I’d just like to begin by stating for the record that, in Bullz-Eye’s 2006 Fall TV Preview, I made the following statement about “Heroes”:

“The premise is fantastic, and the gradual unfolding of the various stories will keep viewers coming back week after week. This is gonna be the water-cooler show of the season.”

That’s right. I’m Nostradamus.

And, like that famous French forecaster of the future, I get at least as many wrong as I get right, like, for instance, these:

1. Ugly Betty: “Expect fans of the original show to be horrified at this poor translation. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that anyone other than girls on the cusp of pubescence or desperately single women in their 20s and 30s will be able to stand this for even 30 minutes. Oh, and did I mention that it’s an hour long?”
2. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: “Best cast on television, hands down… and to have their dialogue written by someone who’s arguably one of the best scribes in the medium? I’m sold. And America will be, too.”
3. Twenty Good Years: “‘Arrested Development’ proved that (Jeffrey) Tambor doesn’t draw the ratings, but Lithgow does. It might not be a huge hit, but count on it doing well enough to stick around for a few seasons.”

Oh, well. At least I was right about “Happy Hour.”

This year’s crop is another blend that’s heavy on drama, light on comedy, and thankfully light on reality shows - well, unless you’re Fox, that is - but, as ever, we must provide the following caveat to the feature that follows:

What we’re offering are our impressions and opinions of what are essentially “rough drafts” of the season’s new shows. Mind you, most aren’t very rough at all — indeed, some may actually look identical when they make their official network premieres — but, nonetheless, it’s not unheard of for producers to retool and recast their shows between the filming of the original pilot and the actual premiere of the series. Actually, this year, it’s closer to the rule than the exception, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Basically, the moral is this: use our descriptions as an approximation of what will end up on the air, not as The Gospel According to Bullz-Eye.

And now that that’s out of the way, let’s warm up the set and head over to the homepage for Bullz-Eye’s Fall TV Preview.