A comic’s play-by-play

Everybody Hates Chris, Thursdays, 8 to 8:30 p.m. (UPN)

No new show on the fall lineup has been as lauded as UPN’s comedy “Everybody Hates Chris” -- and that’s a mixed blessing in this era of the sped-up buzz cycle.

The show, based on comedian Chris Rock’s Brooklyn adolescence, with Rock narrating in voice-over, could be a breakthrough for UPN. Or all the positive advance notice could wind up not translating into ratings.

“We’re thrilled about the critical praise and all of the attention that UPN is getting for ‘Everybody Hates Chris,’ ” said the network’s president of entertainment, Dawn Ostroff. “We’ve seen scripts for several upcoming episodes and we couldn’t be happier with what the producers are doing. Of course, we’re very excited about the show’s prospects, but we’re realistic about our expectations.”

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Sunday

The War at Home

Fox

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 8:30 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 11

Stars: Michael Rapaport (“Boston Public”), Anita Barone, Dean Collins (“MadTV”), Kaylee DeFer, Kyle Sullivan.

The premise: Breast-obsessed insurance man Rapaport bugs and is bugged by his family but tries to do the right thing in what can be read as (relatively speaking) a kinder, gentler “Married With Children,” with added child. Innovation: Family members address the camera from neutral white space as if narrating a reality show. Jokes about bed-wetting, porn. Older son likes musicals -- but he’s not gay!

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Monday

Surface

NBC

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 8 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 19

Stars: Lake Bell (“Boston Legal”), Carter Jenkins (“Bad News Bears,” “CSI: NY”), Jay R. Ferguson (“Judging Amy”), Rade Serbedzija (“Snatch”), Leighton Meester.

The premise: Can you say “Loch Ness monster”? You can? OK, never mind then. It’s much more alien-ish than that. Lake Bell stars as an oceanographer. There’s also a government scientist, a bayou fisherman and a kid previously minding his own business in San Diego. It’s a “Close Encounters” setup, all of them discovering that there’s something at sea that isn’t exactly of this world. Oh, sure, you can scoop one of its eggs out of the water, take it home and put it in your aquarium, but that’s probably not a good idea.

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How I Met Your Mother

CBS

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 8:30 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 19

Stars: Josh Radnor, Alyson Hannigan (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), Jason Segel (“Freaks and Geeks”), Neil Patrick Harris (“Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” “Undercover Brother,” “Doogie Howser, M.D.” ), Cobie Smulders.

The premise: Witty flashback comedy, narrated from the future, in which decent-guy romantic Radnor seeks true love -- and, to keep the series going, will not find it anytime soon. Notable for its “I Love the ‘90s” supporting cast, including, like “Kitchen Confidential” (below), one alum apiece from “Buffy” (Hannigan) and “Freaks and Geeks” (Segel), cutely coupled. Plus Harris, who was Doogie Howser, in a suit.

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Kitchen Confidential

Fox

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 8:30 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 19

Stars: Bradley Cooper, Bonnie Somerville, Owain Yeoman, Nicholas Brendon, Jaime King, John Francis Daley (“Freaks and Geeks”).

The premise: Cooper plays a TV-friendly version of real-life bad-boy chef and author Anthony Bourdain, who has written of the restaurant kitchen as a place of “wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths,” not excluding himself. Here, after an unscheduled hiatus because of chronic overindulgence, half-renamed “Jack” Bourdain gets a second chance at the big time, assembling a team of misfit genius cooks. Somerville is his boss’ bossy daughter, always on his case -- that means she likes him, you know?

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Out of Practice

CBS

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 9:30 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 19

Stars: Christopher Gorham (“Jake 2.0,” “Popular”), Paula Marshall (“Cheaper by the Dozen”), Ty Burrell (“Dawn of the Dead,” “Black Hawk Down”). With Henry Winkler (“Happy Days,” “Arrested Development”), Stockard Channing (“The West Wing,” “The Matthew Shepard Story”) and Jennifer Tilly.

The premise: Psychologist Gorham, a relative low-achiever in a family of MDs -- “real doctors” -- gets estranged surgeon parents Winkler and Channing into the same room just as his own marriage breaks up. Brother Burrell is a cosmetic surgeon and failed ladies’ man who thinks any girl who won’t date him is a lesbian; sister Marshall is an ER physician, and actually a lesbian. Oh, they have their issues, but blood, you may know, is thicker than water.

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Prison Break

Fox

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premiered: Aug. 29

Stars: Dominic Purcell (“John Doe”), Wentworth Miller (“The Human Stain,” “Joan of Arcadia”), Robin Tunney (“Runaway”), Peter Stormare, Stacy Keach (“Titus”), Amaury Nolasco, Wade Williams, Paul Adelstein, Sarah Wayne Callies.

The premise: Absurd yet compelling action melodrama in which structural engineer Miller robs a bank in order to be sent to prison, in order to break out again with brother Purcell, scheduled to be executed for murdering the brother of the vice president. Did someone say “dark political conspiracy”? Keach is the quirky warden, trying to build a matchstick Taj Mahal for his wife.

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Just Legal

WB

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 19

Stars: Don Johnson (“Nash Bridges,” “Miami Vice”), Jay Baruchel (“Undeclared”), Jaime Lee Kirchner (“Rent”), Marika Dominczyk.

The premise: The season’s mismatched-buddy-comedy-legal drama that isn’t “Head Cases” features an appropriately haggard Johnson as a burned-out, sold-out Venice Beach attorney who finds himself teamed with teenage genius lawyer Baruchel, whose uncorrupted yen for justice restores the older’s faith in the possibility of effective action. “Rio Bravo” without the horses.

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Tuesday

Bones

Fox

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 8 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 13

Stars: Emily Deschanel, David Boreanaz (“Angel”), Eric Millegan, T.J. Thyne, Michaela Conlin, Jonathan Adams.

The premise: Deschanel plays Kathy Reichs’ crime-fiction heroine Temperance Brennan (here amalgamated with Reichs herself), a hot-but-cold forensic anthropologist/part-time novelist who reads bones like tea leaves but finds the living a mystery. A team of misfit geniuses and a keen holographic computer program help her solve crimes from a lab that looks like a Prada outlet. Boreanaz is the cute FBI agent she likes to push around -- which means she really likes him, you know.

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My Name Is Earl

NBC

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 9 to 9:30 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 20

Stars: Jason Lee (“Almost Famous,” “Chasing Amy”), Ethan Suplee (“Cold Mountain”), Jaime Pressly, Eddie Steeples, Nadine Velazquez.

The premise: Touched by a Cracker. In this variation on the good-Samaritan series, Lee, having a permanent bad hair day, stars as a comical, crooked sociopath, led by a winning lottery ticket, a car accident, a morphine drip and an edition of “Last Call With Carson Daly” to a moment of superstitious, imperfect semienlightenment: To keep his karma from killing him, he determines to right all his past wrongs -- from littering to robbery to filling the world with secondhand smoke.

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Commander in Chief

ABC

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 27

Stars: Geena Davis (“The Accidental Tourist,” “Thelma & Louise,” “Tootsie,” “Beetlejuice,” “Stuart Little”), Donald Sutherland, Harry J. Lennix (“The Matrix Reloaded,” “The Matrix Revolutions”), Kyle Secor, Ever Carradine, Caitlin Wachs, Matt Lanter, Jasmine Anthony.

The premise: Oddly plausible political melodrama from the writer-director of “The Contender,” in which independent VP Davis becomes leader of the free world after the Republican president suddenly dies -- ticking off ultraconservative Speaker of the House Sutherland but otherwise building coalitions as only fictional presidents can. First Gentleman Secor, meanwhile, must get used to his new life as a White Househusband, while three kids help to promote lack of domestic tranquillity.

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Supernatural

WB

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10:07 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 13

Stars: Jared Padalecki (“Gilmore Girls”), Jensen Ackles (“Smallville”).

The premise: Brothers Padalecki and Ackles reunite to go looking for their vanished father, a quest that by tricks and turns becomes a long ghostbusters’ errand. First stop: a California town where the hitchhiking Lady in White is laying waste to hormonally addled teenage boys. The WB promises that future installments will include Bloody Mary, “the Native American beast known as Wendigo,” and that man with the hook at Lover’s Lane.

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Sex, Love & Secrets

UPN

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 27

Stars: Denise Richards (“Scary Movie 3”), Eric Balfour (“Six Feet Under”), Lauren German (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”), Omar Benson Miller (“Shall We Dance”), Tamara Taylor (“Diary of a Mad Black Woman”), James Stevenson (“Hope & Faith”), Lucas Bryant (“Queer as Folk”).

The premise: Twentysomething yuppies with bohemian pretensions live, love, link and lie in about-to-be-formerly-hip Silver Lake in a youth-soap with a title out of Soderbergh and behavioral-scientific interludes possibly inspired by Alain Resnais’ “Mon Oncle d’Amerique.” Real local rock club Spaceland plays a local rock club. Actual neighborhood residents will be amused or appalled.

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Close to Home

CBS

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 10 to 11 p.m.

Premieres: Oct. 4

Stars: Jennifer Finnigan, Kimberly Elise (“Diary of a Mad Black Woman”), John Carroll Lynch (“Carnivale,” “The Brotherhood of Poland, N.H.”), Christian Kane (“Angel,” “Into the West”).

The premise: The glow of new motherhood alternates with the fire of righteous indignation as spunky, unbeatable Midwestern Assistant D.A. Finnigan returns from maternity leave to find Condi Rice dress-alike Elise promoted above her and the world still full of bad men menacing good women. Postpartum crying jags in the office bathroom and breast milk in the communal fridge proclaim that the Bruckheimer Galactic Domination Procedural Drama Machine has its sights set on you, female America.

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Wednesday

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart

NBC

Genre: Reality

Time slot: 8 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 21

Host: Martha Stewart

The premise: Stewart in a Trumpian image-remake exercise. Though the ostensible issue is who gets to be the next Martha, or at least Martha’s new best friend, the real question is which of her many reported or reputed faces the doyenne of domestic invention will show. Tough boss, mad diva, nurturing mother-substitute, humbled ex-con? Will she cut contestants with relish or with regret?

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Freddie

ABC

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 8:30 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Oct. 5

Stars: Freddie Prinze Jr. (“Scooby-Doo”), Brian A. Green (“Beverly Hills, 90210”), Jacqueline Obradors (“NYPD Blue”), Chloe Suazo, Jenny Gago, Madchen Amick.

The premise: Prinze is a successful yet slow-to-mature Chicago chef living in a luxury apartment full of women: sister Obradors, sister-in-law Amick, niece Suazo, grandmother Gago (whose dialogue is all in subtitled Spanish, striking a blow for reading). They cramp his playboy style, keep him honest and make him store his pool table in his wine room, if you can imagine such an inconvenience. Green steals scenes as the star’s dumbbell rich-kid neighbor/best friend.

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Criminal Minds

CBS

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 22, 10 to 11 p.m.

Stars: Mandy Patinkin (“Dead Like Me,” “Chicago Hope”), Thomas Gibson (“Dharma & Greg,” “Chicago Hope”), Shemar Moore (“Diary of a Mad Black Woman”), Matthew Gray Gubler, Lola Glaudini, A.J. Cook.

The premise: The constitutionally intense, helplessly rabbinical Patinkin is well cast as the latest in what is turning into a long line of uncannily accurate, slightly disturbed criminal profilers, back in the saddle for the FBI from an unscheduled hiatus after the death of a partner. Gibson is the team’s cool head, Gubler the misfit genius full of facts and statistics -- some of them actually quite interesting.

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E-Ring

NBC

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 21

Stars: Benjamin Bratt (“Traffic,” “Miss Congeniality,” “Law & Order”), Dennis Hopper (“24,” “Blue Velvet,” “Easy Rider,” “Rebel Without a Cause”), Kelly Rutherford (“Melrose Place”), Aunjanue Ellis (“Ray”).

The premise: Rule-bending Army major Bratt takes up new post at the Pentagon under unlikely commanding officer Hopper, his disinterest in protocol restoring the old man’s faith in the possibility of effective action. (See also: “Just Legal.”) Together they fight military bureaucracy and pesky civilian oversight to do the right, if not always the economical, thing by servicemen, spies and assorted other guardians of a homeland in continual international crisis. Also starring submarines, satellites, Navy SEALs.

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Head Cases

Fox

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 14

Stars: Chris O’Donnell (“Batman Forever”), Adam Goldberg, Krista Allen (“Unscripted”), Jake Cherry, Richard Kind (“Spin City”), Rockmond Dunbar (“Soul Food” and con-current “Prison Break”).

The premise: Type-A hotshot attorney O’Donnell works himself into nervous breakdown, estranging wife Allen -- oh, the fool -- and 8-year-old son Cherry. Therapist Dunbar orders him to buddy up with bottom-feeding-yet-right-minded lawyer Goldberg, misfit genius sufferer of “explosive disorder.” (He hits people.) Animus lasts nearly the whole pilot but -- shock! -- they work well together.

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Related

WB

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Oct. 5

Stars: Jennifer Esposito (“Crash”), Kiele Sanchez, Lizzy Caplan (“Mean Girls”), Laura Breckenridge, Callum Blue (“Dead Like Me”).

The premise: Four sisters (going “Sisters” one sister better) measure the thickness of blood versus water in a show whose heavy creative pedigree includes “Friends,” “Sex and the City” and the bestselling self-help book “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Of course, they’re as different as ... four different kinds of peas, in a variety of pods: a corporate attorney, a legal aid lawyer, a special events coordinator (pregnant) and a college student dropping premed for experimental theater.

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Invasion

ABC

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 10 to 11 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 21

Stars: William Fichtner (“Crash,” “Empire Falls”), Eddie Cibrian (“Third Watch”, “Tilt”), Lisa Sheridan, Kari Matchett, Tyler Labine, Evan Peters, Ariel Gade (“Dark Water”), Alexis Dziena, Aisha Hinds.

The premise: Hurricane hits Florida town, causing devastation and new suspicions among loose family led by park ranger Cibrian. Post-hurricane quandaries include: Is local sheriff Fichtner for real or, you know, not of this place? And what’s with the hundreds of lights that were seen floating toward the water? And how about the fact that after the hurricane, Fichtner’s ex-wife, Matchett, is found alive but naked in a swamp? She’s now married to the weird sheriff, so it’s family dynamics meets “The Twilight Zone.”

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Thursday

Everybody Hates Chris

UPN

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 8 to 8:30 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 22

Stars: Tichina Arnold (“On the One”), Terry Crews (“The Longest Yard”), Tyler James Williams (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”), Tequan Richmond (“Ray”), Imani Hakim, Vincent Martella. Chris Rock (“The Chris Rock Show,” “Head of State”), narrator.

The premise: Narrator-creator Rock relives his Bedford-Stuyvesant adolescence in this sweet, smart, working-class “Wonder Years” (with a hint of “Malcolm in the Middle”) set in the early ‘80s. Juggling jobs and sleep, young Chris (WIlliams) looks out for his taller younger brother (Richmond) and demanding little sister (Hakim) and for himself while taking care not to tax his busy parents (Crews, Arnold).

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Night Stalker

ABC

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 29

Stars: Stuart Townsend (“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”), Gabrielle Union (“The Honeymooners”), Cotter Smith (“X2”), Eric Jungmann (“Not Another Teen Movie”).

The premise: Investigative reporter Carl Kolchak (Townsend, youthifying the role created by Darren McGavin in the ‘70s series of the same name) knows there’s something out there, and it’s causing trouble. Unlike the original’s “spook of the week” structure, the new series adopts an “X-Files”-style semiglimpsed mythology, a unifying theory of unexplained phenomena that might also explain the mysterious death of Kolchak’s wife and get the FBI off his case.

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Reunion

Fox

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 8

Stars: Dave Annable, Alexa Davalos, Will Estes (“American Dreams”), Sean Faris, Chyler Leigh, Amanda Righetti, Mathew St. Patrick (“Six Feet Under”).

The premise: Retrospective whodunit-to-whom follows six abnormally close and exceptionally attractive friends from 1986 high school graduation to 20th class reunion and a murder -- neither killer nor victim to be revealed until the season’s end. In a miracle of compressed exposition, each episode will chronicle a different year -- it’s like “24” times 365 (plus five days for leap year). Call it “8,880.” Watch the fashions change; hear the good old songs; see gray creep in, youthful expectations go awry.

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Love, Inc.

UPN

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 9:30 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 22

Stars: Reagan Gomez-Preston (“Beauty Shop”), Ion Overman, Vince Vieluf (“Grind”), Holly Robinson Peete (“For Your Love,” “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper”), Busy Philipps (“Dawson’s Creek,” “Freaks and Geeks”).

The premise: Robinson Peete and Philipps (replacing Shannen Doherty) run a dating service, though each is herself unlucky in love. (Yentas, match thyselves!) Wacky co-workers and crazy clients fill out the picture.

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Friday

Ghost Whisperer

CBS

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 8 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 23

Stars: Jennifer Love Hewitt (“I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Party of Five”), David Conrad, Aisha Tyler.

The premise: Love Hewitt plays a medium/armchair psychotherapist, helping ghosts resolve their issues with the living. Plus, she runs an antique store. Plus, she’s a newlywed. So she’s got a lot on her plate. Like NBC’s “Medium,” this one also features the sympathetic-husband-in-bed who’s always saying things like “Go back to sleep, honey.”

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Three Wishes

NBC

Genre: Reality

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 23

Host: Amy Grant, five-time Grammy Award winner.

The premise: Inspirational singer Grant leads a makeover supergroup -- including “Clean Sweep” hunk Eric A. Stromer -- in nonspecific good-Samaritan reality show, playing collective genie to deserving individuals, families, groups and communities in this latest variation on “Queen for a Day.” But who will wish for world peace?

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Twins

WB

Genre: Comedy

Time Slot: 8:30 to 9 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 16

Stars: Sara Gilbert (“Roseanne”), Melanie Griffith (“Working Girl”), Molly Stanton, Mark Linn-Baker (“Perfect Strangers”).

The premise: Griffith’s big red lips find practical employment as their owner essays the role of a dumb (but not so dumb) blond married to, possibly separating from, millionaire lingerie manufacter Linn-Baker. Twin daughters Gilbert and Stanton -- handed the family business as the curtain rises -- embody the parental division of brains and body for maximum comic conflict, but blood will prove thicker than water, you can bet.

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Killer Instinct

Fox

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 23

Stars: Johnny Messner, Chi McBride (“House,” “Boston Public”), Kristin Lehman.

The premise: Lotta freaks, man: All your worst fears about San Francisco are realized in this moody cop show, from “CSI” vet Josh Berman, devoted to the city’s weirdest criminals. Messner is the haunted genius detective, back from an unscheduled hiatus after the death of his partner to play worst nightmare to the city’s worst nightmares. Where have all the flowers gone?

*

Threshold

CBS

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 9 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Sept. 16 (9-to-11 p.m. two-hour series premiere)

Stars: Carla Gugino (“Karen Sisco”), Charles S. Dutton (“Roc”), Brian Van Holt (“House of Wax”), Rob Benedict (“Felicity”), Brent Spiner (“The Aviator”), Peter Dinklage (“The Station Agent”).

The premise: Gugino is a government contingency analyst (she devises plans for when really, really, really, really bad stuff happens) brought in to investigate a supernatural episode on a freighter. She assembles a crack band of specialists to initiate a plan called “Threshold.” Whatever intelligent life has penetrated Earth can cause nosebleeds and turn people homicidal. It’s apparently dialing into our DNA.

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Hot Properties

ABC

Genre: Comedy

Time slot: 9:30 to 10 p.m.

Premieres: Oct. 7

Stars: Gail O’Grady (“NYPD Blue”), Nicole Sullivan (“The King of Queens”), Sofia Vergara (the crossover Univision/travel series “Fuera de Serie”), Christina Moore, Evan Handler (“Sex and the City”), Stephen Dunham, Amy Hill.

The premise: “Designing Women” set in a high-end Manhattan real-estate firm; the mood is now postfeminist and raunchy, but sisterhood still proves powerful. O’Grady is a former hard- partyer married to a man just a little more than half her age, Sullivan is a chronic romantic also-ran, Vergara a Latin bombshell with no gaydar. They are newly joined by upper East Side jilted bride and virgin Moore. The talk is all about love, sex and (network cross-promotion alert) Oprah.

*

Inconceivable

NBC

Genre: Drama

Time slot: 10 to 11 p.m.

Premieres: Sept 23

Stars: Ming-Na (“ER”), Jonathan Cake (“Empire,” “Fallen”), Angie Harmon (“Law & Order”), guest star Alfre Woodard (“Beauty Shop”), Joelle Carter (“American Pie 2”), Mary Catherine Garrison (“How to Deal”), David Norona (“Mister Sterling”), Reynaldo Rosales (“She Hate Me”).

The premise: Idealistic fertility clinic head Ming-Na and narcissistic insemination expert Cake test just how many story lines may be extracted from the subject of engineered pregnancy. (The pilot uses up at least three.) A doctor show for an age of specialization, a “Nip/Tuck” for the reproductively challenged, a drama for the baby-mad.

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TV guide

Capsules by Robert Lloyd with contributions from Paul Brownfield and Katie Sauceda.