What to watch this fall: Here are the TV shows we're looking forward to

Fall was once when all the new TV shows premiered, and when all the reruns finally ended. These days, things are a lot more spread out, with some series returning after long absences and some showing up for the first time. New shows will be scary and soapy and hopefully funny — and will make new trips to both the Marvel and DC worlds.

Slow Horses, Season 4, Sept. 4, Apple TV+
It is a bit of a tribute to Apple TV+’s low profile that some TV fans have only now heard about this brilliant version of Mick Herron’s subversive spy novels. Gary Oldman is deliciously witty and slovenly as weary spy Jackson Lamb, deftly leading a misfit crew consigned to a British intelligence office reserved for screw-ups. This time, one of Lamb’s staff is tangled in a plot involving his own grandfather, a former bigwig poignantly played by Jonathan Pryce, who may have killed someone while confused by dementia. — Eric Deggans

Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, Sept. 5, Peacock
A starry cast including Samuel L. Jackson, Taraji P. Henson and Kevin Hart has a lot of fun with this series, based on a true story, about an armed robbery of an Atlanta afterparty on the night of Muhammad Ali’s historic comeback fight. Total commitment to the 1970 setting extends to the music, the hair, the costumes, and a playful production style. — Linda Holmes

The Old Man, Season 2, Sept. 12, FX, Hulu
Call it something of a fatherhood triangle: Jeff Bridges’ retired CIA operative Dan Chase has teamed with John Lithgow’s ex-FBI man Harold Harper to save Chase’s daughter – who has been kidnapped by a powerful Afghan leader who says he is really her father. Some scenes unfold like the craziest acting exercises ever; others feel like the mashup of Mission Impossible and Parenthood you never knew you needed. It builds to a treatise on aging and regret played against a grand geopolitical backdrop. — Eric Deggans

How to Die Alone, Sept. 13, Hulu
The wonderful Natasha Rothwell (The White Lotus, Insecure) created and stars in this comedy series about an employee at JFK airport whose near-death experience forces her to reexamine her life. Rothwell is an enchanting presence with the capacity for both great tenderness and wild humor, and she's precisely the kind of person who should be getting the opportunity to create her own show. — Linda Holmes

Agatha All Along, Sept. 18, Disney+
The best, funniest part (Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness) of the best Marvel TV property to date (Wandavision) gets her own spotlight series. Agatha assembles a brand new coven of weirdos — and the series' casting director has clearly been reading my diary (Patti LuPone! Aubrey Plaza! Sasheer Zamata!). Together, Agatha and Co. undergo a series of trials which promise to offer up a whistle-stop tour of the creepier, horror-inflected corners of the Marvel universe. — Glen Weldon

The Penguin, Sept. 19, HBO, Max
Why base a spin-off show on a secondary character from a two-year-old superhero movie? One answer is star Colin Farrell, amazingly unrecognizable as Oswald “Oz” Cobb, a small-time hood in Gotham City with a disfigured foot that gives him a gait like … well … a certain flightless bird. Oz didn’t get enough screen time in Matt Reeves’ gritty, Seven-style Batman movie. But selling viewers on a Batman-free tale about a thug who becomes Gotham's crime boss may take more Hollywood magic than even Farrell possesses. — Eric Deggans

Matlock, Sept. 22, CBS, Paramount+
Rather than update Andy Griffith’s old legal show, CBS takes a bigger swing, casting Kathy Bates as Madeline “Matty” Matlock – an attorney in her 70s who jokes her name is just like the old TV show. (Yup, Griffith's series actually exists here!) She lands as an associate at a prestigious law firm, where her unassuming demeanor and smarts solves cases just like Griffith did. But she’s also hiding a deeper secret that will either make this show a brilliant reinvention, or an overly complicated laughingstock. — Eric Deggans

Grotesquerie, Sept. 25, FX, Hulu
This may be the oddest buddy cop drama in years: Niecy Nash-Betts plays put-upon police detective Lois Tryon; teamed with a nun who is also a journalist, Tryon is working to solve a series of heinous crimes which may have been concocted to taunt her. It’s written and co-created by Ryan Murphy, the producer behind American Horror Story and Netflix’s Monster anthology series, so expect maximum weirdness, style, creepiness and horror. — Eric Deggans

Doctor Odyssey, Sept. 26, ABC, Hulu
Sometimes it seems like regular, non-taxing TV has gone away, but it really hasn't. For example, this fall brings Doctor Odyssey, a drama series in which Joshua Jackson plays a doctor who goes to work on a cruise ship and manages all the medical emergencies. And Don Johnson plays the captain! A little luxury, a little medical drama — sounds like fun, to be honest. — Linda Holmes

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol, Sept. 29, AMC
This was a team-up Walking Dead fans were promised years ago, when a spin-off was first dreamed up with weary hunter Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and abused wife/survivor Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride). But Reedus wound up going it alone in the first season, as Daryl landed in France. For round two, he’s reunited with McBride’s Carol, though her road to finding him will likely be an arduous journey – like everything in the Walking Dead's zombie apocalypse. — Eric Deggans

Disclaimer, Oct. 11, Apple TV+
Alfonso Cuarón’s been pretty quiet since his 2018 masterpiece Roma, and everything about his latest project screams “must watch.” He wrote and directed every episode of this series adaptation, which stars Cate Blanchett as a powerful journalist who’s shocked to discover she’s the thinly-veiled inspiration for a character in a novel. The old, embittered man who published the book is played by Kevin Kline – and he’s more than happy to witness her downfall. — Aisha Harris

What We Do in the Shadows, Season 6, Oct. 21, FX, Hulu
The funniest — and not coincidentally, the weirdest — comedy on television wraps up with its sixth and final season. There's no telling what will happen to Staten Island's favorite vampires, as the series has always embraced a healthy amount of chaos. Expect a few audience favorites to return for a victory lap, and for a finale that traffics in real emotion while maintaining the bone-dry silliness we've come to love. — Glen Weldon

Somebody Somewhere, Season 3, Oct. 27, HBO
This intimate, searching and truthful gem of a comedy series is ending with Season 3, and I'll miss it when it ends. The great Bridget Everett plays a woman mourning the loss of her sister who returns to her small Kansas hometown to figure herself out. The show's generous and warm-hearted as hell, but don't go calling it "sweet" — it's far too sharp and clear-eyed for that. If you've slept on this show, now's the time to correct that. — Glen Weldon

Cross, Nov. 14, Prime Video
It’s been nearly 30 years since Morgan Freeman brought brainy forensic psychologist/police detective Alex Cross from James Patterson’s novels to life in the film Kiss the Girls. (The less said about Tyler Perry's stiff version in 2012, the better). Now Black Adam alum Aldis Hodge takes on Cross in this new series – already picked up for a second season – playing him as a younger, buffer version of the driven hero who digs into the psyche of killers and criminals to catch them. — Eric Deggans

Leonardo da Vinci, Nov. 18 and 19, PBS
Ken Burns – a filmmaker often called America’s biographer – peels back myths around his first non-American subject, one of the world’s greatest artists. In addition to painting works like the Mona Lisa, da Vinci filled notebooks with theories on mathematics, physics, anatomy and more. Burns delivers these stories with his usual mix of imagery and talking heads – including director Guillermo del Toro! – showing how this genius draftsman, painter, scientist and engineer made history. — Eric Deggans

Interior Chinatown, Nov. 19, Hulu
Celebrated author Charles Yu adapts his own novel, which has an intriguing premise: A struggling background actor playing the “Generic Asian Man” on a Law & Order-type show suddenly gets pulled into a real-life investigation after witnessing a crime. The cast, which includes comedians Jimmy O. Yang and Ronny Chieng, is very promising, as is the presence of Taika Waititi, an executive producer and director of the pilot episode. — Aisha Harris

Edited by Clare Lombardo. Produced by Beth Novey.