The Fall TV We’re Most Excited For. Plus, ‘Lanterns’ E4 and ‘Lioness’ After Dark.

Key takeaways

• The Creative Arts Emmys previewed a likely sweep: "Adolescence" (referred to throughout as Widow's Bay) took eight awards including guest actress for Betty Gilpin, plus score and cinematography, positioning it Pitt-style as the drama frontrunner. "The Studio" (DTF St. Louis) won six, "The Pit" landed four, Rob Reiner won a posthumous guest comedy Emmy for "The Bear," and "I Love Lucy" got a Legacy Award. The hosts argue winners like Matthew Rhys should stop feigning surprise since the results are essentially known.
• Industry economics are shifting back toward limited series. Streamers are worried about diminishing returns on second and third seasons, long multi-year gaps between installments (Gary Oldman noted how hard the "Slow Horses" team works to hit a British-style annual cadence), and expensive swings like the canceled "Spider-Noir," which cost a fortune and spent five or six years in development despite winning five Emmys.
• Greenwald's fall top three are all returning shows: "The Lowdown" season two (adding Tommy Lee Jones as Ethan Hawke's father and Betty Gilpin), "Slow Horses" season six (based on "Joe Country" and "Spook Street," with Olivia Cooke returning), and "Black Doves" season two. He praises "The Lowdown" for launching with a fully lived-in world of side characters who don't serve the plot.
• New shows flagged as worth covering: "Small Prophets" (Mackenzie Crook, Apple, alchemy and prophecy in Manchester), "Tiptoe" and "Youth" (Russell T Davies and Sharon Horgan respectively), the animated "Get Jiro" from Anthony Bourdain's graphic novel, "American Hostage" (Jon Hamm, Giovanni Ribisi, a true 1977 story, anthology format), and "Kill Jackie" with Catherine Zeta-Jones from a Nick Harkaway novel.
• Marvel's Disney+ output is judged a near-total failure next to DC's steadier TV run ("Penguin," "Peacemaker," the planned American Vandal-style Jimmy Olsen documentary). The hosts joke about covering "Vision Quest," James Spader's return as Ultron in human form, as rigorously as a prestige drama.
• "Lanterns" episode four works as a buddy-cop detective hour with a Lindelof-style surreal set piece (a cow walking through a portal into a white slaughterhouse room), but the Zoe thread is the weakest element, the John and Zoe attraction feels unearned, and the Manhunter reveal pointing to Zoe seems telegraphed. The hosts wonder whether DC lore imposes a ceiling that keeps these shows at a high B-plus.

Notable moments

• Cold open riff casting Greenwald as "the Manhunter" and debating why they record on a Labor Day Monday instead of Tuesday.
• Ryan's admission that he accidentally watched "Lanterns" episode four before episode three, which reframed his whole read of the season's structure.
• Greenwald confessing he skipped "The Rehearsal" season two because Nathan Fielder's comedy is "him inches away from Elizabeth Holmes' face while she doesn't blink," tied to news of the Fielder-Oppenheim Holmes documentary.
• The "high-value target: the hunt for Saddam Hussein" pitch with Joel Kinnaman: "We're fucking back on TNT."
• The recurring "Lioness" bit where Dave Annable's character does nothing but watch cable news and ask his wife whether professors are peddling anti-American invective.
• The image of the show's Ukrainian double agent hiding in Tulsa with a single avocado, sparking a tangent about European avocado supply.
• Tim Simons texting Ryan late-night updates on his "Lioness" journey while Greenwald silently reads the thread at dawn.
• Closing plan to preview the Emmys Thursday plus the return of "The Paper."

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