The fall season, based on new shows I’ve watched two episodes of. Or not

Wow. I don’t recall any time I’ve had so much new genre material to watch, and so much of it on broadcast networks rather than SyFy. Not that it’s all good, but the fact there’s so much out there is encouraging. Though of course, it’s much easier for me to axe a marginal one from my viewing time than it would be in times past.
SLEEPY HOLLOW has Ichabod Crane beheading a demonic Hessian at Valley Forge, then waking up in the present day to find the Headless Horseman walks the Earth again—oh, and he’s one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Can Ichabod and a hot sheriff save the day? Makes a mess of Revelation and Washington Irving, but that said, it’s watchable. But if anything has to go, this’ll probably be it.
BLACK LIST lost my interest when it gave James Spader the nickname “the Concierge of Crime” because he can get anything for anyone. It didn’t get better from then on. Spader plays a criminal mastermind (though we’ve seen little evidence of his criminal genius to date) working with an FBI profiler to bring down the criminals so secretive they never appear on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Spader doesn’t do much for the role and the rest of the show didn’t work for me either (plus Leverage did a better job giving us criminals who can’t be touched by the law).
WITCHES OF EAST END has two small-town sisters discover they’ve actually lived before, multiple times, due to a curse that envelops them, their mother (Julia Ormond) and shapeshifting auntie Madchen Amick. Hard to say where it’s going yet, but I found this Lifetime series at least a little more interesting than Sleepy Hollow. And I did love one sister’s line “Please tell me this isn’t the moment where I find the power was inside me all along.”
THE ORIGINALS spins off from The Vampire Diaries by having Klaus and Rebecca Michaelson return to New Orleans, which they helped found, only to discover Klaus’s former protege Marcel is now king of the city’s supernatural denizens and not looking for rivals. This is clearly shooting to be a tale of redemption for the murderous siblings (giving Klaus a tragic backstory for instance) but Klaus is evil enough that’s going to be a challenge.
AGENTS OF SHIELD starts off well as Coulson gathers a new team of agents to lead on special missions, but the level of comic-book and SF elements seems to drop as it went along (the third episode could have been almost any spy show). I know it’s SHIELD and not the Avengers, but the comic-book version of SHIELD was a lot livelier. However, it may be lively enough.
THE TOMORROW PEOPLE was a British teen SF show about “homo superior,” teens with psychic powers who represent the next stage in human evolution (and technically would be homo sapiens superior,” no matter what Professor X says). This much-better-budgeted remake has a teenager learn he’s part of the homo superior wave, but his human uncle runs a secret organization dedicated to locking the TP up. While in many ways superior to the original, it suffers from treading on familiar ground—this could as easily be Mutant X, Alphas or The 4400 with its story of government repression and good and bad superhumans.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND doesn’t work for me as well as Once Upon a Time does, primarily because lumping Aladdin and Alice together (Jaffar is apparently the big villain) seems a much more awkward mash-up than the fairytale elements of the parent series. The leads are also a lot weaker—but it took me a while to warm to the first series, so I’ll give this some time.