This week TV shows announced their fall lineups and we can tell you one thing for sure – there’s no lack of Black folks on the air this fall.
The runaway success of shows like Scandal, The Haves and the Have Nots and Being Mary Jane along with the spate of reality shows with black casts and their rabid Twitter/social media followings have apparently impressed network TV executives enough to bet on Black.
Viola Davis, Larry Fishburne, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tracee Ellis Ross, Anthony Anderson, Larry Whitmore, Terrence Howard, Taraji P. Henson, Malik Yoba and Alfre Woodward will all be on your TV screen this fall.
Here’s are just a few of the hottest new shows and their trailers for fall.
HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER ABC 10 p.m. Thursdays
On the heels of her eight, yup, eight-figure deal with ABC, Shonda Rhimes puts another Black woman in a starring role on TV. Oscar nominee Viola Davis plays a law professor whose college class gets involved with some shady dealings.
EMPIRE Fox, midseason 2015
Lee Daniels came up with this look at the doings of a hip-hop label and so far, it has everything you would expect – crime, murder, homosexuality, intrigue and what looks like virtuoso dramatics from Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard. So what if it looks like they combined Diddy’s life with a mishmash of hip-hop stereotypes? It’s gotta be better than any Love and Hip-Hop show on TV.
BLACK-ISH Wednesdays, 9:30 p.m.
Colbert Show writer was going to be the showrunner on this Anthony Anderson/Tracee Ellis Ross vehicle but he got tapped to replace Colbert, who’s replacing Letterman. So we’ll see how it goes, but the trailer made us LOL.
GOTHAM Fox, Mondays
We are already loving Jada’s red-tipped hair as Fish Mooney, a new villain in the town of Gotham, that little place that spawned a guy named Batman in the DC Comics universe. Though critics are already questioning how a show about Batman’s origins will be missing a grown-up Batman, we thought the trailer was very cool.
POWER Starz Saturday, June 7 @ 9 p.m.
You won’t have to wait until fall for this show, backed by 50 Cent. Although it looks strikingly similar to Empire thematically, it has a few differences – for one Omari Hardwick is in it, and yes, there are plenty of barechested shots of him here, too. (You’ll remember his bare chest and tatts were almost another character on Being Mary Jane.)
