KMK: Best New Fall TV Shows 2009

So, it’s been a few weeks since the fall season started and the time has come to do a quick round up of what I’ve been watching. Really, the pickings were few since I’m not a big fan of serious looking crime scene investigators or shagging hospital staffers. Still, I managed to find a few shows to tune into and give a go. Here’s the rundown!

Eastwick

Yeah, I know, but don’t roll your eyes at me like that. I’m being serious here. Eastwick percolates with whimsy, wit and woman power. The series, based on John Updike’s book The Witches of Eastwick, stars Jaime Ray Newman, Rebecca Romijn, Lindsay Price as three very different women who come together in a magical moment of happenstance when they each make a wish at the local fountain.

This mutual wishing brings out their inherent magical abilities. Romijn’s Roxy is the blond bombshell bohemian artist with newly discovered clairvoyant powers. Price plays Joanna, a mousy brunette news reporter who uncovers her hidden mantrap powers. Newman rounds out the cast as red headed Kat the warm hearted but overworked mother, wife, and nurse. Their magical awakening also summons the dashing playboy millionaire Darryl Van Horne into town to beguile and bedevil the trio.

The ladies all work well together. Yeah, at times it seems as if character is being subsumed for snappy dialogue, but I think the series will improve and more depth will be uncovered. As it is Eastwick is a light hearted fun affair like the love child of Sex and the City and Charmed just without a dead Shannen Doherty, but we can hope for guest appearances!

Vampire Diaries

Finally, the CW gets its act together and puts on something that I can actually stomach. Usually I’m the first to decry any amount of teen angst, especially when the cast comes prepackaged in waspish clones that could be dropped into any drama on that network and the audience wouldn’t know the difference. I swear the CW lost any meaning of the world diversity. In any case they got some help with Vampire Diaries in the form of writer Kevin Willamson of Dawson’s Creek fame to give the show some necessary bite. Vampire Diaries is what Twilight should have been: a tumultuous teenage roller coaster triangle love affair between two vampire brothers, Stefan and Damon, and high school misfit Elena. Don’t tune in if you’re expecting Buffy 2.0 because VD comes nowhere close. Instead, accept it as a welcome break from the Twilight nonsense and stepping stone into the true vampire seductiveness of True Blood.

The Cleveland Show

The newly spawned brainchild from animated TV show creator Seth Mcfarlane comes in the form of a spin off. Joining the Mcfarlane family of Family Guy and American Dad is The Cleveland Show. The animated sitcom focuses on Cleveland Brown and his son Cleveland Jr. as they leave Cohog. Cleveland settles back into his hometown in Virginia and marries his high school sweetheart Donna. Complications ensue with Donna’s boy crazy daughter Roberta and womanizing little toddler, Rallo. There’s also a bear living down the street doing his best to keep his wife from learning of his smoking habit and a hillbilly single father across the road with a teenage son. Laughs are few and far between, but it is better than most sitcoms on TV. Cleveland, no matter how lovable, just doesn’t seem to be able to generate enough interest as the lead character. Who knows, that may change or perhaps another character will take off instead like Homer did on the Simpsons. It’s still worth watching though!

V

By now if you’ve been reading KMK for awhile you probably know that I’m a total Sci-Fi Fantasy whore. Slap some pointed ears or a shiny metallic costume on someone, throw a few laser guns or magic arrows in the mix and I’m a happy guy. So you can imagine that when I learned one of my beloved sci-fi miniseries from the eighties was making a return for the fall season lineup I almost wet myself. For those not born in the eighties or just out of the sci-fi loop let me explain. You see V is all about the coming of an alien race to the world and what it means for man kind. I don’t want to give to much away, but if they do it right the whole experience will be a rip roaring adventure through sci fi fantasy heaven. This time around though I’m waiting for the unexpected twists and turns the writers take to differentiate it from the old series. Trust, you don’t want to miss this.

Flash Forward

Move over Lost, here comes Flash Forward. With the enigmatic Lost finally coming to an end in the spring, ABC has gone into overdrive to find a replacement. It looks like Flash is it. Just like Lost it deals with mystery wrapped in implausibility and dunked in a healthy dose of unreality which makes it perfect for me! In the world of Flash forward everyone has simultaneously blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. That’s strange enough, but during that blackout it seems everyone got a glimpse six months into their future. The show focuses on how they try to change or not change what’s going to happen to them. The show has lots of promise and, even better, it stars the delectable John Cho. Who could pass that up?

The Beautiful Life

If Top Model isn’t enough to satisfy your bickering model fix, then hold on to your remotes because the CW is brining you The Beautiful Life. It’s a drama focusing on the unseemly side of the modeling world where stunning, emaciated beauties battle it out tooth and nail to make it to the top. So, really it’s just like Top Model only with actual models. The series stars Mischa Barton as a former top model clawing her way back up to the heights of fame and fortune. This show definitely goes on the guilty pleasure list, or it would have, but it was just cancelled by the CW.