Fall TV Preview 2024: What’s Coming to Small Screens This Season

Check out the top 20 upcoming shows

Tim Appelo,

AARP

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En español

Published September 04, 2024

Nicole Kidman places her head on Liev Schreiber's shoulder in the Netflix series The Perfect Couple

(Left to right) Liev Schreiber and Nicole Kidman star in "The Perfect Couple."

Courtesy Netflix

From the networks to streaming giants like Netflix and Prime Video, there’s a whole new crop of comedies, dramas and documentaries in the pipeline. Here’s what to look forward to in the coming months.

The Perfect Couple (Netflix, Sept. 5)

A rich Nantucket boy (Billy Howle) is about to get married, and his celebrated novelist mom (Nicole Kidman, 57) does not approve. When the maid of honor turns up dead on the beach just before the wedding, whodunit? Everybody is a suspect in a soapy mystery twistier than a spiral staircase.

Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist (Peacock, Sept. 5)

In a promising true-crime-inspired miniseries, Atlanta hustler Chicken Man Williams (Kevin Hart) and his tough partner Vivian (Taraji P. Henson, 53) throw a party after Muhammad Ali’s fabled 1970 comeback fight. A hundred people show up, including gangsters Frank “The Black Godfather” Moten (Samuel L. Jackson, 75) and Cadillac Richie Wheeler (Terrence Howard, 55), with Atlanta’s first Black detective, JD Hudson (Don Cheadle, 59), handling security. Gunmen order the guests to strip naked, and steal a million bucks. Can Chicken Man convince Hudson he’s innocent?

My Brilliant Friend, Season 4 (HBO/Max, Sept. 9)

As compulsively watchable as Elena Ferrante’s novels are readable, HBO’s Original Drama series kicks off its fourth and final season following the lives of Elena (Alba Rohrwacher) and Lila (Irene Maiorino), who first became friends as girls in Naples in the 1950s. Titled “Story of the Lost Child,” this season follows the grownup pair as they confront the challenges of careers, motherhood and political turmoil in late-1980s Italy.

The Old Man, Season 2 (FX, Sept. 12)

An ex-CIA man (Jeff Bridges, 74) and his long-ago colleague (John Lithgow, 78) race to rescue an FBI agent (Alia Shawkat) from an Afghan warlord who kidnapped her — and all three men claim she’s their daughter. “Think of it as Mamma Mia! but with a lot more murder,” wrote TheWrap’s Kayla Cobb.

Tulsa King, Season 2 (Paramount+, Sept. 15)

Dwight “The General” Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone, 78) is out of the hoosegow and back in the gambling and pot business, but now he’s got rivals muscling into his turf: A-list tough guys Neal McDonough, 58 (Justified) and Frank Grillo, 59 (Gangster Squad).

Note: Paramount+ provides a discount to AARP members and pays AARP a royalty for the use of its intellectual property.

The Golden Bachelorette (ABC, Sept. 18)

Blond, beautiful grandma and former school administrator Joan Vassos, 61, had to quit as a contestant on The Golden Bachelor show to tend her ailing child, but she’s back as the star of the first grownup dating show starring a woman pursued by 24 guys.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix, Sept. 19)

When Lyle Menendez, 56, and brother Erik, 53, were sent to prison for killing their parents Jose and Kitty in 1989, few bought their defense that they feared their record-exec dad’s abuse. But now there’s evidence supporting their case, and a member of Jose’s boy band Menudo accused him of rape. Chloë Sevigny (50 on Nov. 18) and Javier Bardem, 55, play the doomed parents in a surefire Ryan Murphy true-crime hit, with Nathan Lane, 68, as crime journalist Dominick Dunne covering the case.

The Penguin (HBO, Sept. 19)

Tune in to figure out how in the world Irish hunk Colin Farrell (reprising his role from 2022’s film The Batman) could possibly play this iconically scary-looking DC Universe villain. Stay for eight episodes of a darkly absorbing story about one of the most fascinating bad guys in one of the best franchises in comic book history. The Thursday night premiere will repeat over the weekend and then settle into Sunday night drops.

A Very Royal Scandal (Prime Video, Sept. 19)

Michael Sheen, 55, stars as scandal-plagued Prince Andrew, who agrees to a TV interview with journalist Emily Maitlis (Ruth Wilson) that he hopes will burnish his reputation. Instead, it sinks him further into the royal doghouse. (For another dramatization, try Netflix’s 2024 Scoop, with Rufus Sewell, 56, as the prince and Gillian Anderson, 56, as Maitlis).

Matlock (CBS, Sept. 22)

Who could possibly top the 1980s Andy Griffith as the folksy old cantankerous attorney people underestimate at their peril? Oscar and Emmy winner Kathy Bates, 76.

Grotesquerie (FX, Sept. 25)

Niecy Nash-Betts, 54, who stole the show in Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer — Monster, plays a detective in a small town beset by scary crimes in Murphy’s new horror series, with Courtney B. Vance, 64, as her hospitalized husband.

Disclaimer (Apple TV+, Oct. 11)

Four-time-Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón, 62, directs Cate Blanchett, 55, as a famous investigative journalist whose deepest, darkest secret is exposed in a novel by a nobody (Kevin Kline, 76) who’s out to get her.

Shrinking, Season 2 (Apple TV+, Oct. 16)

Jason Segal is hilarious as a psychiatrist who quits equivocating and starts telling patients what they should do — but one of them (SNL’s Heidi Gardner) took him too literally and shoved her abusive husband off a cliff in Season 1’s cliff-hanger. Sounds like he better discuss it with his supervisor (Harrison Ford, 82).

Happy’s Place (NBC, Oct. 18)

Reba McEntire, 69, plays an heiress running her late dad’s restaurant. Her Reba costar Melissa Peterman, 53, plays a bartender. Reba’s also on the new season of the music competition reality show The Voice, premiering Sept. 23 on NBC with new judges Michael Bublé, 49, and Snoop Dogg, 52.

Poppa’s House (CBS, Oct. 21)

A radio talk show host (Damon Wayans, 64) finds himself still parenting his adult son (real-life son Damon Wayans Jr.), who’s trying to be a responsible father himself without giving up his dreams.

Before (Apple TV+, Oct. 25)

In a supernatural mystery series (and his first big TV role since Soap in 1977), Billy Crystal, 76, plays a child psychologist haunted by the death of his wife (Judith Light, 75) who encounters a young patient (Jacobi Jupe) with unsettling powers.

Yellowstone, Season 5, Part 2 (Paramount Network, Nov. 10)

The smash Western rides stylishly into the sunset without Kevin Costner, 69, but with a passel of rootin’ tootin’ action. Will Beth and Jamie Dutton (Kelly Reilly and Wes Bentley) have a final showdown? And who winds up “getting taken to the train station?”

St. Denis Medical (NBC, Nov. 12)

Wendi McLendon-Covey, 54 (The Goldbergs), and David Alan Grier, 68 (In Living Color), star in a medical mockumentary from the creator of The Office.

(Left to right) Sarah Greene, Eva Birthistle, Sharon Horgan, Anne-Marie Duff and Eve Hewson in "Bad Sisters."

Apple TV+

Bad Sisters, Season 2 (Apple TV+, Nov. 13)

It’s hard to know how they can top the killer first season of the mystery about the murder of an abusive spouse of one of five very close sisters (Sarah Greene, Anne-Marie Duff, Sharon Horgan, Eva Birthistle and Eve Hewson), but we’ll sure tune in to find out.

Landman (Paramount+, Nov. 17)

Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan’s new series concerns the sweaty roughnecks and wildcat billionaires of the Texas oil boom, with Jon Hamm, 53 (Mad Men), as an oil baron, Demi Moore, 63, as his wise wife and Billy Bob Thornton, 68, as an oil company crisis executive. Demi says it’s her first-ever good romantic relationship on-screen.

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Tim Appelo covers entertainment and is the film and TV critic for AARP. Previously, he was the entertainment editor at Amazon, video critic at Entertainment Weekly, and a critic and writer for The Hollywood Reporter, People, MTV, The Village Voice and LA Weekly.

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