I’ve been putting off writing this list for some time, for a couple of reasons, but as we’ve reached the midseason point, I think it’s about time to run down my list of the top new TV shows for the fall.

Unlike last year, the pickings this year are pretty slim, due in large part to the writers’ strike that hit the industry at last year’s midseason. That meant fewer television pilots got developed, and since only a few pilots make it to series to begin with, fewer shows. By midseason, we’ve also already begun to thin the field—two of my favorite shows from last year, Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money, have already been, er, “not picked up for a full season” (diplomatic talk for “cancelled”). And we’re only a short while away from the launch of the new mid-season shows, the most hotly anticipated of which is probably Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. But that’s a matter for a different post.

I’m not going to bother ranking these shows, because that’s a sucker’s game. Besides, the difficulty with reviewing a television show versus, say, a movie or a book, is that you can’t take a single episode as an indication of quality. Most shows (and especially the kind that I like, that really use the serial medium to its fullest) take a few episodes to develop (of course, sometimes they just get worse; right, Sarah Connor Chronicles?). But at the end of the day, my only metric for a show is: is this worth your time? And, by virtue of being on this list, my answer for all these shows is obviously “yes.” Fringe
For the first several episodes, I deemed Fringe my de facto hit of the fall—it wasn’t necessarily great, but it was okay, and better than most of the rest of what was out there. Admittedly, that’s due largely to the fact that Fox hyped the bejeezus out of it: I couldn’t walk around the city without seeing a bus-stop poster of the series’s three leads. That’s not exactly surprising: the show’s pedigree boasts J.J. Abrams as the creator, and J.J. is one of those behind-the-camera guys who’s got a devoted following, and may actually be a recognizable name.

But the first several episodes of the show were heavily “meh” and seemingly an exercise in repetition: there’s a series of unfortunate mysterious events! We call them the Pattern! Investigate them! But Fringe is a mythology show, and mythology shows take time to mature, though, like wine, they can either turn into a great vintage (Lost) or quickly become spoiled and out-stay their welcome (Alias, The X-Files).

What saves Fringe from becoming merely a bad X-Files rip-off is two words: John Noble. As mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop, Noble’s performance alternates between childlike glee and clinical insanity, with bouts of absent-minded professor. In the first few episodes, he’s a little impenetrable, but as the series has progressed, he’s quickly become a fascinating, first-rate character—perhaps the best of the season.

Sadly, the same can’t be said for much of the rest of the main characters, who often seem about as interesting as set-dressing. Anna Torv is serviceable as Special Agent Olivia Dunham, but she seems like a pale imitation of Sydney Bristow from Alias (which, of course, was also created by Abrams). The great thing about Sydney was that not only did we see how good she was at her job, but also how human she was. Torv’s a bit short on the latter, at the moment, but I’m willing to give her time.

Joshua Jackson, as Walter’s son Pacey Peter, is the wise-cracking man of mystery and the foil to the rest of the crew—he’s got about half the smarts of his dad, but he’s twice as sane, which makes for an interesting balance. Jackson’s good at this role, but it’s only in recent episodes that we’ve really started investigating his backstory. They’ve made some interesting hints about his character, and I’d like to see where it goes.

Lance Reddick. Oh, Lance Reddick. Here’s a perfect example of a great actor being squandered in a terrible role. Reddick was fantastic in his portrayal of Cedric Daniels on The Wire, and was appropriately menacing in the couple appearances he’s made on Lost, but as Philip Broyles, the head of the Fringe unit at Homeland Security, he’s nothing more than the guy who Olivia goes to for plot exposition. His job is to look grim and forbidding, which Reddick can probably do in his sleep, but there’s no meat for him to chew on. Shame. The same could be said for Blair Brown as (is she a friend? a villain?) Massive Dynamics’s Nina Sharpe. She’s sort of been set up as an antagonist, but there hasn’t been a lot of room to develop her character yet, either. As a result, her screen time is largely pretty boring.

I’d talk about Mark Valley’s role as Agent John Scott, but that starts to get into spoiler territory. Valley was great as the title character of the short-lived Keen Eddie, but he’s underutilized here for both plot and character reasons.

That said, the show has begun showing a lot of promise in recent episodes, as the plot begins to go serial, and the mythology starts to fill out. We’ve got the mysterious Observer who always seems to show up near Pattern-related activities. We’ve got the excellent Jared Harris (The Riches) as creepy prison inmate David Robert Jones. And we’ve got writing that seems to finally be finding its groove. The most recent episode ended with a cliffhanger that won’t be resolved until the show returns in January, but as I’m actually excited to see what happens, I won’t begrudge them that.

Privileged
Of the shows I’m watching this year, this is the one that I consider the most underrated, and also probably the one that people are least likely to watch, even with my recommendation, as it’s neither genre fiction nor particularly high-concept.

Privileged is about Megan Smith, a recent Yale graduate who wants to be a writer, but can’t seem to quite find her niche. She ends up taking a job as a tutor for a pair of spoiled twins in Palm Beach, the granddaughters of cosmetic mogul Laurel Limoges (Anne Archer).

Who it turns out are vampires.

Okay, I’m kidding, but I could tell your attention was starting to wander. Here’s what Privileged has going for it: excellent writing, superb characters, and, let’s be honest, a cast that isn’t too hard on the eyes of either male or female viewers.

As Megan, Joanna Garcia (Freaks and Geeks) is the lynch pin that holds this show together. She’s cute, funny, and likable, and she perfectly channels Megan’s overachieving, neurotic personality. And like all the main characters on the show, she’s flawed and damaged, which makes her interesting.

The twins, Sage (Ashley Newbrough) and Rose (Lucy Hale), could easily have been caricatures of spoiled rich girls, but the writers take pains to make them three-dimensional—and better yet, distinct. As the show progresses, we’ve seen how each has a gift that the other wants (Sage, for example, is a whiz at school, but wants to be famous; Rose, on the other hand, actually wants to work hard and get into college, but is an immensely talented singer).

The supporting characters are for the most part exceptionally good, from Megan’s best friend Charlie (I’m happy they seem to have more or less ditched the “he’s secretly in love with her” story line) to chef Marco (Allan Louis), who mainly plays the role of explicator, but with style and wit. Not to mention the family butler, Rami, who only gets a few lines in every episode, most of them sarcastic gems.

But it’s the writing I keep coming back to: it’s quick and whip-smart, and makes me grin involuntarily in a way that no show has since the late, lamented, underappreciated Everwood (little surprise, since Rina Mimoun executive produced both)—a bonus to Everwood fans: Sarah Drew, who played Hannah, even guest stars in one episode as Megan’s best friend from college. Of course, there’re love interests and family intrigue, and the show definitely has soap-opera overtones, but Privileged is the rare thing: a character-driven comedy-drama with characters that you actually care about that manages to be sweet without veering into sappy sentimental clichés.

Life on Mars
Arguably the second most-hyped series of the season (which I already took the time to review), Life on Mars is based on the British series of the same name, and centers around Detective Sam Tyler who, after being hit by a car, somehow ends up in 1973. As he continues in his job as a police detective, he tries to figure out how to get back home.

I don’t want to retread ground from my review, other than to say that Harvey Keitel is still no Philip Glenister. But the most recent episodes of the show have veered in a sharply different direction from the original series, in a way that is very American, both in setting and in the way the show is actually put together—the latter is important, since they’re quickly going to run out of material from the original show, which only ran for 16 episodes.

The original was more or less episodic, a psychological drama wrapped in a nostalgic look at British police dramas of the ’70s, a theme continued by the spin-off Ashes to Ashes. The American version, meanwhile, is starting to show signs of being transformed into a mythology show, with characters hinting that Sam is experiencing 1973 for a reason. That’s good, in my opinion, since I was never very satisfied with the resolution of the original series.

With the exception of Keitel—who’s okay—the show’s cast is solid. Jason O’Mara is very likable as Sam, if certainly a bit more of a conventional leading man than John Simm. Michael Imperioli ably fills the role of the bigoted, antagonistic Ray Carlin, though I wonder if they’ll take the American route of redeeming his character as the show progresses. And Jonathan Murphy as Chris Skelton seems to be channeling Marhsall Lancaster, if a little less gawky and awkward.

I have to admit that even Gretchen Mol has grown on me as Annie Norris, Sam’s major 1973 love interest, even though I still carry a torch for Liz White’s somewhat more reserved Annie Cartwright of the original. And the additional secondary characters that we’ve run into have been mostly well drawn as well.

But it’s the show’s most recent episode, which basically wrapped up the first British season’s plot lines, that has me fascinated. What will Sam discover about why he’s in the past? How will they fill a full season of shows? Will the show jump the shark when it runs out of source material, or will it, like The Office, take on an entirely different life of its own. I’ll be watching.

Leverage
Putting Leverage on here may be premature, since only two episodes have aired so far, but it’s one of the only other shows that I’ve enjoyed enough to watch this fall. The show, about former insurance investigator Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton) is a light-hearted romp of a heist/con-man series that’s equal parts Hustle and Mission: Impossible.

Nathan is the one honest man among thieves, running a crew of world-class criminals to essentially play Robin Hood—conning from the rich to help the poor and underprivileged. On the team are pretty-but-slightly-deranged thief Parker (Beth Riesgraf), who has a penchant for jumping off tall buildings; computer hacker Hardison (Aldis Hodge)—and thank god they toned down his kind of stereotypical “Aw, hell no” personality after the pilot; all-purpose ardent anti-gun tough guy Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane, best known as Angel‘s evil lawyer Lindsey, here sporting long hair); and terrible actress Sophie (Gina Bellman, who is basically playing a mix between her Coupling role of the spacey Jane mixed with Jaime Murray’s Stacie from Hustle).

The show’s writing is good, even if it tends a bit towards the silly and unbelievable—I’m kind of surprised it’s not on USA, where it seems like it would fit in well with the likes of Psych and Burn Notice. Executive producer John Rogers wrote a pretty good pilot based on Warren Ellis’s Global Frequency, which never made it to series, but also has among his more dubious credits the recent Transformers movie, Catwoman, and The Core. It’s executive produced by Dean Devlin, who’s best known as the producing partner of Roland Emmerich for the likes of Stargate and Independence Day.

I’m a sucker for both the heist and con-man sub-genres, and I think Leverage has promise as long as it doesn’t get sucked in by its own moral wish-fulfilment and potentially trite backstories (Ford, for example, left his career after the insurance company he worked for wouldn’t cover a medical procedure for his dying son). But it’s earned my attention for the moment.

Life
Okay, yes, I’m cheating. Life actually premiered last year, but I didn’t start watching it until this fall. I went back and caught up on the first season via Hulu, and have been watching the second season as it airs. So while it’s not new, it’s—as NBC used to say—new to me and it’s quickly become one of my favorite recent shows.

Police detective Charlie Crewes (Damian Lewis, Band of Brothers) spent twelve years in jail for brutal murders that he didn’t commit. Released after new evidence came to light, Crewes left prision with a multi-million dollar settlement, a spot on the force, and a Zen outlook on life. As a homicide detective, he and his partner Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi) end up tackling the bizarre murders that seem to pop up all over Los Angeles.

Life isn’t super-deep, but it’s a well-plotted cop story/revenge drama in a field of staid police procedurals—not that I’m the first to make this comparison, but it does for crime shows rather what House did for medical dramas. And that’s not just “cast an engaging, talented British actor as an eccentric but brilliant lead.”

As Crewes and Reese solve the crimes of the week, the larger week-to-week story is about Charlie trying to track down who is responsible for the murders of his friends and his jail time. Rounding out the cast are excellent character actor Donal Logue as New York-transplant police captain Tidwell, Alan Arkin as Charlie’s former cell mate (now roommate) and hapless white collar criminal Ted. Alas, Charlie’s lawyer and love interest Connie (Brooke Langton) is no longer a regular as of season 2, appearing only once as a guest star.

As good as the supporting cast and writing is, it’s Damian Lewis that makes this show tick, inhabiting the role of Charlie Crewes with all his tics, mannerisms, and peculiar winding trains of thought. Even if it didn’t start this fall, it’s good enough for me to pick it up in its sophomore season, and that’s no mean feat.

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Anyway, that’s what I’m watching this fall. In looking forward to the midseason, my prospective picks include Dollhouse, Cupid, and Castle. Disagree? Think I’ve missed something? Let me know: that’s what that box below is for.