New on the tube: “Dancing,” “Chuck,” “Journeyman,” “Big Bang”

  The fall television season begins tonight, both with a “Bang” and a cha-cha-cha. In addition to the biggest “Dancing with the Stars” yet, two new shows will be sandwiching “Heroes” on NBC and yet another sitcom will joining the CBS Monday lineup.

All times Central.

  “Dancing with the Stars”

  7 p.m., ABC (KMBC-9)

  Six men -- including Wayne Newton, billionaire Mark Cuban and racer Helio Castroneves -- and six women -- actresses Jennie Garth and Jane Seymour as well as Scary Spice among them -- will compete for the ultimate prize of temporarily elevated fame. (Not that that's wrong. Reliving one's younger celebrity years can be fun, and dancing is safer than botox.)

  In an attempt to build steam for a mature reality show, “Dancing” will air three straight nights this week. The women perform with their professional dancing partners tonight, while the men and their partners take the floor at 7 p.m. Tuesday, with the results show 7 p.m. Wednesday announcing which team is going home, but not until after Dolly Parton sings.

  Take this with a grain of salt (I did, after all, go 0-for-6 in predicting the major Emmy winners last week, not that anyone else did much better), but I like Mr. Las Vegas' odds of winning. Three reasons why: He's got a street named after him (Wayne Newton Boulevard), he performs on stage all the time, and his partner is two-time “Dancing with the Stars” champion Cheryl Burke. However, my colleague Lisa Gutierrez, a much bigger fan of the show than I am, is putting her chips on “the hot Abercrombie model,” Albert Reed.

  “Chuck”

  7 p.m., NBC (KSHB)

  One of the smartest things new NBC executive Ben Silverman did over the summer was move this show from Tuesday nights to Mondays in the pre-“Heroes” schedule spot. Smart, because I think the “Heroes” audience is going to like the goofy premise, action scenes and clever writing on “Chuck,” a show that also happens to be about an ordinary human who learns he has a superhuman ability.

  The sequence of events by which our underachieving hero, $11-an-hour tech support guy Chuck Bartkowski (Zachary Levi), becomes a human repository for all the top-secret data held by the NSA's and CIA's computers would, I suppose, strain credulity -- if there was any time for that. But thanks to a fast-paced opening few minutes, you're moved along so quickly you don't really care how he got all that data downloaded into his brain. He's now a walking anti-terrorism machine. And it's hard to imagine a less likely keeper of the nation's security secrets than Chuck, a guy who'd rather fight his nerdly sidekick Morgan (Joshua Gomez) in Mortal Kombat than any actual terrorist.

  Fortunately, he has no choice. With a beautiful CIA spy (Yvonne Strzechowski) looking over one of his shoulders and a trigger-happy NSA twit (Adam Baldwin, no relation to Alec) over the other, combined with the creeping knowledge that he's going nowhere fast in life, Chuck will be forced to put down his joystick and take on the bad guys. The results aren't much different than a video game, for the violence on “Chuck” is pretty cartoony, but after watching two episodes I'm hooked. This is a fun escapist show, although maybe you should tape it and use it for a pick-me-up after the intensity of watching “Heroes.”

  “The Big Bang Theory”

  7:30 p.m., CBS (KCTV-5)

  Continuing with our nerds-meet-unattainable-blondes theme, Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons are young physicists who have no idea what to do with women. Lucky for them, a hot young woman (Kaley Cuoco) has just moved in down the hall, and is eager to make friends.

  I didn't get much of a sense where this show was going from the pilot, though there was nothing to hate about “Big Bang Theory,” and the writing's every bit as sharp as “Two and a Half Men” and “Dharma and Greg,” two comedies overseen by “Big Bang” producer Chuck Lorre. But with its enviable time placements between “How I Met Your Mother” and “Men,” this show will have room to grow. Look for Sara Gilbert to reunite with Galecki (they were married on “Roseanne”) in later episodes.

  “Journeyman”

  9 p.m., NBC (KSHB)

  San Francisco newspaperman Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, who was great in “Rome”) is having blackouts and finding himself being whisked back to the 1980s, for reasons he knows not. The problem with reviving a time-travel show is there needs to be a really distinctive and appealing twist so that critics won't just write things like, “This reminds me of 'Quantum Leap.'” Neither that show nor its successor, “Early Edition,” had much of a romantic angle, so the success of “Journeyman” would seem to hinge on Dan's relationship with his wife (Gretchen Egolf), which he's now questioning since, in this parallel 1980s world he now visits, his onetime fiancé (Moon Bloodgood) is no longer dead. Can a whole season be spun out of this love triangle? And will anyone care? And what happens if he wakes up in 1989, turns on the TV and sees “Quantum Leap”?

Comments

[Ron Ozer]

I hope Big Bang is more reminiscent of Dharma than 2 and a Half Men, which is awful.

[Jim Crumley]

Regarding Journeyman, I think that you miss a key point. Dan's former fiancee is also
alive in his present day. He came across an older version of her and she appears to be a time jumper as well. So the other thing big mystery for this show, is how the time jumps happen, and why both Dan and his former fiancee are the ones time jumping. I think that this show feels more like Lost (or maybe The Nine) than it does like Quantum Leap. I hop it gets a fair chance to grow.

Also, I don't think this show really deals with parallel world. Dan seems to travel back in time and change things in his own timeline. Though based on only one episode, I may be misinterpreting that.

[Bob]

Jim, I'm pretty sure his ex-fiancee is dead, in a plane crash I think? That's why it's a shock that she's there when he time travels and she knows what's going on.

[scott]

Hi ya, I don't think his fiance is dead in Journeyman. He sees his '80's fiance in her pre-dead stage, but he also comes across a second one of her and as far as I could tell, she didn't have time to explain at that moment to him how she was there and was a "Jouneywoman."