Trailers: Fox Shows a Trifecta of New Shows, Minority Report Included

With the traditional season of scripted TV coming to a close, those of the most traditional mindset are beginning to show off their newest slate of little screen adventures. Today it’s a new slate of Fox shows, each derived from something that came before, each due next season at some point or another.

Be forewarned, these are lengthy, dense trailers that start with a premise and slip deeper and deeper into the spoiler-ridden folly. Let’s start with the one about the devil.

Lucifer

Lucifer, which began its life as a Vertigo comic written by the famed Neil Gaiman, falls the literal devil up to earth so he might get all humanized and stuff. Of course, he’s got a European accent, some perpetual five o’clock shadow and his own murder-mystery to solve, all while running a night club in San Francisco. He can’t be that bad, can he?

Write Lucifer up as a Constantine replacement, seeing as that show’s been cancelled, filled out with its own visiting angels and spilling out of evil unto earth. Only this time the prick on the posters drives a fancier car.

Now, here’s the one about the Frankenstein monster.

The Frankenstein Code

If you want to fancy up an old property, maybe try to convince some millenials it’s modern, throw the word “Code” in there somewhere. The Frankenstein Code brings an old cop back to life, only now he’s young and beautiful, just like Mary Shelley imagined him to be. Also, Timmy of the immortal Rules of Engagement triumphantly returns to television, though having resurrected a dude is decidedly more serious about stuff.

Oh, and in case you were worried the show might not have the kind of pace a classic tale might need in today’s age, there’s a murder-mystery to keep the iron pumping. Of all the Fox shows we know about, this is the one most definitely in need of a little extra.

Finally, here’s the one about the Tom Cruise-less future.

Minority Report

Instead of simply re-imagining the film over what probably would have been a grueling 20-ish episode season, Minority Report jumps past the narrative of the original movies and creates it’s own tale about one of the three pre-cog children. After the whole pre-crime system shutters follow Tom Cruise’s dramatic self-blindness, the source of the system, three kids capable of seeing bits and pieces of the future, are set upon the world.

One of them, of a doubtlessly dramatic nature, can’t take not using his gifts for good, so he hooks up with a future cop and prevents future crimes. You might consider it a weekly murder-mystery type deal, only the guns are non-lethal and the background music originated from the recycling bin of a drunk sound mixer’s computer.

The lessons we can learn from Fox shows this coming year? New ideas are crap. Old ideas are crap too, unless people get murdered. And then there’s mystery., which definitely means nothing else matters.