Michael Douglas
Who'll win at this year's Emmys? Who knows? It's the only major awards show where the old guard and new blood clash on an annual basis, and among the few things you can bet on in this unpredictable process are that Michael Douglas will win for his Liberace impersonation (ditto his HBO movie Behind the Candelabra) and that host Neil Patrick Harris will do his damnedest to make CBS's live Emmys telecast (8/7c, 5 Pacific) as enjoyable as the Tonys.
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Valerie Harper
This is the calm before the new-season storm. A week from now, only the most advanced devices will be able to handle the crush of new (and mostly returning-hit) programming airing on Thursdays, with expanded season openers of long-running faves The Big Bang Theory, Parks and Recreation and Grey's Anatomy among the draws.
By comparison, this is a much quieter Thursday, although NBC once had high hopes that the two-hour climax of the seemingly endless and haplessly muddled Million Second Quiz (8/7c) would be something to shout, instead of yawn, about. Instead, the peacock's more anticipated headliner is Valerie's Story — A Meredith Vieira Special (10/9c), an hour-long good-news report from the former Today co-anchor chronicling Valerie Harper's unusually public battle against terminal brain cancer.
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Olivia Colman
The summer's most gripping series (until Breaking Bad started back up) rushes toward a shattering conclusion as BBC America's Broadchurch presents its penultimate episode (Wednesday, 10/9c), with broken lives and aching hearts on all fronts — including the ailing Hardy's (David Tennant), who won't let his latest collapse keep him from pursuing little Danny's killer: "Don't tell me what my limits are," he barks. As more skeletons are unearthed in this seaside community (and let's hope the mysterious Susan's poor dog isn't one of them), the toll of secrets and suspicion weighs heavy: "Once it's got its claws into you, it never lets go," says one of the many suspects whose world has been rocked by the tragic events and poisonous fallout. Don't let next week's denouement escape you as the new broadcast season gets underway with all of its bells and whistles.
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Andy Samberg
As an object lesson in the extremes of new fall TV, welcome to Fox's new and not entirely improved Tuesday comedy lineup. (Unhappily missing in action, but for how long: Raising Hope, currently designated to return for its fourth season in the Friday swamplands in early November with back-to-back episodes, a scenario few believe will ever occur.)
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Tom Mison
Heads will roll — and more than a few eyes — in Fox's lavishly entertaining but hopelessly convoluted new supernatural thriller Sleepy Hollow (Monday, 9/8c), which officially kicks off a new season of network premieres. Given how ordinary so many of the networks' new shows are this fall, it seems a bit churlish not to wholeheartedly embrace a series that is anything but ordinary. And yet by the end of an opening hour that gets off to a spectacularly fun start, I wanted nothing more than for it to just shut up with all of the apocalyptic mumbo jumbo.
On the plus side, a star is unquestionably born in Tom Mison, a winning British actor who makes for a dashing and amusing action hero in this bold re-imagining of Washington Irving's iconic Ichabod Crane (from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which we've heretofore seen Disney-fied and Tim Burton-ized). Here conceived as a studly Revolutionary War hero and spy for General George Washington, this Ichabod is mysteriously resurrected into the 21st century, along with the axe-wielding Headless Horseman who cut him down 250 years ago and is soon lopping off heads in the modern-day Hollow.
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Andy Samberg, Joe Lo Truglio
Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: Love your column and hope you could shed some light on an issue for me. As I understand it, TV shows/actors submit one episode of what they feel is their best work (that season) for Emmy consideration. Is this true? If so, don't you think the criteria should require a greater sample size since one episode, no matter the quality, does not necessarily tell the story of an entire season? —Charles
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Foyle's War
One war makes way for another as the incredibly durable Foyle's War, in its seventh Masterpiece Mystery! season on PBS, transitions from post-World War II intrigues to the ethically murky spy games of a burgeoning Cold War. "I haven't got the requisite capacity for deceit," grumbles former police DCS Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen, radiating crisp intelligence and decency), who once again is denied his dreams of retirement when MI5 spooks reel him in, fresh off the boat from America.
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Ricky Gervais
Fans often feel burned when the final curtain falls on a favorite show — especially when it happens unexpectedly and without resolution (just ask fans of A&E's The Glades or, even more recently, AMC's The Killing, which at least solved its third-season case before the grim fadeout). This is not the situation with USA's Burn Notice, which has been leading all summer to a calculated big finish (Thursday, 9/8c) after seven seasons of...
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Billie Jean King
For nearly 30 years, PBS's great American Masters series has profiled overachievers in the arts and culture at large. It only makes sense than when the documentary series finally decided to do its first study of a sports superstar, it turned to tennis legend Billie Jean King. Masters (Tuesday, 8/7c; check tvguide.com listings) has always reflected personality through performance, so who better than a woman who says of her craft: "Every ball I hit has a consequence."
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Hostages
Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: What do you think about new shows that have a premise that seems unsustainable beyond one season? When Revenge was announced, it seemed like a good idea for a miniseries rather than a long-term program, and with the results we saw in the second season, that doesn't seem so far off. The new CBS show Hostages sounds interesting, but it doesn't seem like something you could continue beyond the initial 15-episode run without the writers coming up with convoluted ways to keep situations from being resolved or having it turn into a different show entirely. So I guess my question is: Do you think networks are getting desperate to have instant hits and aren't thinking about whether or not the show can last and still be good? — Mike
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