New fall TV season full of (mostly white) geeks, girls

Sarah Rodman

If you’re a geek who loves hot chicks, then grab your remote and some snacks and get comfy on the couch, because the new fall television season has plenty of shows both for and about you.

If you’re part of just about any minority group and you like seeing faces that look like yours looking back at you … well, you’ll have a little more free time on your hands.

Here’s a night-by-night breakdown:

• Two shows try to crack the “football and crime” stranglehold on Sunday nights. CBS’ “Viva Laughlin” is a bizarre and intermittently entertaining musical drama about a casino owner, his associates — including D.B. Woodside, the second black president from Fox’s “24” — and his family, all of whom occasionally break into song. It’s certainly odd, but worth a look. Much more traditional is the fish-out-of-water family drama “Life is Wild” on the CW, about a clan of New Yorkers transplanted to the wilds of South Africa.

• Monday offers six new shows: three sitcoms and three dramas. Going for the funny bone, and even almost hitting it, is the ABC amnesia romp “Samantha Who?” starring Christina Applegate of “Married … With Children” fame. The CW offers up the surprisingly winning “Aliens in America,” following the trials and tribulations of a nerdy Muslim exchange student from Pakistan trying to fit in with his Wisconsin host family. And “The Big Bang Theory” is a wildly uneven — sometimes laugh-out-loud, sometimes painfully clichéd — look at a pair of physics geeks trying to interact with their hot new neighbor.

The hour-long shows fare better as Anthony Anderson, so powerful on FX’s “The Shield,” headlines Fox’s “K-Ville,” a gritty post-Katrina New Orleans cop show. Zachary Levi is a star in the making on NBC’s comic computer-nerd-becomes-a-spy action series “Chuck” and, also on NBC, Kevin McKidd travels back in time on the intriguing sci-fi adventure show “Journeyman.”

• Things look 50 percent promising on Tuesday, which features four new shows. The ABC sitcoms “Carpoolers” and “Cavemen” — the former about, well, carpoolers and the latter about, well, cavemen in modern society — are pretty much duds. While I have yet to see the new “Cavemen” pilot with new cast members and story tweaks, mixing racial allegory with comedy on a show based on those GEICO insurance commercials just feels like a bad idea. For 30 seconds? Maybe. But 30 minutes? I don’t think so.

CBS’ Latino family drama “Cane,” starring Jimmy Smits, had an intriguingly dark pilot and a great multigenerational cast, and it’s possible that this show will become a “caliente” topic around the water cooler as the season progresses. And the CW’s “Reaper” delighted with its devil’s bounty hunter premise — look for Rick Gonzalez of the film “The Rookie” in a funny supporting role.

• Wednesday hit the new show lottery this year with seven and there are some good choices and a lot of diversity on this night.

ABC’s entire lineup is new, starting with former “Boston Public” star Chi McBride starring in the quirky and precious “Pushing Daisies.” He’s followed by acclaimed Broadway vets Taye Diggs and Audra McDonald on the so-so “Grey’s Anatomy” spin-off “Private Practice.” A journeyman cast — including Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh and ex-“Six Feet Under” star Peter Krause — infuse the filthy-rich family drama “Dirty Sexy Money” with pizzazz.

The ’70s staple “Bionic Woman” gets a chilly but action-packed update on NBC —watch for controversial former “Grey’s” star Isaiah Washington to appear early in the season. Children are put to the task of running a town without adults on CBS’s scandal-plagued “Kid Nation” — while some have raised concerns about child labor law violations and injuries on the set, review screeners weren’t made available, so I’m withholding judgment until I’ve actually seen it.

Sitcom vets Kelsey Grammer (“Frasier”) and Patricia Heaton (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) have chemistry and a few funny lines in Fox’s “Back to You,” but the “bickering local news anchors” angle feels stale, as does the trampy Latina weather girl character, played by Ayda Field. I hope the show improves, because all three actors are terrific. Finally, the CW offers up the trashy “Gossip Girl,” based on a series of best-selling young adult novels about rich, mostly white, teens in New York City.

• With warhorses like “ER,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Survivor” in place, Thursday has one lonely new entry: the ABC drama “Big Shots.” The show has a terrific cast, including Dylan McDermott of “The Practice” and Michael Vartan of “Alias,” but looks an awful lot like a mediocre male version of “Sex and the City.”

• Two new shows and two new reality offerings will try to liven up the TV graveyard that is Friday. Following the “Sex and the City” theme is ABC’s “Women’s Murder Club,” in which a reporter, a cop, a lawyer and a coroner team up to solve crimes and talk about their romantic woes in a pleasantly old-fashioned manner. CBS’ vampire detective drama “Moonlight” wasn’t available for review, but I’m cautiously optimistic, since it co-stars Jason Dohring (late of the CW’s cancelled “Veronica Mars”).

Both reality shows come from Fox and, unsurprisingly, are musical in nature — something the network that brought us “American Idol” knows plenty about. “Nashville” will follow those trying to make it in Music City, while “The Next Great American Band” is “Idol” for bands and includes former Prince drummer Sheila E. as a judge.

Most shows are kicking off even as we speak, so check your local listings for times.

Sarah Rodman is a staff music critic for the Boston Globe.