When announcing its primetime programming lineup for the 2025-2026 season, CBS claimed to be on track to win its 17th consecutive season as the most watched network. 

One new comedy, four action-packed dramas, and three unscripted series might be enough to push them to the top once more.
  
Everyone knows that a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles is more of a horror show than a laugh-filled adventure. CBS aims to change the image of one of the government’s least popular agencies with its comedy series “DMV.”
  
Based on award-winning author Katherine Heiny’s short story, “DMV” is a single-camera workplace comedy set at the place everyone dreads going most. The site is supposedly filled with quirky and lovable characters, which explains this is pure fiction.
 
The idea is that these minimum wage workers are doing a thankless job where customers are annoyed before they even walk in the door. Apparently, it’s a good thing the staff have each other, and certainly not the public that cools its heels with insufferable wait times.
  
“Blue Bloods,” a police procedural starring Tom Selleck as New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, had a long run of fourteen seasons, which came to an end in December last year.

The police commissioner’s eldest surviving son, Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg), will now be the star in the new spin-off series “Boston Blue,” where he’s taken a position with the Boston Police Department.
  
Once in Boston, Danny is paired with detective Lena Peters (Sonequa Martin-Green), the eldest daughter of a prominent law enforcement family who is considered a “rising star” in the police department.
  
Another police procedural arrives with “Sheriff Country,” starring Morena Baccarin as straight-shooting sheriff Mickey Fox, the stepsister of Cal Fire’s division chief Sharon Leone (Diane Farr in CBS’s “Fire Country”).
  
Sheriff Fox investigates criminal activity while she patrols the streets of small-town Edgewater, contending with her ex-con father, Wes (W. Earl Brown), who is an off-the-grid marijuana grower, and a mysterious incident involving her wayward daughter.
 
“Sheriff Country” is considered to be an expansion of the universe of the hit drama “Fire Country.” The latter stars Max Thieriot as a convict seeking to redeem himself and shorten his prison sentence by volunteering as a Cal Fire firefighter.
  
Dick Wolf, best-known as the producer of the “Law & Order” television franchise, should also be familiar for creating other law enforcement series like “Chicago P.D.” and the “FBI” show that resulted in two spinoffs with “FBI: Most Wanted” and “FBI: International.”
  
What’s next for Dick Wolf is an expansion of the “FBI” series into new series “CIA,” a one-hour drama centered on two unlikely partners. Tom Ellis stars as a fast-talking, rule-breaking loose cannon CIA case officer.
  
Ellis’ CIA officer is teamed up with a by-the-book, seasoned and smart FBI agent who believes in the rule of law. When this odd couple are assigned to work out of the CIA's New York Station, they must learn to work together to investigate cases.
  
There may be challenges ahead for these disparate characters as they lean into ferreting out criminals posing threats on U.S. soil, but then they find their differences may actually be their strength.
  
The unscripted series “The Road” offers viewers a backstage pass into the gritty and unforgiving life of a touring artist. With exclusive access to behind-the-scenes workings of the music industry, viewers will see what happens when performers pile into a tour bus and tackle a grueling schedule.
  
The documentary format trails Grammy Award winner Keith Urban on his journey to discover the next big artist alongside Grammy Award winner Gretchen Wilson, who acts as the “tour manager.”
  
Singers will join the headliner on tour, performing as opening acts in venues across the country. They will compete over local fanbases to secure a spot in the next city and remain on the tour.
  
During the mid-season, “America’s Culinary Cup” unscripted series from Emmy-nominated food expert Padma Lakshmi (“Top Chef”) is a new cooking competition series. Not all cooking shows can belong to Gordon Ramsay.
  
Show creator Lakshmi serves as host of this new culinary showdown featuring a cast of the nation’s most decorated chefs as they embark on a one-of-a-kind, high-stakes competition designed to challenge their creativity, endurance, presentation, leadership, and more.
  
The working title of “Y: Marshals” will come to fruition in some form during the mid-season where Luke Grimes stars as Kayce Dutton, leaving behind the Yellowstone Ranch to join an elite unit of the U.S. Marshal.
  
Combining his skills as a cowboy and Navy SEAL to bring range justice to Montana, Dutton and his teammates must balance family, duty and the high psychological cost that comes with serving as the last line of defense in the region’s war on violence.
  
Another midseason show is “Harlan Coben’s Final Twist,” which brings the world’s best-selling mystery author into the true-crime television genre for the first time. In each episode, Coben will guide audiences through gripping tales of murder, high-profile crimes, and life-altering surprises. 

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

‘THE LOWDOWN’ ON FX

FX’s new series “The Lowdown” wastes little time setting up the noir atmosphere of the dusty, hardscrabble landscape of Tulsa, Oklahoma, starting with the apparent suicide of Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), the black sheep of a prominent local family.
  
Sitting at his desk, penning a mystery letter that will get tucked away inside a paperback book to be hidden on a shelf with several Jim Thompson crime novels, Dale ends up with a bullet hole at his right temple.
  
While the apparent suicide happens within the first minutes of the first episode, it won’t be the last time that Dale makes an appearance. 

One might question whether he is truly deceased, and if he is, then Ethan Hawkes’ Lee Raybon occasionally conjures up his spirit during another quest for truth.
  
What we have in creator, writer and director Sterlin Harjo’s (“Reservation Dogs”) gritty exploits of his central character’s search for veracity is a hunt across a trail of breadcrumbs through the underbelly as well as the upper echelon of the Sooner State’s second largest city.
  
Calling himself a “truthstorian,” citizen journalist Lee Raybon is also the purveyor of rare books at Hoot Owl Books, where his lone underpaid employee Deidra (Siena East) keeps her boss and everything at the store in line one eye-roll at a time.
  
Raybon’s curiosity with the death of Dale, which he suspects as something other than suicide, is that the Washberg family is well-heeled and powerful. Moreover, Dale’s brother Donald (Kyle MacLachlan “Twin Peaks”) is campaigning for governor.
  
Does that fact that Raybon has written an unmasking of the Washberg family having anything to do with Dale’s demise? Obviously, a family member running for office has reason enough to squash any skeletons escaping from the closet.
  
Donald Washberg is connected to unsavory characters, including Tracy Letts’s Frank Martin, owner of Akron Construction that is buying up distressed property all over town, and Allen Murphy (Scott Shepherd), who handles the dirty work for the construction company.
  
Persistent sleuthing has intruded on Raybon’s personal life, to where his ex-wife Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn) is frustrated by his incessant stalking of corruption and deceit, even if she grudgingly admires his dedication and fears for his innate ability to place himself in danger.
  
What about Keith David’s Marty, a mysterious private investigator hired by the gubernatorial candidate to tail Raybon? Does he pose any threat? He keeps showing up at the same diner frequented by the citizen journalist. 
  
Violence comes for Raybon when a pair of skinheads break into his bookstore’s upstairs quarters and beat him to a pulp for what he wrote about them setting fire to a synagogue. What’s surprising is that these dimwits had enough brain cells to read a newspaper.  
  
However, Raybon is devoted to his wise 14-year-old daughter Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who shares her father’s curiosity and adventurous spirit so much that she’s always eager to tag along on his escapades.
  
Despite being mostly a loner, Raybon has support from friends and colleagues, like the antique dealer Ray (Michael Hitchcock) who helps with clues, and Cyrus (Michael “Killer Mike” Render), editor of the crime newspaper “Tulsa Beat” who publishes some of his work.
  
Film noir is a popular genre that’s also had a storied history in television. Personal favorites on the small screen include the “Mr. Lucky” and “Peter Gunn” series when television was black-and-white, and thus all the better for authentically depicting the harsh noir atmosphere.
  
The interesting thing about noir over time, whether in film or television, is that the settings are typically in big cities like Los Angeles, in particular, or New York, Chicago, and even New Orleans, where crime rears its ugly head in the dodgy parts of a city.
  
During a press conference with television critics, Sterlin Harjo, who has called his show “Tulsa noir,” explained that the Oklahoma town has “the right amount of grit, the right amount of history, the right amount of secrets to set the story in,” to fight for the truth.
  
Ethan Hawke let it be known that he loved the expression “truthstorian” because “it’s not a really a word,” and furthermore, it expresses “the intersection of truth and history,” and then he finally admits it’s “also sloppy and kind of a trainwreck of an expression.”
  
The most fun part of “The Lowdown” is that just about everyone in Tulsa, with the possible exception of Raybon’s precocious daughter, is either a trainwreck or on the verge of becoming one. 
  
In the role of Dale Washberg’s widow Betty Jo, Jeanne Tripplehorn let it be known that her character may or may not have been a stripper, but she was “definitely a rodeo queen” and “kind of a hellcat.”
  
If anything, “The Lowdown,” in the fine tradition of noir with a touch of dark comedy, is deliciously character-driven, with so many of the players proving to be eccentric, none more so than Ethan Hawke’s Lee Raybon constantly engulfed in all sorts of problematic situations.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

Before he was master spy Ethan Hunt in the popular series of “Mission: Impossible” films, Tom Cruise demonstrated his traits of bravado and reckless behavior in 1986’s “Top Gun” as a cocky naval aviator.
   
Cruise’s Lieutenant Pete Mitchell, known by his call sign Maverick, entered a training program at the U.S. Navy’s Fighter Weapons School where his reputation as an impulsive pilot willing to break the rules put him at odds with fellow aviators and Navy brass.

   

Almost four decades later, an even more popular sequel emerged with “Top Gun: Maverick,” and Cruise’s now-Captain Mitchell, though still flying, was now training young Top Gun graduates for a dangerous mission.
   
The idea is not far-fetched that Tom Cruise’s impetuous and foolhardy antics as a Navy fighter pilot served him well for many of the daring stunts he pulled off in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.
   
Moreover, “Top Gun” proved to be a recruiting tool for the Navy. The image of brash rule-breaking fighter pilots may seem cool, but real-life Top Gun pilots are efficient, methodical professionals engaged in strict rules of engagement.
   
This is why National Geographic’s “Top Guns: The Next Generation,” a six-part series that will also stream on Disney+ and Hulu, takes a real-life view of what it takes for one to be an elite fighter pilot.
   
In this compelling series, the cameras follow a class of Navy and Marine Corps student pilots as they enter the final and most unforgiving phase of elite strike fighter training.
   
The grueling program is six months of high-stakes aerial training, brutal physical demands, and emotional reckoning, where only the top performers earn the chance to fly the most coveted aircraft.
  
The series goes beyond the cockpit, following ambitious young Navy and Marine students both in the air and off-base, capturing candid moments with family and friends and revealing the personal stakes, sacrifices and motivations that brought them here.
   
Filmed with unprecedented access, the series immerses audiences in a world of intense pressure and soaring expectations, where dreams of earning wings of gold collide with the harsh reality of demanding training.

From bombing drills to close-range dogfights and nail-biting aircraft carrier approaches, each episode captures the intense demands of a program that challenges their abilities, endurance, and resolve at every turn. 
   
While the emotional stakes fuel the story, the skies are where the drama hits full throttle. Outfitted with in-cockpit cameras, the series delivers a breathtaking front-row experience to capture moments of precision, panic, and hard-fought triumph as they happen.

Filmed by some of the creative talent behind the blockbuster film “Top Gun: Maverick,” the aerial sequences are cinematic and pulse-pounding, pushing the limits of what these student aviators and their aircraft may accomplish.
   
The first episode, “Strike,” finds one student’s dreams of becoming a fighter pilot put in jeopardy as the class starts advanced phase training with a set of breathtaking bombing tests.
   
Diving at speeds they’ve never faced before, students struggle with the dynamic moves and start to make high-risk mistakes. Instructors deliver tough assessments in the debriefs to keep students safe.
   
“Catching the Wire” episode follows next. Landing on an aircraft carrier demands precision flying and is a skill vital for all U.S. Navy fighter pilots.
   
As the students tackle the longest and most technical section of the Advanced Phase, they know it’s a test they must pass to keep their dreams alive. The pressure mounts on some struggling pupils, and the commanding officer issues a timely warning to one. 
   
As the students reach the midpoint of their training in “Attack Attack!,” they start the iconic dogfighting phase. Against them are seasoned instructors with hundreds of hours of real-world experience.
   
To pass, they must outmaneuver the enemy to take a “kill shot.” One student has the added pressure of flying with his Top Gun-trained commodore, while another struggles to control his aggressive instincts.
   
Entering the second and most challenging phase of dogfighting in “Fight’s On!,” apprentice pilots find everything is on the line.
   
Defensive dogfighting involves dynamic maneuvers to evade battle-hardened instructors. The physical strain proves too much for one student, while another has a crisis of confidence when past failures come back to haunt him.
   
In “Head-to-Head,” the students face their final test in an iconic head-to-head dogfight against an instructor. To pass, they must bring all the skills they’ve learned during their Advanced Phase training.
   
With graduation just days away, students start to worry about their final grades and whether they will get the posting they – and in many cases, their families – want.
   
In the appropriately-titled last episode “Last Chance,” it’s graduation week. For the remaining students, it means they have one last chance to prove they deserve their prestigious fighter pilot wings. 
   
Standing in their way is a tense head-to-head dogfight against an instructor. Past failures come back to haunt one student, and another’s whole fighter pilot future comes down to a single flight with their commanding officer. 

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Lake County Symphony Association will present a performance by its Lake County Adult and Youth Concert Orchestra on Sunday, Sept. 21.

The concert will take place beginning at 2 p.m. at the Soper-Reese Theatre, 275 S. Main St., Lakeport.

Dr. Camm Linden will conduct. 

Tickets cost $15 for general admission, with those 18 and under admitted for free.

The concert also is free for 2025 Lake County Symphony season ticket holders.

For more about the symphony association, visit its website.

CRIME STORIES ON LIFETIME CHANNEL

During the month of September, the Lifetime Channel delivers three new “Ripped from the Headlines” movies for Saturdays, kicking off on Sept. 13 with “A Husband to Die For: The Lisa Aguilar Story (working title).”

This first film follows Lisa Aguilar (Keana Lyn Bastidas), a bright and loving woman who is newly married and expecting her first child with husband Darren (John McLaren).
   
Life seems picture-perfect as Darren, who dreams of becoming a professional golfer, appears devoted and driven. But Lisa soon discovers he’s living a dark double life. When she is viciously attacked in her own home, she and her unborn baby are left for dead.
   
Yet, Lisa miraculously survives and begins to unravel a horrifying truth: the man she trusted most may have tried to kill her. A cheating husband who doesn’t want to be a father may go to extreme lengths.
   
With the help of her grandmother Gabrielle (Marilu Henner), her devoted parents, and a determined legal team, Lisa embarks on a courageous journey to protect her child, seek justice and rebuild her life from the ground up.
   
Darren ultimately pled guilty for attempted murder. The biggest surprise for this film, however, might be Marilu Henner playing a grandmother to an adult woman. It’s a credit to the actress that she does not seem to be of that age.
   
A week later, on Sept. 20, the based on a true story “The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story” trails 15-year-old Alina Thompson (Brielle Robillard), an aspiring model in Los Angeles during the ‘80s, who gets caught in the dangerous web of a serial killer.
   
Without the knowledge of her parents, Carl (Sam Trammell) and Nancy (Ashley Jones), Alina sneaks off to attend an amateur photo casting call to meet up-and-coming photographer William Bradford (Steve Byers). 
   
Unbeknownst to Alina, William is a serial killer hiding in plain sight, using his charms to lure aspiring young women into secluded photo shoots that end up in unspeakable violence.
   
After their meeting, William becomes obsessed with Alina and her beauty and ultimately sets his sights on her as his next victim. But thanks to the protective instincts of Carl and a series of fateful twists, Alina manages to survive, where many others did not.
   
Though other young women were not so fortunate, “The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story” has a happy ending for a teen saved by a caring father’s quick instincts.
   
For the final Saturday of September, “I Was a Child Bride: The Courtney Stodden Story” movie is part of Lifetime’s provocative I WAS/I AM franchise which spotlights the untold stories of women reclaiming their narratives.
   
“The Courtney Stodden Story” dives into the controversial story of Courtney Stodden (Holly Barrett), a teenager catapulted into international notoriety after marrying 51-year-old actor Doug Hutchison (Doug Savant) at just sixteen years old.
   
Narrated by the real-life Courtney Stodden and told through her perspective, the deeply personal biopic chronicles the controversial and emotionally complex journey of Courtney.
   
Encouraged by her mother Krista’s (Maggie Lawson) dreams of fame for her, Courtney was thrust into the spotlight when she married an actor who is more than three decades her senior.
   
The movie is a story of resilience and survival of a young girl coming of age under a harsh public eye whose voice was nearly lost, despite her mother’s own fractured dreams and decisions that shaped the unfortunate path Courtney was pushed to follow.
   
More than a retelling of sordid tabloid headlines, “I Was a Child Bride: The Courtney Stodden Story” is an exploration of child exploitation, trauma and transformation.
   
Hulu streams the ABC News “IMPACT x Nightline: Confessions of a Child Bride: Courtney Stodden’s Story,” which relates that now she’s divorced from Doug, she’s claiming to be a crusader for other young vulnerable women.
   
The Hulu program features interviews with Courtney and snippets of stories about how a sophomore in high school in Ocean Shores, Washington ended up meeting Doug Hutchison.
   
Courtney’s mother signed over consent to allow marriage to a man three times her age, and more astonishingly that the nuptials took place at Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas only two weeks after they met when Courtney wanted to take acting lessons from Doug.
   
Clips from the time Courtney was getting married revealed a young girl who looked much older than her age with the physique of a buxom Hollywood starlet like Pamela Anderson when she modeled in Playboy magazine.
   
Courtney also pushed back on being described as a “child bride,” preferring instead to being a “child who was exploited.” She also revealed being a virgin when married to a man older than her father when the marriage was consummated. 
   
Not surprisingly, the Hulu program takes note of the “morbid curiosity” that everyone had about her wedding night at the Chateau Marmont hotel on the Sunset Strip.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — In celebration of her new book release, the Lakeport Library is welcoming award-winning Mendocino County poet Michelle Peñaloza for a reading of her work on Saturday, Sept. 27, at 2 p.m.

An audience Q&A will follow. 

This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Lake County Library and the Lake County Literacy Coalition.

Michelle Peñaloza is the author of “All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems,” winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and the James Laughlin Award, awarded by The Academy of American Poets (Persea Books, 2025).

Peñaloza is also the author of “Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire,” winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019), and two chapbooks, “landscape/heartbreak” (Two Sylvias, 2015) and “Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes” (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). 

Some of her honors include the Frederick Bock Prize from the Poetry Foundation as well as grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, Upstate Creative Corps, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Literary Arts, and PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists).

You can find her work at The Seventh Wave, Poetry, Honey Literary, Bellingham Review, New England Review, Lantern Review, and featured in American Life in Poetry. 

The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Peñaloza was born in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Nashville, Tennessee.

She now lives in Covelo, California. 

The Lakeport Library is located at 1425 N. High St. in Lakeport.

For more upcoming events, visit the library’s website at http://library.lakecountyca.gov/.