With a presidential election on the horizon, just about every screen will be dominated by campaign coverage. When you’re ready for a palate cleanser, the fall TV season has plenty on offer.

Even so, it’s not the deluge of the recent past.

Six hundred scripted shows premiered in 2022. That was never going to be realistic in the long term and media companies have cut back. But it’s also made the professional lives of screenwriters and others in Hollywood more precarious than ever (unless you’re a big-name star). Overall, Hollywood remains in a state of flux, with layoffs at Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global. The latter — which is the parent company to a sizable chunk of TV operations, including CBS, Showtime, Comedy Central and Paramount+ — may or may not have a new owner by the time you read this, with two rival bids duking it out. What either outcome means for you, the viewer, is unclear.

I would be remiss for not mentioning that one of the best shows in recent memory isn’t premiering this fall; it just became available on Netflix and is probably new to most viewers. That would be AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire,” which is smart and funny and far better than any adaptation has a right to be. I don’t even like vampire stories, but here I am, in the bag for this one.

With that out of the way, here’s a snapshot of the coming weeks, presented in chronological order. It’s a fever dream of adaptations because Hollywood’s love affair with IP (intellectual property) continues unabated.

“Slow Horses” (Sept. 4 on Apple TV+) >> The British spy series returns for Season 4 with an adaptation of Mick Herron’s “Spook Street,” which centers Jonathan Pryce’s recurring character, who may not be long for this world: “What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don’t remember they’re secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good?”

“Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” (Sept. 5 on Peacock) >> Adapted from a true-crime podcast, the limited series tells the story of an armed robbery that took place on the night of Muhammad Ali’s 1970 comeback fight in Atlanta. Here’s how the podcast describes the crime: After the fight, guests attending an after-party (thrown by a hustler known as Chicken Man) were greeted not with food and drink, but the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. Starring Kevin Hart as Chicken Man and Don Cheadle as the police detective assigned to the case.

“How to Die Alone” (Sept. 13 on Hulu) >> Natasha Rothwell (“Insecure” and “The White Lotus”) stars in this comedy as a millennial stuck in a miserable existence: “I’m broke, my family thinks I’m a lost cause, my love life is a joke and the punchline is, I work at an airport.” A brush with death prompts her to start taking chances.

“Three Women” (Sept. 13 on Starz) >> The drama centers on the lives of three women (talk about an accurate title!) including a suburban housewife who begins an extramarital affair, an entrepreneur navigating an open marriage and a student who accuses a teacher of an inappropriate relationship. All three tell their stories to a character played by Shailene Woodley.

“Moonflower Murders” (Sept. 15 on PBS Masterpiece) >> A former book editor living in Greece and running a hotel (played by Lesley Manville) is drawn back into her old literary world when she’s asked to figure out whether a novel about a murder is fact or fiction. Based on the book by Anthony Horowitz.

“Agatha All Along” (Sept. 18 on Disney+) >> “WandaVision” was the first Marvel TV series to premiere on the streamer and it remains the best. That’s because it eschewed your typical superhero storyline in favor of the cheeky and bizarre, plunking down a couple of MCU characters into various sitcom templates of old. It also featured a very funny performance from Kathryn Hahn, and her character’s long-gestating, witch-focused spinoff is finally here. The teaser suggests the show will be entirely different in tone and interests than its predecessor. That’s not a selling point for me, but Hahn is so … decisions, decisions.

“The Penguin” (Sept. 19 on HBO) >> This eight-episode TV series from DC Studios puts Batman nemesis the Penguin front and center, played by Colin Farrell under 576 layers of prosthetics. (I’m exaggerating, but he’s as unrecognizable as he was in 2022’s “The Batman.”) The premise is very Batman-saga-meets-the-Italian mob.

“Frasier” (Sept. 19 on Paramount+) >> I wasn’t a fan of the first season of this reboot, which had no understanding of what made Frasier Crane — and the people surrounding him — so much fun. But here we are with Season 2, which is loading up on guest stars from the original show — including Dan Butler as Bob “Bulldog” Briscoe, Edward Hibbert as Gil Chesterton and Harriet Sansom Harris as Frasier’s agent, Bebe Glazer — with Frasier returning to his own radio station in Seattle for an episode. Peri Gilpin, who played Roz, will also appear as a recurring character.

“A Very Royal Scandal” (Sept. 19 on Amazon) >> In 2019, Britain’s Prince Andrew gave a now-infamous TV interview about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, which ultimately led to him withdrawing from official royal duties. The backstory of how that interview came together has already been adapted for the screen by Netflix and it was a pointless exercise with a self-congratulatory tone. But at least it was only a movie-length treatment. Amazon’s upcoming version is spread out over three episodes and stars Michael Sheen and Ruth Wilson.

“Matlock” (Sept. 22 on CBS) >> The original “Matlock” of the 1980s and ‘90s was an Atlanta-set legal drama starring Andy Griffith. This new version has an actor just as beloved at its center — Kathy Bates — but the premise is slightly different. She plays Madeline Matlock, a folksy defense attorney who, thanks to her rotten finances, can’t retire just yet, so she seeks out an entry-level job at a slick corporate firm in New York. But the real story — her real motivation for working there — is more complicated. That part makes up the ongoing storyline, while each week there’s a new client to defend.

“Midnight Family” (Sept. 24 on Apple TV+ ) >> The Spanish-language series follows a med student in Mexico City who moonlights as part of her family’s privately owned ambulance service. It’s adapted from the absorbing 2019 documentary of the same title, which is well worth seeking out whether you plan to watch the Apple series or not (it’s streaming free on Pluto). Here’s a bit from my write-up when it screened locally:

“Mexico City has a population of 9 million, but according to a figure provided at the film’s beginning, the government operates fewer than 45 emergency ambulances. Privately operated ambulances attempt to fill in those gaps and director Luke Lorentzen’s high-adrenaline vérité film offers an immersive look at this underground economy, as seen through the eyes of one family-run business. … The documentary is the antithesis of eat-your-vegetables filmmaking. It has the intensity of an action film and the moodiness of a noir. It’s thrillingly shot and incredibly thought-provoking. It’s one of my favorite documentaries in recent memory. … You worry for everyone — patients (who are having one of the worst days of their lives) and paramedics alike. The latter are frequently stopped by police, who shake them down for bribes. This becomes a major impediment; they are barely getting by.”

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