1. Reign
From the network that brought you Gossip Girl and 90210…comes a period drama. Don’t let that put you off, though. This is definitely more The Borgias than The White Queen. Things kick off with Nostradamus, famed fortune-teller, giving Catherine de Medici some particularly gloomy tidings about the marriage of Cat’s son, Dauphin Francis to a wee bonnie beauty known to history as Mary Queen of Scots. He’s going to die. Don’t panic though because Sebastian, Francis’s best mate, played by period drama rogue Torrance Coombes, has his eye on Mary. Francis has his eye on another girl too, so Catherine shouldn’t be too freaked out. Added into that heady mix, Mary’s ladies are plotting to make her Court It-Girl, Nostradamus is generally waxing on about how terrible everything will be, and there’s an assassination attempt on the way!
2. The Tomorrow People
This is actually a reboot of a 1970s British sci-fi show but the trailer wouldn’t give that away. Things open on what looks like a threesome. Then it emerges Stephen (Robbie Amell) has actually woken up in bed with a couple. Whoops! Apparently he sleepwalks. He has voices in his head, so everyone at school thinks he’s a weirdo. The voice makes him get on an abandoned subway where he meets Home & Away’s Luke Mitchell, who teleports him to an abandoned subway station, full of super-powered people that can teleport anywhere – The Tomorrow People. They’re basically Jedi, with no lightsabers and a little more teleportation. Stephen even does some force-choking in the trailer. Predictably the government’s a bit arsey about the whole thing and the currently unnamed arch-villain looks to be a marvellous bastard of an enemy.
3. Dracula
You can’t deny NBC have called in the big-guns for this new-take on the age-old Dracula story. Boasting a producer from Downton Abbey and a director from The Tudors, the show’s also helped by the choice of high-profile lead Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the eponymous Dracula. Set in Victorian London, they’re channelling the Jack the Ripper vibe with lots of candlelit balls and theatres, and foggy cobbled streets. There are also lots of unfortunate damsels in distress for Dracula to sink his fangs into, and intriguingly what may or may not be a reincarnation of his wife who was burned at the stake as a witch. Cheery. Add in the fact that Dracula’s seen taking on a Vampire Hunter as a lover in the trailer, and you have all the elements for a supernatural show that will survive long enough to assert itself in a supernaturally saturated market.