9 TV Shows You Need To Watch This Fall

While Back to School season is null for us as adults, the transition from summer to fall does have perks: New York no longer smelling like hot garbage, cool breezes, and (sorry not sorry) pumpkin spice lattes. And we do have our own version of homework: the chockfull season of programming known as "Fall TV." Streaming sites and cable networks like FX have lessened the impact of Fall TV, but it still remains the time of the year in which the most new television is introduced. That means a whole lot of bad network shows, new HBO power grabs (Hi Westworld!), and overall, enough programming to make a TV Guide from 1994 disintegrate. (Cheers to the Golden Era of TV!)

So let's simplify things. Instead of taking a look at every show on television this fall like we did last year (cool though, right?), here are nine picks for what you should tune into this fall.

Network: FX

Premiered: Sept. 6 at 10 p.m.

For Fans Of: Twin Peaks with a side of existential dread.

The hype around FX’s newest series Atlanta is nothing to be sneezed at. We knew Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, was poised to serve us something dope when he told us last year that he wanted to make a “Twin Peaks with rappers”—a series that is, as Complex’s own Julian Kimble writes, an “ingenious exploration of resurgent ambition anchored by the black experience in America.” The show’s creator, executive producer, and writer, Glover stars as Earn, a once promising 20-something grasping desperately at his last chance to come back out on top. He begins managing his cousin, rapper Alfred "Paper Boi" Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), while also trying to also hold down an amiable relationship with the mother of his kid. But that only scratches the surface of what Atlanta manages to deliver in its first four episodes—including drugs, murder, socioeconomic disparity, and parenthood. As Henry told Complex in a recent interview, Atlanta “is really going to cover all things, and nothing at all.” And from what we’ve seen so far, that may be the best thing to happen to television this year. —Catie Keck

Network: FX

Premiered: Sept. 8 at 10 p.m.

For Fans Of: The gawd Pamela Adlon (and messy, spectacular women)

Pamela Adlon has long made her mark as "that chick" in Hollywood. You instantly recognize her, but aren't quite sure where from. Could it be from Grease 2? Californication? Boston Legal? More than likely, you'll recognize her from Louie, where she recently played Pamela, the off/on love interest with whom Louie had more than a murky history. Finally though, Adlon's stepping into the spotlight on her own, with Better Things, a Louie-esque "sitcom" in which Adlon plays Sam Fox, a working actress in Los Angeles and a single mom of three girls.

It's easy to assume that Better Things could be more "can this woman have it all?" garbage, but Adlon pushes past that low, boring bar. While she examines what it's like working as an "aging" (ughhhh) actress in Hollywood and raising her girls, she also packs the show with an unexpected emotional punch, from a surprising romantic connection with a director to a whole episode devoted solely to the Period. Better Things is a perfect mix of Adlon's biting sarcasm, feminist bent, and huge heart. When the pilot episode had Sam texting her former love, reminiscing about their time together to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now," I knew I was a goner.—Kerensa Cadenas

Network: ABC

Premiered: Sept. 12 at 8 p.m.

For Fans Of: When "Jeah" Goes Very, Very Wrong.

Full disclosure: I’ve never watched Dancing With the Stars. I don’t even know if I’ve ever watched a YouTube clip from Dancing With the Stars. It just seems like a pretty stupid, vapid TV show, and I’ve never cared much for Tom Bergeron. But ABC turned it fucking out this year, and I’m pretty sure DWTS is going to be the best thing on network TV this fall.

The success of this show season to season is almost entirely dependent on the contestants. Just browsing Wikipedia, you can see that the lineups follow a format: a few forgotten celebrities, another couple D-listers, some athletes, maybe someone with a notable, heartwarming story. That formula in the past hasn’t produced the most exciting results—that Alfonso Ribeiro doing the “Carlton” in 2014 is an all-time highlight is not a good thing—but finally, ABC seems to have realized that reality TV in 2016 is only successful if it’s as savage as possible. Look at this season’s cast: Amber Rose, Vanilla Ice, the very despicable, very failed presidential candidate Rick Perry—that’s a trainwreck waiting to happen that I will not be able to look away from. And you know who else is dancing this season? FUCKING RYAN LOCHTE. Lochte is an embarrassment to the United States, and DWTS is all too happy to turn itself into a vehicle for Lochte schadenfreude. Bless them. I can’t wait until that very flamboyant judge (just looked up his name—it’s Bruno Tonioli) tells Lochte, “That moonwalk was worse than the time you sprayed the walls of a Brazilian bathroom with your urine.” [Note: I wrote this before Monday night’s season premiere, during which TWO MEN RAN ON STAGE TO ATTACK RYAN LOCHTE. That’s just the beginning.]

Finally, the frontrunner for this season is Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez, an absolute goddess who makes very good faces during floor exercises:

Network: HBO

Premiere: Sept. 16 at 11 p.m.

For Fans Of: Smoking weed without owning clothing that tells everyone about it.

High Maintenance has steadily risen its profile over the past four years from an independent series of shorts to Vimeo’s first On Demand original program to HBO’s latest half-hour comedy. It’s the path every Brooklyn creative group with a web series dreams of, but not every group has Ben Sinclair and KatjaBlichfeld.

The husband-wife duo created a pot-smoking series in which the characters’ defining traits aren’t smoking pot. While too many shows and movies turn those who indulge in marijuana into caricatures, Sinclair and Blichfeld use the herb as a window into the lives of a diverse range of New Yorkers. Sinclair plays a nameless drug dealer, known simply as The Guy, who acts as the Kevin Bacon in the degrees of separation between a cross-dressing father, a homeless woman who uses online dating to shack up, and a couple terrorized by their Airbnb patrons. We get infrequent glimpses into The Guy’s life, and his occasional faux-pas creates conflict for our customers, but the true stars are his clientele.

By reserving judgment for what was once or still is considered taboo, High Maintenance explores the oddities—the obsessions, rituals, beliefs, speaking patterns, hobbies, dreams, fears—that set us apart while revealing we aren’t so different. We all smoke pot. Or a shit ton of us do, at least. Marijuana isn’t the only commonality amongst people, but it’s a consistently reliable bridge to discover more of them. Come for the pot; stay for the vignettes vacillating between hysterical and devastating, wacky and routine, familiar and foreign. Outstanding writing and casting (Blichfeld is an Emmy-winning casting director) have made High Maintenance a cult favorite online. With a longer slot and a larger outlet, the roto only grows stronger. —Ian Servantes

Network: Amazon

Premiere: Sept. 16

For Fans Of: "Gritty" Sex and the City.

Amazon has a spotty track record in their quest to topple Netflix, but one thing they do excel at is picking the creme of the crop of exported shows (check out Catastrophe immediately!). Their next hopefully successful export is the British Fleabag from the mind of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who stars in and wrote all six episodes. The idea for the show stemmed out of Waller-Bridge's own anxieties about what being a "good feminist" meant and debates with friends about how much sex a single woman should really be having. Fleabag was born from the dark recesses of every woman's paranoid thoughts.

Waller-Bridge plays Fleabag (yes, that's her name), a sarcastic woman who navigates living and loving in London. Sex and the City-sounding right? But unlike Carrie in SATC, Fleabag is plagued with financial stressors, family troubles, and an undercurrent of crippling grief. She constantly breaks the fourth wall, directly addressing the audience about her friendships, one night stands and bitchy sister. Fleabag manages to make a typical premise fresh, biting, and emotionally devastating. And with Waller-Bridge behind the scenes and in front of the camera, it's yet another gem that Amazon picked from abroad. —Kerensa Cadenas

Network: Netflix

Premiere: Sept. 30

For Fans Of: Marvel Series That Need More Black People and Hip-Hop in Their Lives.

Marvel’s Cinematic Universe has been dominated by white, male superheroes, but in 2016, it feels like someone over there decided to open up the scope and let the non-white males and women shine. Whether it was Black Panther stealing every scene in Captain America: Civil War or Brie Larson signing on to play Captain Marvel, there’s some change we can believe in, even if there are still some things that need explaining. We’re on the right path, and no move explains that more than Luke Cage, the latest original Netflix series from Marvel.

Going down in the heart of Harlem, Luke Cage features a bulletproof black man in a time where being black while doing damn near anything could result in the police busting a few caps in your ass. Where a show like Daredevil can show you the darker side of Hell’s Kitchen, Luke Cage brings the soul of Harlem to the MCU. From the soundtrack (which is expertly crafted by Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge) to the cast (which mixes returning Marvel actors like Rosario Dawson with new faces like the super-hotMahershala Ali), we’re being given one of the most diverse Marvel casts ever.

Look, when you get a series that’s firmly planted within the MCU, it’s easy to say “hey, this is going to be dope.” Marvel’s been consistent good, both in their film products and in their television series. Luke Cage doesn’t totally reinvent the wheel, but it does do one extremely important thing: it lets you know that superheroes come in all shapes and sizes, and while the soundtrack might be different, a black superhero can lead the way without selling himself or his people out. —khal

Network: The CW

Premiere: Begins Oct. 4 at 8 p.m. with The Flash.

For Fans Of: For Fans Of Superhero #Content That Isn't Just 300 With Capes.

It’s been a rough year to be a DC comics fan at the movies. Warner Bros. fucked around and let two hacks mangle both Batman & Superman and the Joker & Harley Quinn’s first time sharing the silver screen. Travesties abounded. While we patiently await for the film universe to hire someone who actually knows what they’re doing, thankfully it’s almost October—time again, to take solace in the fact that DC TV, at the very least, has their shit together.

Last year’s respective seasons of The Flash and Arrow didn’t even represent both shows at their creative peaks, but the stage is set for a grand return. The Flash, which has already played with time travel and parallel universes, is about to fully unleash its game of mindfucks by adapting the fan-favorite storyline Flashpoint, presenting an alternate reality with dozens of ripple effects after Barry’s last-minute decision to fuck with fate and prevent his mother’s death. By contrast, Arrow is rolling out a much-needed scale back. After seasons full of haiku-spouting unkillable assassins, mysticism and magic, not to mention a highly overwrought engagement subplot, the talk is that season five will feature a return to the basics that made it so enjoyable in the first place: hardcore, human villains and plots grounded in Nolan-Batman level realism. Here’s hoping it can finally recapture the season two highs that it’s been chasing.

That’s to say nothing of the wildly impressive small-screen cinematic universe that Greg Berlanti and co. have set up. This fall has not only Arrow and Flash airing side-by-side, but spin-off Legends of Tomorrow AND the newly CW-adopted Supergirl, with plans for at least a FOUR-WAY crossover event. It’s at once intimidating and impressive to even think about.

It sucks that the A-list heroes are getting poor representation in film, but Berlanti’s B-squad is crushing it. When Ben Affleck announced Joe Manganiello would be playing Deathstroke in his Batman solo film, all the real ones knew Berlanti’s take on the iconic villain is the one to beat. Case, meet point. —Frazier Tharpe

Network: The CW

Premiere: Oct. 4 at 9 p.m.

For Fans Of: End-of-the-World Sex​.

We've said this before and we'll keep saying it until everyone agrees: THE CW IS THE MOST LIT NETWORK (imagine there are a bunch of handclap emojis around these words for extra in-your-face emphasis). While The CW is currently killing the rom-com game with Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, they've added what will likely be another fire show to their slate with No Tomorrow, a quirky romantic series starring a Taylor Swift look-a-like (Tori Anderson) who falls in love with her Michael Fassbender look-a-like neighbor (Joshua Sasse). I know that sounds like a TV dramatization of the recently-canceled Hiddleswift relationship, but it has none of the annoying factors of that extreme PDA on a pile of New England rocks.

No Tomorrow, like its fellow CW cohorts, of course has a so-weird-it-works premise: turns out the hunky neighbor Xavier (Sasse) that our protagonist Evie (Anderson) falls for is a self-proclaimed "apocalyst," which means he believes the world will end in eight months. And he's dead serious about it. Xavier has a bucket list—wait for it—an apocaLIST, of things to do before the end of existence, so he just lives every day like there's… NO TOMORROW. He sounds crazy, yes, and if it was anyone else, the dude would probably be hit with a restraining order ASAP, but he's SO DARN HOT that Evie—after some feigned protest—just goes along with this whole thing and makes her own apocalist. You know how it goes: Xavier helps Evie live life on the edge, not take anything for granted, etc… Eyeroll all you want but it's actually freakin' cute and so fun to watch on a basic escapist level because you get to vicariously live through two people who do whatever the hell they want. We can't wait to see how this show unfurls—and what will happen when those eight months run out. —Kristen Yoonsoo Kim

Network: HBO

Premiere: Oct. 9th at 10:30 p.m.

For Fans Of: Awkward Black Girl (duh)

One of the most awesome parts of television on 2016 seems to be the idea that black characters can be more than the Lucious or Cookie Lyons of Empire, no disrespect to that show. A show like Atlanta, while firmly planted in the world of hip-hop, is about so much more, allowing us to see different shades and textures of black life in the U.S., while Luke Cage is doing something similar in the superhero realm. Lucky for us, Issa Rae’s Insecure, which she created alongside television vet Larry Wilmore, lets us know that there are, ahem, awkward black girls out there, too.

The series, which aims to pick up and expound upon Rae’s hit web series, Awkward Black Girl, finds Issa at a pivotal moment in her life where she’s tired of doing what many expect of her, and is really trying to find herself and what she’s been put on this planet to do. The problem? She’s not as “cool” as many might think, which is where the comedy (and reality) really kicks in.

Issa Rae has already been a gem for those of us outside of the “cool” black realm for the last five years, and in linking with Larry Wilmore (who’s working on a litany of successful television shows, from The Office to The Bernie Mac Show), one has to imagine that all of the social and life issues she’s already tackled, in today’s climate, will be turnt to the nth degree. —khal