TV Guide Magazine's annual Fall Preview issue hits newsstands today! Here's a sneak peek at what to expect with all of your favorite fall shows:
The Good Wife, CBS, Premieres 9/22, 10/9cIf
The Good Wife becomes a hit, we'll have John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer and - most of all - their spouses to thank. "There were [several] scandals where wives stood behind their disgraced politician husbands," says executive producer Robert King. "Michelle [
King, his wife and cocreator/producer] and I were curious about what was going through their minds about what would happen to them later. At the same time, my sister was restarting her career as a lawyer after being home with her kids. Those two ideas seemed to dovetail nicely." Behold: A legal procedural with a humiliated politician's wife at the center - a combo that lured Julianna Margulies back to TV after 2008's ill-fated
Canterbury's Law.
Glee, Fox, Premieres 9/9, 9/8cWhen it comes to securing the right song for a musical number on
Glee - the centerpiece of Fox's fall lineup, about a group of students in a high-school glee club - creator Ryan Murphy's motto must be "Don't stop believin'."
"It's been shocking. I don't think we've been turned down by anybody," says Murphy, who also created FX's
Nip/Tuck, another series that expertly employs music. "I've always had luck with artists. I've written letters and begged, borrowed and pleaded. I think if you show them you're passionate, [they'll agree]."
FlashForward, ABC, Premieres 9/24, 8/7cThe
FlashForward script inside Joseph Fiennes' trailer should probably come with one of those digital countdown clocks and a wired-up bundle of TNT. Security is so tight on the new ABC drama that every cast and crew member is assigned a number that's watermarked through each script to prevent pages from popping up online. Even Fiennes ("Shakespeare in Love"), the star, only gets a few pages at a time and has to return them before getting revisions. "It does feel a bit extreme," he says. "But I believe we've had some security leaks and unauthorized visitors."
Community, NBC, Premieres 9/17, 9:30/8:30cThe Soup's Joel McHale hits prime time in NBC's collegiate comedy. We asked him why he chose the show:
The script for
Community was the funniest thing I'd read in years. When I first read it, I was sitting on a plane next to a guy watching the movie "What Happens in Vegas" with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. I was laughing out loud, and he was getting pissed that I was laughing over his romantic comedy. And I was thinking, "That's ironic."
Melrose Place, The CW, Premieres 9/8, 9/8cSo, there's this apartment building in LA....you may have heard of it? The '90's prime-time soap and its original address have been given a facelift, with a new crop of twentysomethings (couples, singles and every pairing in between) knocking heads - and boots - with old-timers like Sydney Andrews (Laura Leighton) and Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro).
Be sure to print your own copy of
TV Guide Magazine's Fall Prime-Time Schedule
here!
Also check out our exclusive Fall Preview 2009
photo gallery!