The Fall TV Preview (Shipping Lane Edition)
Fall is officially upon us, which means it's time for sweater weather, pumpkin-spice everything, and cozy nights curled up with the a blanket and the remote. In Ye Olden Days, it also meant the start of the new television season, full of buzzy premieres and heavy-hitting series returns. Now, the rise of streaming has essentially rendered the concept of a TV "season" obsolete and the near-constant need for fresh content means that new releases essentially drop 24/7/365. But there's still something special about this time of year as a TV fan, which still heralds the arrival of a glut of new programming of all stripes.
Here are some of the new arrivals and most anticipated returns of the Fall TV season, just with a Shipping Lane twist. These aren't just good shows that you should check out—though they all are!—they're the ones that are focused primarily on relationships and romance.
Colin From Accounts
Premiere date: September 10
Network: Paramount+
The best romantic comedy series that entirely too few people even know exists, Colin From Accounts hails from co-creators and real-life couple Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who star as quirky med student Ashley and brewery owner Gordon. The third and final season jumps forward in time and catches us up on where things stand with Ashley and Gordon's on-again, off-again, please-just-get-it-together-for-real relationship.
Crew Girl
Premiere date: September 10
Network: Netflix
Sports romances are all the rage right now — see also: Off Campus, Finding Her Edge, and, of course, Heated Rivalry — and Netflix's Crew Girl is the latest entry in this steadily growing trend. To its credit, the show takes things off the ice and into the river, following Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau), a talented single sculls rower forced to move back to her mother's hometown and attend a school that doesn't have a girls' crew team. She finds herself becoming coxswain for the boys' team instead and immediately finds herself drawn to both working-class Cam (Kyle Clark) and rich boy Josh (Samuel Braun). The show's just been renewed for a second season.
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Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence
Premiere date: September 15
Network: BritBox
BritBox is betting big on its first contemporary-set version of Agatha Christie's pair of Bright Young Things detectives, and with good reason: The show is charming as hell. More character-than-mystery-forward, the series reimagines the Queen of Crime's married sleuths as modern-day exes thrown back together after a dead body turns up at a mutual friend's wedding. Unconvinced of the groom's guilt, Tommy (Josh Dylan) and Tuppence (Antonia Thomas) join forces to suss out and end up reviving Tommy's aunt's (Imelda Staunton) detective agency in the process. How long will it take them to solve the mystery of how they're perfect for each other? We'll have to wait and see.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood
Premiere Date: September 18
Network: Starz
Outlander may have wrapped up its run earlier this year, but prequel series Outlander: Blood of My Blood has proven itself more than capable of picking up the slack. One of the most unabashedly romantic things on television at the moment, this historical drama about time travel and political intrigue in eighteenth-century Scotland features many convoluted plot twists and fantastic chemistry between its quartet of leads (who happen to be the parents of the original Outlander's fated lovers, Jamie and Claire).
The story follows two key relationships: Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) and Ellen Mackenzie (Harriet Slater), lovers from two rival Scottish clans, and Henry (Jeremy Irvine) and Julia Beauchamp (Hermione Corfield), a young married couple from post-World War I London who are thrown into the past—and Brian and Ellen’s lives—while vacationing in the Highlands. As Brian and Ellen fight to be together, and Julia and Henry search for a way home, plenty of drama and yearning ensue.
Trespasses
Premiere Date: September 19
Network: PBS
There's little chance Trespasses will be what anyone would call a happy story, but the idea of a Troubles-set series about an interfaith forbidden romance in 1970s Belfast is catnip enough for me to risk the heartbreak. Based on Louise Kennedy’s novel of the same name, it follows a Catholic schoolteacher (Lola Pettigrew) who finds unexpected passion (and the hope of escape) with a very married Protestant barrister (Tom Cullen). Bring tissues.
Best Medicine
Premiere date: September 22
Network: FOX
This American remake of long-running British dramedy Doc Martin is so much better than it has any right to be — and likely better than anyone expected. (I might even argue it's the rare American remake that is often better than the original!)
Its fish-out-of-water story follows a blood-phobic doctor (Josh Charles) who leaves his big city job to become a general practitioner in the idyllic Maine village where he spent summers as a child. The scenery is picturesque, the locals are charmingly quirky, and there are more beloved town traditions than should fit into a single calendar year. He hates it immediately, but slowly begins to warm to his new home thanks to the power of family, community, and his crush on the kind local schoolteacher (Abigail Spencer). Charles and Spencer have great chemistry, and the supporting cast (Annie Potts! Josh Segarra!) is excellent. It's peak comfort TV.
The Love Hypothesis
Premiere Date: September 23
Network: Prime Video
Technically, Prime Video's The Love Hypothesis is a movie, not a TV series, but since it's not getting a theatrical release and you can just cozy on right up at home and watch it, I'm saying it counts as far as this list goes. (Plus, there's no world where I make a list of upcoming romance-adjacent Fall entertainment content and don't put the Ali Hazelwood adaptation on it. Sorry not sorry, I love having my own website.)
Anyway, the college-set Reylo fanfic AU turned megabestselling romance novel stars Lili Reinhart (Riverdale) as Olive Smith, a PhD student who fakes a romance with notoriously grumpy professor Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman) in order to convince her best friend (Rachel Marsh) that she no longer has feelings for the ex-crush that Ahn is now dating. If you've read any romance story in your life, you know where this is going, but who cares, it's great.
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Eternally Yours
Premiere Date: October 8
Network: CBS
CBS is building on the continued success of Ghosts (excellent, and a remake of a British series, let's not forget!) by expanding its supernaturally-based comedy block with Eternally Yours. Swapping ghosts for vampires, the show follows an undead couple who've been together for 500 years and whose marriage is stuck in something of an extended rut. But their boring routine is turned upside down when their daughter brings home a very earnest, very human boyfriend. Can love survive forever?
One of the things that Ghost has always done so well is its depiction of Jay and Sam's marriage, and the real problems they face as a couple who inherit a ramshackle B&B and later try to launch a restaurant. Their relationship issues are refreshingly realistic, and the show takes pains to illustrate how they work through their problems and misunderstandings, outside of any ghost-related drama. There's every reason to assume Eternally Yours will adopt a similar mindset.
The Diplomat
Premiere Date: October 15
Network: Netflix
Some people watch Netflix's The Diplomat for its breakneck pacing and wild cliffhangers. Others, for its political intrigue. Still more for its prestige cast, which includes big names like Kerri Russell, Rufus Sewell, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, and more. Me? I'm here for Kate and Hal Wyler.
Their rocky but weirdly relatable relationship is what gives this series its heart: a furious, sexy, cruel, heartfelt, chaotic negotiation between two whip-smart people with their own personal and professional goals and agendas. Their love is both dangerously toxic and strangely romantic, and The Diplomat certainly doesn’t shy away from showing us both how much they love each other and how hurtfully they each can behave. One part romance and one part high-stakes political chess match, the show doesn't work without the complicated bond between them or the chemistry that Russell and Sewell share.
With the addition of Janney and Whitford as the series' new First Couple, The Diplomat has another lens through which to explore the strains and struggles of marriage in a high-pressure environment. All these crazy kids better work it out, its what I'm saying.
The Gilded Age
Premiere Date: November 1
Network: HBO
It's been so satisfying to watch audiences slooooowly come around to the delight that is The Gilded Age. The series originally premiered in 2022 and was initially positioned as a sort of American Downton Abbey, set amidst the battle between New York City's old and new money elite. Yes, it's a soapy period drama about everything from dueling opera houses to railroad speculation, but the reason to watch it is the array of intriguing romances and relationships onscreen.
New money power couple Bertha (Carrie Coon) and George Russell (Morgan Spector) are one of TV's best marriages, intensely loyal to one another and ruthless toward the rest of the world. Marion Brook (Louisa Jacobson) and Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) are a sweet slow burn, Gladys' (Taissa Farmiga) marriage of convenience to a British duke (Ben Lamb) is slowly developing into a love match, nd Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) and William Kirkland's (Jordan Donica) romance also touches on important issues of racism and Black life in late nineteenth century America.
The Hunting Wives
Premiere Date: November 26
Network: Netflix
Last summer's most unapologetic guilty pleasure is back for a second round this this November and if you haven't tried the wild ride that is The Hunting Wives, consider this an exhortation to fix your life immediately. Based on May Cobb's novel, the story follows liberal East Coaster Sophie (Brittany Snow), as she relocates deep in the heart of Texas, and strikes up an unexpected friendship with the wife (Malin Akerman) of a wealthy oil magnate.
The plot is twisty and outlandish—there are multiple scandalous affairs and a murder mystery among other insane things—but the most compelling aspect is the relationship that develops between Sophie and Margo. What starts as a rebellious physical fling turns into something much more genuine and emotionally complicated, and it makes for great TV. Where does their relationship go in Season 2? I have no idea, but that's why it's so exciting.
The Empress
Premiere Date: November 12
Network: Netflix
Wildly underrated German-language period drama The Empress will air its third and final season this November, which means that everyone who has slept on this (excellent) series still has a few weeks left to catch up.
A deeply romantic story about the daughter of a Bavarian duke who married an emperor for love, the show dramatizes the life of Elisabeth I of Austria (Devrim Lingnau), whose life was full of equal parts glamour and tragedy. Haunted by depression, stalked by the press, and yet beloved by her people, Elisabeth and her husband, Franz (Philip Froissant) must face their fair share of hardship and tragedy—some of it self-inflicted, some of it the work of her overbearing mother in law, some of it just horrific luck. But the truth of their feelings for one another are never in doubt, no matter how many problems they encounter.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Premiere Date: November 11
Network: Prime Video
Very few people are probably tuning into Prime Video's epic tale of J.R.R. Tolkien's Second Age of Middle-earth for the romance. Well, I am not most people. Sure, a significant contingent of sickos (affectionate) were eagerly drawn The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power by the peak enemies-to-lovers vibes buzzing between Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Sauron (Charlie Vickers). But for my money, one of Tolkien's best love stories seems as though it's finally headed our way in the show's third season.
For reasons that still passeth this critic's understanding, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power decided to have Galadriel believe her husband Celeborn was dead for the show's first two seasons. (In the world of the show, he simply never returned from the battle against Morgoth centuries earlier.) That's finally about to change in Season 3, with the casting of Stranger Things' Jamie Campbell Bower as the Elf lord and warrior who will one day rule Lothlorien alongside his wife.
How The Rings of Power plans to reunite them or explore the ways their long separation has impacted them both—outside of the whole Sauron thing—is unknown at this point. But the Galadriel/Celeborn relationship is one of Tolkien's richest and most enduring—and it's past time this pair finally gets their due.
Newlyweds
Premiere Date: October 23
Network: NBC
I have a soft spot for married couples who work together, so the idea that husband-and-wife duo are teaming up to tell a love story about an older couple who marry later in life is catnip to me on multiple levels. (They're adorable together, is what I'm saying.) It takes a lot to get me to watch a multi-cam network comedy these days, but for these two? I'm in.
Pride and Prejudice
Premiere date: December 3
Network: Netflix
It's true, this series won't hit our screens until December, which seems well outside the range that most of us consider "Fall TV". But you can't tell me a new Netflix adaptation of Pride and Prejudice will hit my screen in the next few months and expect me not to include it here.
Collectively, we've been on a run of really good Jane Austen-inspired TV lately---The Other Bennet Sister! A new Sense & Sensibility movie!—but if I'm honest, I'm still not 100% sure we need a new Pride and Prejudice at this particular moment. (I also have reservations about Slow Horses' Jack Lowden as Darcy, but am willing to be proven wrong.) Still, as the kids say, I will be sat.
The Other Bennet Sister
Premiere date: TBD this holiday season
Network: BritBox
The Other Bennet Sister is one of the most romantic TV shows that aired this year, and the fact that we're getting a three-part Christmas special this holiday season is the best present we could ask for. What the festive special will be about remains a mystery, though we know it's based on storylines from author Janice Hadlow, who wrote the original novel.
But if the way the original series handled Mary's journey of self-discovery, it seems safe to assume that this holiday offering will handle the story of what happens after happily ever after with the same deft touch.
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