Sarah Jessica Parker Carries On in HBO’s Divorce

After a 12-year hiatus, Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker is back on TV full-time, portraying a woman going through another stage of life and love in HBO’s Divorce. Parker portrays Frances, a corporate headhunter who put her dreams of owning an art gallery on hold to move out of Manhattan and support her ex-stockbroker husband, Robert (Thomas Haden Church), when he began a career as a house flipper in Westchester County. Then the real estate market tanked. Years of being the sole breadwinner, mortgage payer, insurance supplier and grocery buyer for their two adolescent children have wearied Frances. In the opening scene, she gives Robert the finger behind his back after he complains about her bathroom use. That night, the pair witness a fight between their married friends Diane (Molly Shannon) and Nick (Tracy Letts) that ends in gunfire. (Did we mention this was a dark comedy?) Robert feels reborn. Frances realizes she needs a divorce. As she sadly states, “I need to save my life while I still care about it.”

The idea for Divorce came to Parker, also an executive producer on the series, four years ago. “I started thinking about how many different versions of marriage there are,” she recalls. “I saw my friends at various points in their own marriages—getting divorced, thinking about getting divorced, contemplating affairs, having survived affairs, having not survived them. I wanted to tell the truth about what divorce can look like, what an attempt at divorce can look like and what marriage at this point can feel like if you’re in it and you want out. I’m not a writer. I couldn’t tell the story. I could just talk about what was interesting to me.”

Also in this issue:

• Fall Streaming Preview: A look at what’s coming up this season, including Gilmore Girls, Marvel’s Luke Cage, The Man in the High Castle, Chance and more.

• Tom Bergeron. The unflappable Dancing With the Stars host talks about the recent Ryan Lochte incident and how he keeps his cool on live TV.

• Designated Survivor. Kal Penn returns to TV, putting his White House experience to good use in ABC’s Designated Survivor.

• Shameless. Emmy Rossum previews big changes ahead in Season 7 of the Showtime dramedy.

• Scorpion. A behind-the-scenes tour of the CBS hit’s new season.

• Ash vs. Evil Dead. Starz’s horror romp gets more outrageous (and more personal) in Season 2, including the arrival of Lee Majors as Ash’s dad.

• Plus: Hawaii Five-0, Arrow, Superstore, General Hospital and the best of movies, streaming, sports and more.

Returning Favorites: Meet the New Agents of NCIS

You wanna tussle? Say the word “replace” on the Santa Clarita, California, set of NCIS. You’ll get the cast and crew worked up and ready to rumble.

They’ve been hearing it (and all its variants) a lot since January, when longtime star Michael Weatherly announced he was leaving the drama—and taking movie-quoting, lady-killing, bighearted manboy Tony DiNozzo, whom he portrayed for 13 years on four different series, with him. Everyone wanted to know: Who will replace Weatherly? Who can replace Weatherly? And what will this do to the world’s most watched drama series?

The answers were pretty simple: no one, no one and kick it up a notch. The Season 14 premiere introduced NCIS’s first two new recruits: That ’70s Show’s Wilmer Valderrama as Nick Torres and Blue Bloods’ Jennifer Esposito as Alex Quinn. He’s a former undercover agent who just resurfaced after going MIA in Argentina. She’s an old associate of Gibbs (Mark Harmon) who left active duty to teach probies at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. Both have…dah-dah-dum-dum-dum…dark pasts.

Viewers have already met the drama’s third addition, cocky MI6 agent Clayton Reeves (Duane Henry). He helped nab the guy who killed fan fave Ziva (Cote de Pablo) in May’s season finale and comes back into the fold next month when the international arms dealers he’s pursuing are tied to the team’s latest murder case. Then he sticks around on loan from British Intelligence.

“All three characters have this fish-out-of-water quality,” executive producer Gary Glasberg says. “Torres has always worked alone and is suddenly put in an office environment. Quinn knows her stuff inside and out but hasn’t been in the field for years. And Reeves is used to a different government with different rules.” The trio also has little in common with boarding-school-bred ex–police detective Tony.

Also in this issue:

• Returning Favorites: All the scoop on dozens of shows, including Chicago Fire, Supergirl, Empire, Grey’s Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, The Flash and more.

• Seth Meyers: The Late Night host picks 10 fall shows he can’t wait for—some real and some he made up!

• Presidential Debates: What to watch for when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump finally face off.

• Plus: Younger, Shameless, Survivor, Shark Tank and the best of movies, streaming, sports and more.

Fall Preview: Kiefer Sutherland Returns in ABC’s Designated Survivor

Jack Bauer has left the building. After nine seasons on Fox’s pulse-pounding 24, Kiefer Sutherland is no longer channeling an action hero but a thinking man called to action. In ABC’s new political thriller Designated Survivor, he plays freshly minted U.S. President Tom Kirkman. When we first encounter Kirkman, he’s a lusterless Cabinet member—the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, to be exact—and a pancake-flipping family man. Then a massive terrorist strike hits the Capitol Building during the State of the Union address, wiping out all of the country’s top officials suddenly leaving Kirkman to take over as president. “I had heard this weird piece of trivia about a ‘designated survivor’—it’s a real thing in our government—and found it oddly fascinating,” says creator David Guggenheim. “How does someone go from a low-level Cabinet job to the most powerful person in the world in an instant?”

Plenty of wheels are being set in motion as the series unfolds, and for Sutherland, that’s the main draw. “The show works on three levels: There’s the thriller aspect with the conspiracy investigation; there’s the family drama; and there’s the political angle,” he says. “All of those storylines can intersect and also live on their own. We have a lot of landscape to work with.”

Also in this issue:

• Fall Preview: Scoop on the best new shows, including The Good Place, starring Kristen Bell and Ted Danson; Michael Weatherly’s Bull, reboots of MacGyver, The Exorcist and Lethal Weapon, plus new shows for Michelle Dockery, Matt LeBlanc, Kevin James, Sarah Jessica Parker and more.

• Harry Connick Jr.: The charming crooner launches a new daytime show, which he calls “a late-night show party in the afternoon.”

• Mariska Hargitay: The Law & Order: SVU star writes about her real-life commitment to battling sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse.

• TV Guide Magazine Advocacy Awards: A preview of our second annual partnership with the Creative Coalition to honor creators and stars who give back.

• Plus: Dancing With the Stars, The Bold and the Beautiful and the best of movies, streaming, sports and more.

Lethal Weapon: Fox Reboots the ’80s Buddy-Cop Franchise

As far as film-to-TV adaptations go, recent history includes the great (Fargo!) and the not-so-great (sorry, Rush Hour). But network execs aren’t stopping the remake train anytime soon, since familiar titles often bring built-in audiences. First up this fall: Fox’s Lethal Weapon. Based on the iconic 1987 action movie starring Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, the small-screen reboot takes its own spin on what happens when by-the-book detective Roger Murtaugh (now played by My Wife and Kids’ Damon Wayans) teams with loose-cannon cop Martin Riggs (Rectify’s Clayne Crawford). “There’s a tremendous difference between these two guys,” says executive producer Matt Miller (Forever, The 100) of the bickering partners. “But like with any good relationship, the chemistry comes exactly because they don’t have the same characteristics.”

And while that chemistry brings a humorous tone, “we’re playing it dead straight,” Crawford says. “And the seriousness of those moments is where the comedy comes in, because the situations themselves are so ludicrous.”

Also in this issue:

• Fall Sneak Peek: First looks at your favorite shows, including Criminal Minds, Empire, NCIS, Chicago Fire and more.

• Harley and the Davidsons: Discovery Channel revs up the story of how Harley-Davidson became America’s motorcycle giant in a new scripted miniseries.

• Emmys: Jimmy Kimmel previews his second gig hosting TV’s biggest night.

• The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey: CBS’s re-opens the investigation into the unsolved 1996 murder of the 6-year-old beauty queen.

• Star Trek: Celebrating the sci-fi classic’s 50-year legacy of groundbreaking TV.

• NFL Preview: Peyton’s retired, Brady’s suspended and the Rams are back in L.A. Get ready for a season of change.

• Plus: The Rizzoli & Isles series finale, Queen Sugar, Masters of Sex, Blindspot, Z Nation, The View’s Sara Haines and the best of movies, streaming, sports and more.