Fall TV: Monday nights

I’ll deal with the atrocity of last night’s Emmy Awards later but first a few words on the new series debuting tonight.

Of course if you only watch one thing tonight it should be the third season premiere of Arrested Development. 8 o’clock. Fox. Be there. None of the season’s new shows (on any network, any night) are on this level.

Fortunately, the best of the night’s new shows, Kitchen Confidential, immediately follows on Fox. Alias alum Bradley Cooper stars in the single-camera half-hour comedy loosely based on the adventures of real life "rebel chef" Anthony Bourdain. The opening episode is a little too busy as it introduces a large ensemble cast which includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Nicholas Brendon, Grosse Pointe’s Bonnie Somerville, Freaks and Geeks’ John Francis Daly, Sin City’s Jaime King and Owain Yeoman (apparently he was in Troy, I haven’t seen him before but he’s pretty funny), but as long as the show can make intelligent use of this cast in the weeks to come it should be worth watching (I’m a little disappointed that Harold and Kumar’s John Cho will only appear in the opening episode, his absence not only leaves the show down one talented actor but also with a lily-white cast). Pairing the unconventional and promising comedy with Development makes for a smart hour but one likely to be ratings-challenged. The comedy hour leads into Prison Break and three solid shows make Fox the night’s quality network, but most people will probably be watching CBS…

Raymond is gone (it will never again terrorize the Emmy Awards) but CBS has added two new comedies to its successful Monday line-up. The first is How I Met Your Mother, a sappy and not especially funny show that promises to tell the story of how its lead character fell in love with the woman he would ultimately marry. There’s a twist at the end of the first episode that makes the show even more conventional than it first appears. On the plus side the show does a decent job of sharply defining its characters and the supporting players – Neil Patrick Harris, Buffy’s Allyson Hannigan and Undeclared’s Jason Segal – are all great comic actors (though only Hannigan is at the top of her game in the pilot). The blend of romance and comedy could appeal to the Friends crowd but I’d recommend watching Kitchen Confidential instead.

CBS’ other new comedy, Out of Practice, is more promising. It’s from the Frasier showrunners Joe Keenan and Christopher Lloyd and it shares elements of that series’ sophisticated farcical humor. Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler are the veteran names in the cast, playing the separated parents of three grown children played by Christopher Gorham, Paula Marshall and Ty Burrell. All five of the characters are in the medical profession but at heart this is a dysfunctional family comedy. Jennifer Tilly is also in the cast as Winkler’s new girlfriend (although not in the early pilot that I saw) and as long as Keenan and Lloyd can give these actors material worthy of their talent Out of Practice could emerge as one of those rare laugh-track-comedies that are actually funny.

Also new tonight is alien invasion series Surface on NBC. Each of the three major networks has their own alien invasion series this fall and CBS’ Threshold (which premiered to so-so ratings on Friday but I have yet to check out) is supposedly the classiest while ABC’s Invasion has the cushiest timeslot (following Lost on Wednesdays). Surface stands out in a less desirable way – it’s the cheesiest. In this series the aliens are in the water and are discovered by three different people in three different areas of the U.S. The dialogue is pretty awful, the characters generally uninteresting and the mystery is on the level of the 50s B-movie. There might be some appeal here for younger viewers but hardcore sci-fi fans are probably better off with the other new shows, and everyone else is better off watching Fox.

The other new show of this busy premiere night is Just Legal on the WB. Jay Baruchel (the star of Undeclared and the mentally challenged wannabe boxer in Million Dollar Baby) and Don Johnson star in a legal procedural from exec producer Jerry Bruckheimer. It’s Bruckheimer’s first show to actually get on the air at WB, part of his continued attempt to dominate all of network television. I haven’t seen it but I don’t expect I’m missing very much.