the return to school, the resumption of football and the grand unveiling of next year’s car models.
It was an era of the Big Three. And not General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, but ABC, CBS and NBC.
Terms like “cable networks,” HBO, Hulu or Netflix were unknown.
A half-century later, the Fall Season persists with the five self-designated broadcast “majors”: the Big Three plus Fox and CW.
Here are some of the high- and lowlights of the so-called Fall Season:
There’s a possibility that CBS’s “The Crazy Ones” will ultimately reveal itself to be hilarious, and not one of the lamest new comedies on the schedule (as an initial viewing might suggest).
It brings back Robin Williams to TV sitcoms after “Mork &Mindy” 35 years ago.
NBC has brought back Michael J. Fox. Addressing the real-life health problems (and triumphs) of this breakout star of “Family Ties” in the 1980s, “The Michael J. Fox Show” strikes a fresh, funny tone amid the flood of new comedies.
NBC is also reviving the successful cop show “Ironside,” with Blair Underwood, not Raymond Burr, as the intrepid detective in the wheelchair.
NBC’s “Dracula” stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers in a reimagining of the vampire as a proto-environmentalist.
ABC offers a very cool, comic-driven “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” and its storybook spinoff, “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,” which explores the psyche of Alice, complete with CGI rabbit.
CW’s “The Originals” is a spinoff of “The Vampire Diaries,” while the same network’s “The Tomorrow People” is a sci-fi series about a genetically advanced race that also happens to be young and sexy.
Fox’s “Almost Human” is a police drama set 35 years in the future.
Youth-skewing CW is jumping on the historical trend with “Reign,” which focuses on Mary, Queen of Scots, as a verrrry attractive teen.
ABC’s very funny comedy “The Goldbergs” revisits the childhood of creator Adam Goldberg in the distant, “simpler” time of the 1980s.
ABC’s “Lucky 7,” is a potentially charming and engaging series about a group of New Yorkers who share a winning lottery ticket.
Also on ABC, “Betrayal” is a soap that involves a murder, a marital affair and a powerful family at war with itself.
CBS’s “Hostages” puts Toni Collette in the middle of a political conspiracy: She plays a surgeon ordered to assassinate the ailing president of the United States to save her family held captive.
Possibly the season’s most surefire hit is NBC’s “The Blacklist,” with James Spader as one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives who surrenders to help the FBI catch the terrorists he used to enable.
ABC’s “Back in the Game” finds sexy Maggie Lawson as a former all-star softball player who, post-marriage, returns with her son to move in with her irascible father, a washed-up baseball player played by James Caan.
“Family Guy” mastermind Seth MacFarlane’s live-action Fox comedy “Dads” focuses on two best friends and business partners whose fathers move back in. Its raunchy humor has already ruffled critics’ feathers, but its problems are more fundamental: It isn’t funny.
On CBS’s grim-in-spite-of-itself “Mom,” newly sober single mom Christy is suddenly inflicted with the return of her formerly estranged mom (Allison Janney), who, to say the least, didn’t serve as much of a parental example: “While other mothers were cooking dinner,” Christy reminds her, “you were cooking meth.”
On NBC’s “Sean Saves the World,” Sean Hayes plays a divorced dad with an overbearing mom (played by Linda Lavin) and a weekends-only 14-year-old daughter.
On CBS’s “The Millers,” Will Arnett stars as a recently divorced TV reporter whose outspoken mother moves in with him while his dad moves in with his sister.
CBS’s promising “We Are Men” has three divorced men bonding and offering dating advice to a young pal.
On the comedy “Trophy Wife,” Pete (Bradley Whitford) has had two broken marriages behind him when he lucks upon lovely Kate (Malin Akerman).
A strong contender for silliest new show is “Enlisted,” a military comedy set in the not-so-funny modern age of war, with three brothers stationed on a small base in Florida.
Fox’s cop comedy “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” arrives as perhaps the season’s biggest disappointment because it doesn’t measure up to the comedic brilliance of its star, former “Saturday Night Live” player Andy Samberg or acclaimed dramatic actor Andre Braugher.
Arguably the most depressing new sitcom: NBC’s “Welcome to the Family,” which attempts to mine laughs from a Stanford University-bound whiz kid who learns his bubble-head girlfriend is pregnant.
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