Supernatural selection

If you had been plucked from the greedy claws of death and fitted with an arm, ear, eye, and a pair of legs built from indestructible material at a cost of $50 million, and if you were now able to heal instantly from physical injury, and if your handsome scientist beau saved you because he couldn't live without you, you might be just a tiny bit relieved, no?

But in NBC's re-imagining of Lindsay Wagner's 1970s series ``The Bionic Woman," mighty heroine Jaime Sommers is only agitated and angst-ridden about having found near immortality. In fact, the 24-year-old, played by Michelle Ryan, has become a total stress puppy.

Shorn of levity, brightly lit sets, and extraneous words in its title, NBC's ``Bionic Woman" is not a celebration of newfound power. Like a number of network series premiering in the next six weeks, the promising action-drama is about the weight and responsibility of owning special powers. Despite being classified as Fantasy TV, ``Bionic Woman" - as well as newcomers ``Chuck," ``Journeyman," ``Pushing Daisies," ``Reaper," and ``Moonlight" - double as reminders of the not-so-fantastic side of having extraordinary talents.

Interestingly, in what is a rather ordinary grouping of new fall pilots, three of the best - ``Bionic Woman," ``Chuck," and ``Pushing Daisies" - fall into this mixed-blessing fantasy category. They, along with the soapy ``Dirty Sexy Money," have the kind of personality and vision that made last year's batch of pilots - which included ``Friday Night Lights," ``Heroes," and ``30 Rock" - so memorable.

Like the population of gifted ones on ``Heroes," this year's empowered protagonists accept their gifts unwillingly. In the case of Kevin McKidd's newspaper reporter in ``Journeyman," the involuntary ability to travel back into his own past seriously disrupts his present tense, namely his already troubled marriage and his job. He gets to see his late fiance again, but at a cost. It's the same duality that Rod Serling explored on ``The Twilight Zone" and that superhero comic book writers have always relied on for drama: ``With great power comes great responsibility," as Spider-Man's uncle told him.

These new shows aren't full-on nightmares, by any means, although the moody ``Moonlight," in which a do-good vampire falls in tormented love with a mortal, comes close. On the contrary, some are comedic - notably ``Reaper" and two of the best newcomers, ``Chuck" and ``Pushing Daisies" - even while they make magical phenomena into a burden. Looking like John Krasinski of ``The Office," Zachary Levi's benign Chuck accidentally downloads government secrets into his brain and essentially becomes a walking computer file. Doomed to fight off terrorists and assassins, he bids his post-college slackerdom farewell.

The similar and similarly wry ``Reaper," too, uses the acquisition of unwanted power as a loose metaphor for adulthood. Like Chuck, Sam is a slacker-geek working at an impersonal Home Depot-like megastore. (Perennial theme alert: Geeks are also prominently featured on the sitcoms ``Aliens in America" and ``The Big Bang Theory.") When he turns 21, Sam learns his parents have sold his soul to the devil - played as a slick joker by Ray Wise - and that he must serve as hell's bounty hunter.

``Pushing Daisies" is also playful, a fairy-tale-like story of a man who, with one touch, can bring the dead to life. Alas, a second touch kills them forever. That second touch makes Ned (Lee Pace) into a tragic figure: He brings his childhood sweetheart back to life but can never have contact with her again. Cue the emo. Still, the colorfully designed show, from Bryan Fuller of ``Heroes" and ``Dead Like Me," has a generally sunny tone, thanks in part to Kristin Chenoweth as a bold waitress and Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene as a pair of eccentric aunties.

This year's sci-fi and fantasy wave comes not long after a ``Lost"-inspired wave in 2005, but ``Surface," ``Threshold," and ``Invasion" crashed. Why are the networks trying again, so soon after such failures? For one thing, a single hit such as ``Heroes" weighs more than a few misses, since every season is chock-full of misses. Indeed, ``Heroes," along with its six-episode midseason miniseries spinoff called ``Heroes: Origins," has become the fall's most hyped returning series. Also, the new sci-fi and fantasy shows don't have frightening horror-movie overtones and paranoid undercurrents.

And mainstream supernatural stories are increasingly falling into the realm of the networks. General-interest cable has staked a claim on realism - on taking dramatic and comedic situations and giving them grit, not to mention sexual content and language. Preoccupied with the hyperrealism of FX series such as ``The Shield" and ``Nip/Tuck" and the dark psychological complexities of so many HBO and Showtime characters, adult cable has left the more whimsical concepts for the networks.

HBO's new ``Tell Me You Love Me," a sexually explicit relationship series that premieres next Sunday, is the kind of candid, morally gray drama the networks couldn't attempt. But a night-long block of sci-fi and fantasy, which NBC is trying by lining up ``Chuck," ``Heroes," and ``Journeyman" on Mondays? Why not.

Soap cycle

Along with the fantasy, a few new soap operas will try to lure viewers into an addiction this season. Last year's slew of serial dramas - ``The Nine," ``Kidnapped," ``Vanished" - famously bit the dust, but they were puzzle-like suspense shows that required very close attention. (See story, Page N8.) More conventional and less densely plotted soaps such as ``Brothers &#amp Sisters," ``Desperate Housewives," and ``Grey's Anatomy" are thriving. We'll see ``Private Practice," the mediocre ``Grey's Anatomy" spinoff, join their ranks, with tales of romance and medical tragedy at a medical practice in LA.

The dishiest, archest, more scandalous new soap has to be ``Gossip Girl," about a set of extremely wealthy and catty preppies on New York's Upper East Side. These teens blog and text with abandon about the sort of romantic power plays of MTV's ``Laguna Beach"-style shows. A few new series will generate controversy this fall - ``Aliens in America" for its Muslim jokes, ``Cavemen" for its racial metaphor - but ``Gossip Girl" may lead the pack for its negative role modeling. Parents tired of exposing their kids to frivolous rich brats such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan will certainly be groaning.

``Cane" is a tepid throwback to ``Falcon Crest," with Jimmy Smits its best hope for an audience, but ``Dirty Sexy Money" is a family drama with great potential. The filthy rich family in question, the Darlings of New York, promises lots of twisted melodrama, complete with prenups, an illegitimate child, drug and gambling addictions, and a secret affair with a transvestite. Meanwhile, as their lawyer, Peter Krause (from ``Six Feet Under") blames the Darlings - headed up by patriarch Donald Sutherland - for using his late father and causing his mother to kill herself. Phew.

Magical powers and supernatural high jinks certainly have their charms, but there's nothing like watching a wealthy family in ruins to keep you hooked.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.

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