Select previews of this Fall’s upcoming science fiction and fantasy shows. You can see the full schedule of shows at this link.
Person of Interest: CBS, Returning Series (4th Season), Premieres Tuesday September 23rd 10 PM EST
The Season 3 finale of this series brought quite a lot of changes to Person of Interest with Finch and his partners forced to go rogue as the “new” (and nefarious) machine Samaritan appears ready to take over as the sentinel for humanity. It looks like the series could be setting itself up for a course change from its more procedural focused stories from its first three years (though it was already veering away from that for much if its third season). However, TV shows love to make you think that big changes are coming, especially around season finale time, and then set things back to business as usual after an episode or two of the new year.
Person of Interest started out in 2011 as yet another “procedural with a twist” and it fit comfortably within CBS’ lineup of similar cop dramas. But as the show has progressed, it has continued to delve into its sci fi elements even if it typically avoids too much in the way of pondering over the moral quandaries of its pre-crime concept. In the show’s third season, it moved further away from its procedural elements as it really explored the AI nature of the machine and also brought in the competing system that ended up having its day as the finale rolled around. Hopefully it will continue in that direction and not backtrack too much, though the show’s network is not one known for taking a lot of risks. I will continue to tune it, though, and this series has developed some decent buzz from the sci fi community as it has grown across its three seasons.
As far as its prospects for renewal, the show’s ratings in the 18-49 demographic dropped last season, but it total viewers numbers remained high which is a factor at older-skewing CBS, and it regularly landed in the Top 20 based on that metric. It will be in its fourth season now, so anything beyond that is just padding for the syndication run. If it doesn’t drop too far and if CBS doesn’t consider it too expensive, it should be good to go for a fifth season.
Here is the Season 4 Trailer:
Buy Person of Interest on DVD and Blu-ray or Stream Episodes from Amazon.com:
