In photos: 'Fargo', 'The Frasier' and 'The Changeling', get ready for a TV season like no other

This will be an unusual season, television-wise. All signs point to peak TV - this long moment we've lived through in which more and better television programmes have been made than ever before — nearing its end. Orders for new shows have fallen, many existing shows have been cancelled, and because strikes by Hollywood actors and entertainment writers are still in full swing, many networks have reduced their season's offerings or postponed premieres. Despite this grim prognosis, there's a lot of interesting stuff coming our way. Below are seven of the most buzzy, interesting shows that will air in the next few months.

The Changeling (Apple TV+): LaKeith Stanfield stars in this mind-bending adaptation of Victor LaValle's 2017 novel of the same name. The series - about a half Ugandan rare-book dealer named Apollo Kagwa (Stanfield) trying to make it in New York - starts off as a relatively straightforward, grounded drama about Apollo's family, carefully rooted in history and covering the circumstances that drove his mother (played at different ages by Adina Porter and Alexis Louder) from Uganda and how his parents met during the garbage strike in New York. Apollo meets and marries a librarian named Emma Valentine (Clark Backo), but it's when they have a child that the series radically transforms into horror fantasy - becoming a disorienting, magical fable about motherhood through the perspective of fatherhood.

The Morning Show (Apple TV+): Apple TV Plus's weird, energetic, sometimes soapy series about ethical quandaries in TV news has kept its momentum long past the #MeToo moment that inspired it. Having concluded its exploration of Mitch Kessler (the lightly fictionalized version of Matt Lauer played by Steve Carell) last season, the show's third season turns away fully from its inciting incident. Network UBA is in trouble and Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) and Stella Bak (Greta Lee) are courting investors; the front-runner is Paul Marks (Jon Hamm), a tech billionaire. When the network's communications are hacked, racist communications among some senior executives result in some very 'Morning Show' confrontations and negotiations. There is, of course, a Jan. 6 subplot. The show continues to explore complicity and corruption among its principals, and solutions to the crises plaguing traditional media, along entertaining - albeit highly implausible - lines.

Lupin (Netflix): Omar Sy is back as shape-shifting mastermind Assane Diop in the third season of the fizzy French series about an urbane and brilliant "gentleman thief" modeled on Maurice Leblanc's creation, Arsene Lupin. His inaugural gambit, back in Season 1, was robbing the Louvre - not for profit, but as part of a long-running plot to avenge his father, who was framed by a rich family and killed himself in prison. Diop spent the second season trying to prove the family's guilt and rescue his son, Raoul (Etan Simon), from a kidnapping. The third season picks up with Diop as a wanted man. It's an idiosyncrasy of this show that the character's Blackness has often augmented his almost magical powers. While his younger self certainly suffered from French racism, the older Diop appears to live in a society that - in lieu of surveilling Black citizens excessively - fails to see them at all, especially when they're service workers. (Diop "disappears" when cosplaying as a janitor, for instance.) This doesn't seem sustainable, especially with Diop on the run. The third season seems poised to deal with this conundrum: "Now," he says in the trailer, which shows his face on wanted posters, television, even masks, "watch me disappear."

The Gilded Age (OSN): Julian Fellowes' lavishly produced but strangely inert series, about the struggles of New York's nouveau riche as they struggle to penetrate the city's aristocracy, returns this fall. Season 2 begins in 1883, with Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) preparing for "war" with Mrs. Astor (and the whole upper crust who are excluding her) because her attempt to acquire a box at the Academy of Music has failed. The official trailer shows no sign of Louisa Jacobson's Marian Brook or Dene Benton's Peggy Scott (despite the latter character's story taking a breathtakingly dramatic turn toward the end of the first season), but that feels unsurprising. It's my official position that this pale imitation of Edith Wharton wastes Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon and particularly Coon, who was transcendent in "The Leftovers"; but it's big on spectacle and can be a fun way to learn about this period in American history and the real Mrs. Astor.

Frasier (Starzplay): Kelsey Grammer's snooty radio psychiatrist will come back this fall, 30 years after the 'Cheers' spinoff series premiered. James Burrows, who created 'Cheers' 41 years ago, directed the first two episodes of the new show. Frasier Crane has returned to Boston, so brother Niles and sister-in-law Daphne aren't among the new series' regulars. The revival will star Jack Cutmore-Scott as Frasier's son Freddy, who dropped out of college to become a fireman; Jess Salgueiro as Freddy's roommate, Eve; and Anders Keith as Frasier's nephew David. Frasier's circle will include Nicholas Lyndhurst as his old friend Alan Cornwall, a college professor, and Toks Olagundoye as Alan's colleague Olivia, who heads the psychology department. 'Frasier' is one of the most successful spinoffs of all time; it'll be interesting to see whether there's enough left in the tank for a spinoff of a spinoff - or is it a sequel?

Lessons in Chemistry (Apple TV +): Executive-produced by Brie Larson, Jason Bateman and Susannah Grant, 'Lessons in Chemistry' feels, tonally, like a mash-up of 'Hidden Figures' and Max's show 'Julia'. Based on Bonnie Garmus' 2022 novel of the same name, the series begins with Elizabeth Zott (Larson) working as a lab assistant and trying to conduct her own research on the sly. Zott, a scientist who was forced out of her graduate programme, doesn't fit in with the secretaries at the lab but also can't get any of the male scientists to take her seriously. Except for one, with whom she shares, among other things, the "experiments" she has been conducting when she cooks dinner. As a chemist, she's interested in perfecting dishes. Things end badly, she gets fired and winds up, somewhat perversely, hosting a cooking show for housewives - and wishing she could get back to science. The concept feels a tiny bit stale, but Larson excels at making Zott strange, guarded and sincere; the result may be better than the recipe.

Fargo (Starzplay): The celebrated anthology series from Noah Hawley returns with 10 episodes set in North Dakota and Minnesota. Dot (Juno Temple), a respectable housewife with a checkered past she would rather keep secret, is being hunted by Jon Hamm's Sheriff Roy Tillman, a rancher and preacher intent on exposing her. Dot's husband, Wayne (David Rysdahl), means well when he asks for help from his mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the CEO of an enormous debt-collection agency. Lorraine, who doesn't much care for Dot, nevertheless appoints her in-house counsel (Dave Foley) to assist when some Minnesota State Police officers (Richa Moorjani and Lamorne Morris) get involved. It will be refreshing to experience Temple outside the 'Ted Lasso' universe, and I'm particularly looking forward to seeing Hamm, whose 'Mad Men' character spent lamentably little time parenting, play the larger-than-life, disapproving father of a disappointing failson (played by Joe Keery).