Frasier (TV Program)

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares99 Views

    Kelsey Grammer Analyzes 40 Years of Frasier: ‘I Have Nothing to Regret’

    by

    Kelsey Grammer likes his raw meat cut very fine. On a recent afternoon, at the restaurant of a Midtown hotel, he requested that his steak tartare be put through the grinder twice. He wanted it, he said, like velvet. The tartare, topped with its quail egg, was presented roughly chopped. “I’ll deal with it,” Grammer said uncomplainingly.Frasier Crane would never. On and off for 40 years on several different sitcoms, Grammer, 69, has played Frasier, a dyed-in-the-cashmere-wool snob and psychiatrist about town. The character is indelibly associated with Grammer. He can’t shake him, though Grammer mostly sees this as a boon.“It’s wonderful to spend your lifetime entertaining people,” he said.In 1984, Grammer, a stage actor who had studied at Juilliard, was cast on the sitcom “Cheers” as Frasier Crane, a love interest for Shelley Long’s waitress character, Diane Chambers. He stayed with the show until it ended in 1993.That same year, Grammer starred in a spinoff, “Frasier,” which saw the character move from Boston back to Seattle, where he lived with his father (John Mahoney) and brother (David Hyde Pierce). Grammer was often a tabloid fixture in those days, with an erratic personal life. Much married, he would eventually father seven children with four different women. He was arrested for drug possession and for driving under the influence. He now believes his chaotic behavior was a response to the trauma of his early life — in separate incidents, both his father and his sister were murdered.The revived “Frasier,” which premiered last year on Paramount+, has included other past characters like Frasier’s ex-wife Lilith, played by Bebe Neuwirth.Chris Haston/Paramount+But he stuck with the show until the 2004 finale. After that, Grammer moved on to other projects, but none lasted very long. And then in 2023, a “Frasier” reboot returned Frasier to Boston, reuniting him with his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), and his best friend, Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst). The second season premiered Thursday on Paramount+.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Review: ‘Frasier’ Returns, Tossed, Scrambled and Eggscruciating

      by

      One of TV’s longest-lived characters gets revived, in an anticlimactic museum reproduction of the original.“Frasier” always saw itself as something more than a mere plebeian sitcom. It delighted in Noel Coward-esque banter. Its protagonist, the radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), closed his final broadcast reciting Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”So let me begin my thoughts on “Frasier,” the Paramount+ revival of the long-running “Cheers” sequel, with words that its leading man of letters might attend to, from the poem “Terminus,” by his fellow Harvard man Ralph Waldo Emerson:It is time to be old,To take in sail:—The god of bounds,Who sets to seas a shore,Came to me in his fatal rounds,And said: “No more!”Alas, “No more!” is not a phrase in the streaming TV industry’s vocabulary. On Thursday, Frasier Crane becomes the latest classic character to set sail for a mediocre, anticlimactic return, the god of bounds be damned.When last we saw Frasier, he had passed up a chance at TV stardom and left Seattle for Chicago to be with his new love, Charlotte (Laura Linney). The new “Frasier,” developed by Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli, dispenses with that inconvenient narrative closure in about ten seconds of exposition. Frasier landed a TV show after all — he recently quit it after many years — and Charlotte has dumped him. (At least the premiere doesn’t Etch-a-Sketch the no-longer-a-finale quite as brazenly as the “Will and Grace” and “Roseanne” revivals.)Single again, loaded with TV money and having just buried his father, Martin (John Mahoney, who died in 2018), he’s off for a sojourn in Paris. But he makes a pit stop in Boston to reconnect with his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who disappointed Frasier by dropping out of Harvard and becoming a firefighter. (His choice may also surprise the audience, who might recall him as an awkward chess nerd going through a goth phase, but hey, people change.)Freddy, who resents Frasier’s dismissal of his work, isn’t eager for the reunion, but the inexorable logic of sitcom revivals kicks in. While Paramount+ has declared some twists of the first episode — none of them surprising — to be spoilers, suffice it to say that Frasier cancels his Paris plans, has a Harvard teaching gig fall into his lap and ends up spending a lot of quality time with his estranged son.If you are scanning this review for familiar names besides Grammer’s, I have some bad news. Beyond some reportedly upcoming guest appearances, the new “Frasier” joins “Night Court” as a revival that surrounds one returning lead with new sidekicks who, if you squint, might pass for versions of the old gang.So Freddy is Freddy, but he’s also a version of Martin, the down-to-earth ex-police officer who took the air out of Frasier’s swelled head. As David, the son of Frasier’s brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and his wife Daphne (Jane Leeves), Anders Keith channels the absent Hyde Pierce, right down to pronouncing the word “Sahara” the way Sting does.Well, he’s half a Niles; Nicholas Lyndhurst, as Frasier’s old college chum and new faculty colleague Alan, supplies the other half, playing Frasier’s erudite contemporary. Freddy’s roommate Eve (Jess Salgueiro) is sort of a Daphne. Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), the department head who recruits Frasier to teach, is sort of a Roz.And “Frasier” is … sort of “Frasier.” It is also, returning to Boston, sort of “Cheers.” The callbacks flow like drafts at happy hour. Frasier says that the last time he lived in the city, “I may have spent too much time at a certain bar.” And his run-in with a firehouse Dalmatian sets up a callback to his canine frenemy, Eddie: “I outlasted that little mongrel. I’ll outlast you.”The result is something that feels less like Season 12 of “Frasier” or Season 1 of a new series than a sort of museum of itself — be sure to visit the gift shop! — weighed down with knickknacks and nostalgia.The people orbiting Frasier in the new sitcom, including his boss (Toks Olagundoye) and a professor colleague (Nicholas Lyndhurst), resemble characters from the original.Chris Haston/Paramount+Frasier Crane, of course, has a lot of history even by sitcom-revival standards. He first appeared on TV nearly four decades ago, as the stuffed-shirt romantic rival to Sam Malone (Ted Danson) on “Cheers.” The 1993 premiere of “Frasier” mellowed him out and put him in his own element. The lead-character version of Frasier was haughty but soulful.You can’t say Grammer doesn’t know Frasier after all these years. He falls into the old bluster as if he’d time-traveled straight from 2004, and his new staff writes in the character’s voice well enough. (It did stop me in the first episode when he references “the hoi polloi”; surely the purist polymath Frasier would hold that “the” is redundant since “hoi” is a definite article.) The show even returns the formidable sitcom director James Burrows to shoot the first two episodes, which both premiere on Thursday.But it has the purgatorial feel of a sitcom that returned without a purpose beyond “More of that guy I like, please.” The central father-son dynamic feels forced rather than rooted in history, and Freddy is a nonentity, undefined as a character except in relation to his meddling dad.You could forgive the lack of ideas if there were at least a few laughs. But this reproduction has the predictable beats of a mothballed 20th-century sitcom. If there is a baby seat that plays “Baby Shark” when someone bumps into it, you know that someone will bump into it again. And again.The third episode, the best of the five screened for critics, at least gives Frasier a new conflict while meta-commenting on the revival. As he prepares to teach his first class, he realizes that his students, and his colleagues, are looking not for a professor but a celebrity, wanting him to re-create his shtick from his talk show. But he’s embarrassed of those years; in a series of clips, we see that he went from giving sober advice in the first season to, by Season 13, wearing a football-referee uniform and doing ax-throwing stunts.Now that I would watch! No, not the cheesy advice program that Frasier sold himself out to do. But a show about Frasier Crane making that show, lowering himself to win the love of hoi polloi, moving outside his comfort zone, finding out that success is a kind of prison — I would hit “play all” on that. It might be great, it might be terrible, but it would be interesting. But the revival industry is not in the business of interesting.As I’ve written before, there’s an inherent sadness to bringing back a sitcom after years or decades, the twinge of time passing. You can treat that melancholy in different ways, even get laughs out of it, but to ignore it just rings false. While this “Frasier” has the occasional sentimental moment, it’s too busy re-creating the past to engage with the past. It re-tosses the salads, it re-scrambles the eggs. But it has no desire to hear the blues a-callin’. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      ‘Frasier’ Returns With a Sitcom Veteran in the Director’s Chair

      by

      Over nearly five decades, Burrows has directed a thousand sitcom episodes. Next up: the new Paramount+ series, which follows Frasier Crane’s return to Boston.“You can’t learn how to be funny,” James Burrows said. “That has to be instinctual in you.”Burrows, 82, a celebrated director of the multicamera sitcom, has more of that instinct than most. The son of the playwright and director Abe Burrows (“Guys and Dolls,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”), he never intended a career in show business. But to defer his draft eligibility, he enrolled at the Yale School of Drama. Yale taught him that he wasn’t a playwright. Or an actor. But he became curious about directing.After graduation he worked as a stage manager, once assisting Mary Tyler Moore on a disastrous musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” (“It was a horrible experience,” he said. “Mary would come offstage and collapse in my arms and start crying.”) He segued into directing, eventually running a theater in San Diego. One night, while watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” he realized that directing a sitcom in front of a live studio audience wasn’t so different from his theater work. He wrote to Moore. Her husband, the producer Grant Tinker, invited him to the set.In 1974, he directed his first episode of the show. Over nearly five decades, he would go on to help create “Cheers” and direct a thousand more sitcom episodes, including the pilots for “Taxi,” “NewsRadio,” “Friends,” “Third Rock From the Sun” and “Will & Grace.” In 1993, he directed the pilot of “Frasier,” a “Cheers” spinoff that followed Kelsey Grammer’s psychiatrist character, Frasier Crane, as he relocated to Seattle from Boston. That show ended in 2004. But Burrows has kept on. In February, he directed another pilot, a “Frasier” reboot (though Burrows doesn’t like to think of it that way) that begins Oct. 12 on Paramount+. The show finds Frasier back in Boston, trying to reconnect with his son. Besides Grammer, none of the other original cast star, but several make guest appearances.In the new Paramount+ series, Kelsey Grammer, left, reprises his role as Frasier Crane, trying to reconnect with his son, played by Jack Cutmore-Scott, in red. Chris Haston/Paramount+On a recent Monday (morning in Los Angeles, where Burrows lives, afternoon in New York), Burrows appeared on a video call screen, spiffy in a New York Giants jersey. A practiced entertainer, he kept the jokes and the Yiddish — naches, mishpachah, kop — coming as he discussed the decline of the sitcom and the pleasure of getting behind the camera again. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you learn to direct for television?I observed on “The Bob Newhart Show.” I knew how to talk to actors. I knew what was funny. But I didn’t know the situation with the cameras. Then I watched my dear mentor, Jay Sandrich, on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” And after about four months, they gave me a show to do.You say that you knew what was funny? How?How do you know when something’s hot?You touch it and it burns you?It’s an instinctual reaction. I know what’s the best way to say a joke or what’s the best position onstage. I also have a multitude of ideas of what’s wrong with the script and what’s not wrong.I’m staggered by the list of shows that you’ve brought into being. How do you know if a show is for you?I try to only do multicamera sitcoms. For me, the camera is not a character. I don’t think of it that way. If there’s two people talking, I want you laughing at what they’re saying, not admiring the beautiful cinematic camera moves. When I first started, I did anything anybody would throw my way. “Taxi,” that was my first big break. Then there was “Cheers,” which I created with Glen and Les Charles. I look at those scripts. “Cheers” was a workplace comedy. “Taxi” was a workplace comedy. But they were about families. In “Taxi,” it’s a family that wants to get out. In “Cheers,” it’s a family that wants to come in. I guess I have a gift for creating families. My job is to mold a disparate group of actors into a family that likes one another.“Cheers,” in 1986, from left: Woody Harrelson, John Ratzenberger, Grammer and George Wendt.Ron Tom/NBC, via Getty ImagesHow do you know if a show is going to work?Well, it comes in pieces. The first thing I do is read the script. Then I’ll meet the writers. There has to be this compromise between writer and director, that’s the second thing. The third thing is the casting. You have to get lucky. You have to have the right actor available.I do my work in rehearsal. I don’t have any preconceptions. I take the best bolts of electricity and stick with that. And if there is no electricity, my job is to try to make electricity, change the batteries. Then I put in pieces of business that make the scene funnier. When the audience comes in on the fifth day, we do the first scene. And if a couple of jokes don’t work, we change the jokes, because the audience is the ultimate barometer.Frasier Crane was first introduced on “Cheers.” Who was he?Glen and Les created the character. He was a device to get Diane Chambers [the waitress played by Shelley Long] back into the bar. She was in a loony bin. Her doctor there was Dr. Frasier Crane, and he recommended that she go back and confront her demons. We hired Kelsey Grammer for four shows. In the first show, he was sitting at the bar, and he opened his mouth and the audience laughed. The three of us looked at one another and went, “Oh my God, this guy’s great.” We hired him for the rest of the series. If you watch Frasier on “Cheers,” you can see he’s a buffoon, but you love him. He’s pretentious, but you love him. Kelsey played him with such vulnerability.What made this character worthy of a spinoff?David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee [the creators and executive producers, who were then writers on “Cheers”] came to us and said they wanted to spin off the character of Frasier. They were smart enough to know that Kelsey was a skilled enough actor to go from playing a buffoon on “Cheers” to playing a leading man on “Frasier.” So that was their genius and also Kelsey’s genius.Where did the inspiration come from to do a revival?I was not involved in that. I don’t even call it a revival. I call it a continuation, because it’s not really a reboot. It’s a character moving on, and he’s surrounded by a whole new set of characters, so it’s not really a reboot.Are there maybe too many revivals, reboots, continuations these days?I have no idea. I don’t like them. But I enjoyed going back with Kelsey and revisiting the character.Grammer, with David Hyde Pierce as his brother Niles Crane, in the original “Frasier,” which premiered in 1993.Gale M. Adler/NBC, via Getty ImagesIf the magic of the original “Frasier” was the interaction among the characters and the actors playing them, is it enough to do it with just Kelsey?Well, the audience will be the judge of that. I know that. When Kelsey called me and said, “Would you do it?” I said, “I’ll read a script.” I read the script. I liked the script. And I agreed to do it just to make sure we protect the character.Has Frasier changed? Can characters change in a multi-cam format?Frasier is dealing with new emotions with his kid that weren’t emotions he dealt with before. He’s still a pompous ass. He always is and will always be. That’s what makes him funny. But I think there is growth.This “Frasier” is on a streamer. It doesn’t need to adhere to a 21-minute time limit or pause for commercial breaks. Does that change anything?You can go up to 30 minutes with a comedy. After that, it gets taxing. I do love a joke a page. Sometimes two jokes. That doesn’t happen often now.Why is that?There are a lot of single-camera comedies that get chuckles. They don’t get guffaws. I have friends at CBS and they say [of multicamera sitcoms], “Don’t worry, don’t worry. They’re going to come back.” I’ve been hearing that for years.How have you seen sitcoms evolve during your career?The one evolution I’ve seen is that a lot of them aren’t funny anymore. The prime requirement of a multicamera sitcom is you’d better be funny.When a great pilot script comes your way, do you still enjoy the process?I had a ball on this, with my dear friend. That laughter behind me is so rewarding for my soul. If somebody sent me a great script, I would almost do it for free. It’s better than sitting around in the house, reading novels and watching sports. And it’s nice to be able to go back to what happened to me 50 years ago and still have this feeling of creativity. When pilot season comes this year, I hope there is a pilot that I like. More

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Fall TV Quiz: Do You Like Game Shows?

      by

      The ongoing strikes by actors and writers in Hollywood mean the broadcast networks have fewer new and returning scripted series than usual this fall. Good thing they have plenty of game shows and reality contests to plug the gaps and a seemingly bottomless appetite for more! Elsewhere there are delayed premieres and other adjustments but don’t worry, there will still be plenty of TV to watch.So what can you expect to see in prime time this fall? Take this quiz to find out. Even if you’ve never read a Hollywood trade publication, a little familiarity with TV’s recent past will serve you well. (Note: Given the ongoing negotiations and uncertainty, all schedule information here is even more subject to change than usual.) More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Fall TV 2023: New and Returning Shows to Watch

      by

      Even with much of Hollywood on strike, there will be plenty of notable new and returning shows arriving in the next few months.We’ve been here before. In 2020, to be exact, when it was the pandemic that played havoc with fall network television schedules.The effects of the writers’ and actors’ strikes this year are a little less drastic — they took hold later in the production cycle than the pandemic did, and they only affect American series. But once again we are looking at lineups full of reality programs and game shows. Fox will still have its animation lineup (their long lead times mean more episodes were completed); CBS will repurpose and recycle (“Yellowstone,” the original British “Ghosts”); CW will offer a Canadian smorgasbord. On cable, streaming and PBS, meanwhile, with shorter seasons and more flexible scheduling, the effects are not so noticeable.Here is a roundup of strike-proof shows on fall schedules. Dates are subject to change.September‘THE SUPER MODELS’ Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington Burns are executive producers of this documentary series about their ’90s heyday, which promises to be as luxurious as the goods they modeled. (Apple+, Sept. 20 )‘SEX EDUCATION’ With Moordale Secondary closed, everyone has to get used to a new school in the fourth and final season of this popular, award-winning, sex-positive soap opera. (Netflix, Sept. 21)‘YOUNG LOVE’ “Hair Love,” the Oscar-winning animated short film from 2019 about a Black father learning to style his daughter’s hair, has been expanded into an animated series about a Chicago family. (Max, Sept. 21)‘THE CONTINENTAL: FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK’ Mel Gibson headlines this three-episode extension of the John Wick universe, a prequel focused on a private hotel for assassins called the Continental. Colin Woodell (“The Flight Attendant”), as the future proprietor Winston Scott, has the unenviable task of convincing us that he’s a younger version of Ian McShane. (Peacock, Sept. 22)‘DEADLOCKED: HOW AMERICA SHAPED THE SUPREME COURT’ Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”) directed this four-part documentary about the modern history of the Supreme Court. (Showtime, Sept. 22)‘KRAPOPOLIS’ Dan Harmon, creator of “Community” and “Rick and Morty,” joins Fox’s Sunday-night lineup with a comedy about a young king (Richard Ayoade) trying to foster civilization in a brightly animated ancient Greece. Fox has ordered three seasons of the show, which if nothing else will provide ample opportunity for the inimitable Matt Berry to voice the king’s father, a debauched half-centaur, half-manticore. (Fox, Sept. 24)Created by Dan Harmon, “Krapopolis” joins Fox’s Sunday night animation lineup.Fox‘THE IRRATIONAL’ Jesse L. Martin, a star of “Rent” on Broadway and a “Law & Order” mainstay for nine seasons, gets his own show for the first time in a three-decade TV career. In mainstream TV’s long tradition of offbeat crime solvers, he plays a behavioral scientist whose quirky team tackles “illogical puzzles and perplexing mysteries.” (NBC, Sept. 25)‘FRIEREN: BEYOND JOURNEY’S END’ This anime series begins after its heroes have completed their ultimate mission; one of the group, the elf Frieren, will outlive her human companions by hundreds of years and come to regret not having known them better. In a genre that gives a lot of space to melancholia, “Frieren” is particularly wistful. (Crunchyroll, Sept. 29)‘GEN V’ Amazon expands the world of its buzziest show, “The Boys,” with a spinoff set in a college for superheroes. (Amazon Prime Video, Sept. 29)October‘BOB’S BURGERS’ Fourteen seasons in (with No. 15 already ordered), Loren Bouchard’s animated comedy remains the sweetest, truest series about family love and dysfunction. With the recent revitalization of “The Simpsons,” it makes Sunday night on Fox the closest thing left to a destination on terrestrial TV. (Fox, Oct. 1)‘FOUND’ Shanola Hampton of “Shameless” stars as a public-relations expert who looks for missing persons of color in NBC’s second new series about an unconventional crime-solving team (after “The Irrational”). (NBC, Oct. 3)Shanola Hampton and Bill Kelly in “Found,” coming to NBC in October.Steve Swisher/NBC‘THE SPENCER SISTERS’ Lea Thompson, starring in a live-action series for the first time since ABC Family’s “Switched at Birth” ended in 2017, plays a Canadian mystery writer who solves crimes with her ex-cop daughter. The joke is that the vain, libidinous mom and the no-nonsense daughter get mistaken for sisters, or so the mother would believe; call it “Murder, She Flirted.” (CW, Oct. 4)‘BARGAIN’ The story line of this Korean series involving an organ auction, a remote location and an earthquake carries some “Squid Game” vibes. (Paramount+, Oct. 5)‘LUPIN’ Netflix’s contemporary take on a classic French character, the turn-of-the-previous-century master thief Arsène Lupin, resurfaces more than two years after its last appearance. Omar Sy returns as the Lupin aficionado Assane Diop, who spent the show’s first two seasons clearing the name of his unjustly imprisoned father. (Netflix, Oct. 5)‘OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH’ David Jenkins’s singular concoction — a queer romance and office sitcom set aboard an 18th-century pirate ship — returns for a second season. (Max, Oct. 5)‘TRANSPLANT’ A pre-strike Canadian import, this conventionally well-made medical drama about a Syrian refugee (Hamza Haq) who becomes a surgeon at a Toronto hospital enters its third season, with Rekha Sharma replacing John Hannah as the chief of the emergency room. (NBC, Oct. 5)‘LOKI’ The most multiverse-y of the Disney+ Marvel series returns for a second season, with Tom Hiddleston as a variant of the shifty Norse god Loki who is reluctantly attached to a timeline-policing authority. The Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan joins the cast. (Disney+, Oct. 6)From left, Tom Hiddleston, Ke Huy Quan and Owen Wilson in “Loki.”Gareth Gatrell/Marvel, via Disney+‘THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER’ Having adapted Shirley Jackson (“The Haunting of Hill House”) and Henry James (“The Haunting of Bly Manor”) for Netflix, Mike Flanagan tackles Edgar Allan Poe in a story that reimagines the Ushers as a big-pharma family. Flanagan regulars like Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas and Michael Trucco return. (Netflix, Oct. 12)‘FRASIER’ Intellectual property that deserves the name. The sparkling sitcom returns with Kelsey Grammer’s sniffy psychiatrist, Frasier Crane, having relocated to Boston (scene of the character’s original incarnation in “Cheers”) after his 1993-2004 run in Seattle. Not making the trip, unfortunately, is David Hyde Pierce as Frasier’s brother, Niles, nor, apparently, any of the other original cast members. (Paramount+, Oct. 12)‘GOOSEBUMPS’ R.L. Stine’s series of comic horror books for teenagers, already the basis of a popular series on Fox Kids in the 1990s, gets a new adaptation created by Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) and Rob Letterman (the 2015 “Goosebumps” feature film). (Disney+, Oct. 13)‘LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY’ Apple has shown a taste for shows with a nostalgic flavor, whether or not they are set in the past — “Hello Tomorrow!,” “Physical,” “The Morning Show.” (Remember when morning shows mattered?) Brie Larson stars in this one as a woman in the 1950s who channels her skills as a scientist into hosting a cooking show. (Apple+, Oct. 13)Brie Larson stars in “Lessons in Chemistry” as a scientist turned cooking show host.Apple TV+‘SHINING VALE’ Courteney Cox, as a blocked writer who moves to the suburbs, and Mira Sorvino, as the jealous ghost haunting the writer’s new house, return in a comic take on “The Shining” whose first season was cleverly macabre. (Starz, Oct. 13)‘ANNIKA’ The second season of this under-the-radar British cop show will be American viewers’ only ration of the wonderful actress Nicola Walker this fall, now that “The Split” and her run in “Unforgotten” have ended. Walker plays the leader of a “marine homicide unit” based in Glasgow. (PBS, Oct. 15)‘BILLY THE KID’ It’s not obvious why this workmanlike western with the British actor Tom Blyth in the title role got a second season, but it may have something to do with the track record of its creator, the British writer Michael Hirst, who was also responsible for “The Tudors” and “Vikings.” (MGM+, Oct. 15)‘RICK AND MORTY’ The seventh season of the celebrated sci-fi cartoon will be the first without Justin Roiland, who created the show with Dan Harmon and voiced both of the title characters. (Adult Swim cut ties with Roiland after his 2020 arrest on domestic abuse charges was publicized; the charges have since been dropped.) (Adult Swim, Oct. 15)‘WORLD ON FIRE’ The first season of this British series about ordinary people proving their mettle, or failing to prove it, in the various theaters of World War II was not the most sophisticated of melodramas. The return of Lesley Manville (after a four-year gap between seasons), as a bigoted Manchester woman coping with her son’s sudden acquisition of a Polish wife, makes up for a lot, though. (PBS, Oct. 15)‘THE AMERICAN BUFFALO’ For the first time, Ken Burns directs a documentary that is not about man or man’s accomplishments. (Well, the second time if you count “Not for Ourselves Alone,” the one among his three dozen projects as a director that focuses specifically on women.) But the four-hour series is equal parts human history and natural history, as it traces the intertwined fates of the bison and the tribes that depended on them. (PBS, Oct. 16)‘EVERYONE ELSE BURNS’ The CW slips a British comedy onto its menu of mostly Canadian series. Simon Bird of “The Inbetweeners” and Kate O’Flynn of “Landscapers” play the parents in a family that struggles with the strictures of their Christian sect, whose many no-nos include drinking coffee and celebrating birthdays. (CW, Oct. 16)Simon Bird and Kate O’Flynn star in “Everyone Else Burns,” a British import coming to the CW.James Stack/CW‘NEON’ Three friends portrayed by Tyler Dean Flores (who plays the singer), Emma Ferreira (the overbearing manager) and Jordan Mendoza (the social media geek) move to Miami in search of reggaeton stardom in a comedy whose executive producers include the Taylor Swift antagonist Scooter Braun. (Netflix, Oct. 19)‘WOLF LIKE ME’ This Australian dark comedy is a mix of rom-com and broken-family drama in which one character’s being a werewolf is both the classic impediment to true love and an all-purpose allegory of the need for safety in relationships. Its first season was slight, amusing and often moving. (Peacock, Oct. 19)‘30 COINS’ The Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia’s entertainingly lurid thriller about a demonic conspiracy focused on a small village gets a second season and a substantial new cast member, Paul Giamatti, who plays a mysterious American tech billionaire. (HBO, Oct. 23)‘LIFE ON OUR PLANET’ The creators of British series like “Planet Earth” and “Our Planet” join forces with Industrial Light and Magic and Steven Spielberg for a natural-history series about the ebb and flow of life across the eons, which provides copious opportunities for animating the 99 percent of earth’s species that have gone extinct. (Netflix, Oct. 25)‘FELLOW TRAVELERS’ Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey star as clandestine lovers in a nostalgic march-of-history mini-series — McCarthyism, Vietnam, disco, AIDS — written by Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia”), based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon. (Paramount+, Oct. 27; Showtime, Oct. 29)‘THIS ENGLAND’ Hamlet and Hercule Poirot are all well and good, but here’s a real challenge for Kenneth Branagh: playing the Brexit-boosting, Covid-partying former prime minister of Britain, Boris Johnson, in a six-episode mini-series written by Michael Winterbottom and Kieron Quirke. (BritBox, Nov. 1)‘ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE’ Steven Knight, creator of “Peaky Blinders,” developed this mini-series from Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning World War II romantic thriller about a brave, blind French girl and a German boy whose technical skills pull him into the Nazi army. Marie-Laure, the blind heroine, is played by Aria Mia Loberti, a Fulbright scholar, disability advocate and first-time actor; Marie-Laure’s father and great-uncle are played by the more seasoned Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie. (Netflix, Nov. 2)Aria Mia Loberti, a first-time actor, stars in an adaptation of the novel “All the Light We Cannot See.”Katalin Vermes/Netflix‘LAWMEN: BASS REEVES’ Originally billed as yet another spinoff of “Yellowstone,” the latest show from the executive producer Taylor Sheridan is now an anthology series that will feature various real-life old-west lawmen. The first season stars David Oyelowo as Reeves, a formerly enslaved man who developed a formidable reputation as a deputy U.S. marshal. Lauren E. Banks plays Reeves’s wife and the cast includes Dennis Quaid, Donald Sutherland and Shea Whigham. (Paramount+, Nov. 5)‘THE BUCCANEERS’ “A group of fun-loving young American girls explode into the tightly corseted London season of the 1870s,” according to the press release, which sounds like a cross between “Downton Abbey” and a reality dating competition (never mind that it’s based on an unfinished Edith Wharton novel). (Apple TV+, Nov. 8)‘FOR ALL MANKIND’ Equal parts soap opera and engaging alt-history of the space race — you didn’t see the North Korean thing coming, did you? — “Mankind” jumps ahead another decade for its fourth season, with international partners uneasily working together to mine asteroids in 2003. (Apple TV+, Nov. 10)‘BELGRAVIA: THE NEXT CHAPTER’ Written by Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey”) and starring redoubtable British performers like Tamsin Greig and Harriet Walter, the mini-series “Belgravia,” about 1840s London society, was a distinct pleasure. This sequel jumps ahead 30 years and has a new cast and a new writer, Helen Edmundson (“Dalgliesh”). (MGM+, Nov. 12)‘PARIS POLICE 1905’ The first season of this historical police procedural — titled “Paris Police 1900” and set when the procedures we’re used to seeing were being invented — was handsomely produced, crazily plotted and consistently entertaining. The new season returns most of the cast (with the regrettable exception of Valérie Dashwood’s laudanum-sniffing, steel-nerved Mme. Lépine) and adds automobiles. (MHz Choice, Nov. 14)‘MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS’ Kurt Russell’s last regular role in a series was nearly 50 years ago, in the 1976 western “The Quest,” so kudos to Legendary Pictures and Apple for talking him into starring in their Godzilla-adjacent MonsterVerse mystery. It’s a package deal: Russell and his son Wyatt both play the central character, an Army officer somehow connected to kaiju research and development. That would seem to prevent them from appearing onscreen together, but we can always hope for a time warp. (Apple TV+, Nov. 17)‘SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF’ Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels about a mopey Toronto bassist who is also, accidentally, a video-game warrior — already made into a 2010 film starring Michael Cera, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” — are now adapted into an anime series produced by the Japanese studio Science SARU. O’Malley is on board as a writer and showrunner. (Netflix, Nov. 17)‘FARGO’ After an underwhelming sojourn in 1950s Kansas City in its fourth season, Noah Hawley’s arch rural noir heads back north to Minnesota and North Dakota for a story starring Jon Hamm as a sheriff and Juno Temple as the woman he’s hunting for. The typically eclectic cast includes Dave Foley, Lamorne Morris and Jennifer Jason Leigh. (FX, Nov. 21)‘ECHO’ Like alien invaders sending out spores, Marvel series multiply on Disney+. This one — starring Alaqua Cox as the Native American hero who can perfectly mimic movement and Zahn McClarnon as her father — is an offshoot of “Hawkeye,” from 2021. But it lies closer to “Daredevil” in the Marvel narrative architecture, so Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are also in the cast as Daredevil and the Kingpin. (Disney+, Nov. 29)December‘PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS’ Ten years after the second and, so far, final Percy Jackson film, Walker Scobell (he played Ryan Reynolds’s younger self in “The Adam Project”) takes on the role of the 12-year-old demigod in a new series. (Disney+, Dec. 20)Other returning shows: “American Horror Story” (FX, Sept. 20); “Starstruck” (Max, Sept. 28); “The Simpsons” (Fox, Oct. 1); “Family Guy” (Fox, Oct. 1); “Magnum P.I.” (NBC, Oct. 4); “Quantum Leap” (NBC, Oct. 4); “Creepshow” (Shudder, Oct. 13); “Hotel Portofino” (PBS, Oct. 15); “Bosch: Legacy” (Freevee, Oct. 20); “Upload” (Amazon Prime Video, Oct. 20); “Native America” (PBS, Oct. 24); “American Horror Stories” (FX on Hulu, Oct. 26); “Shoresy” (Hulu, Oct. 27); “The Gilded Age” (HBO, Oct. 29); “Invincible” (Amazon Prime Video, Nov. 3); “Rap Sh!t” (Max, Nov. 9); “Julia” (Max, Nov. 16); “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” (Starz, Dec. 1) More