Fall TV First Impressions – Prodigal Son, Perfect Harmony, and Evil

It’s September and that means it’s time for new shows on network TV! I watched three premieres this week. Here are my first impressions of Prodigal Son, Perfect Harmony, and Evil.

Prodigal Son

Tom Payne stars as Malcolm Bright, a criminal psychologist with a troubled background and some managed mental health issues. He is also the son of a serial killer, Dr. Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen), who taught him much of what he knows about the mind of a criminal.

While Sheen is fantastic in his role, the rest of the acting is average at best. Tom Payne’s performance felt a little forced, but that also had to do with the spoon-fed feel of the writing. I liked the complexity of both characters, but the mediocre story didn’t pull me in. I don’t plan to watch this again unless I hear that it radically improves.

Prodigal Son airs Mondays at 9pm on Fox.

Perfect Harmony

Perfect Harmony is a 30-minute sitcom starring Bradley Whitford and Anna Camp. It’s about former Princeton music professor Arthur Cochran (Whitford) who finds himself in a small town after his wife’s death, contemplating whether he wants to go on. He happens upon a small church choir that needs a lot of help – musically and otherwise. Arthur’s gruff disposition clashes with the choir, but ultimately they come together.

The story is predictable: grumpy, yet redeemable, old man finds a new home with small group of misfits. Whitford and Camp are great in their roles. The rest of the cast is pretty forgettable, though that will hopefully change as the supporting characters are developed.

I’m not a huge fan of sitcoms but I did laugh out loud a couple times during the pilot. This is the type of show I’ll watch while multi-tasking.

Perfect Harmony airs Thursdays at 8:30pm on NBC.

Evil

Evil stars Mike Colter, Katja Herbers, and Aasif Mandvi as a priest-in-training, a psychologist, and a contractor. That might sound like the start of a “walk into a bar” joke, but this show is absolutely not a joke.

The lovable Colter plays David, a priest-in-training who is investigating the supernatural. In the pilot, he enlists the help of Kristen and Ben to sort out whether or not a serial killer is actually possessed by a demon.

It looks like each episode will focus on a different case and discovering whether the demons, miracles, etc can really be explained by science. While it seems a little bit like Scooby-Doo on steroids, Evil is well-acted, compelling, and pretty damn creepy at times. Case in point: a scene where a demon crawled under Kristen’s bedcovers in the middle of the night had me screaming “Hell no!”

But I will definitely watch this show again. I love the premise, the characters, and the complexity.

Evil airs Thursdays at 10pm on CBS.