How to Get Away with Murder

How To Get Away With Murder wraps up its season with a two-hour finale that solves the central mystery while leaving some questions unanswered. Some of the episode is a slog, padded out by yet another snoozy case of the week, but the last 10 minutes are as suspenseful as anything on television. If Peter Norwalk and the writers can figure out how to drop the procedural element of the show and more fully explore the actions of the regular characters, some of whom are not much more fleshed out than when the series began, the show will be much improved in season 2.

Six weeks into fall and How to Get Away With Murder is the biggest hit of the new season and one of the most watched shows on television. Viewers are connecting with its potent mix of legal procedural, murder mystery, and soap opera. They also must be connecting with the character of Annalise Keating, a woman as complicated as has ever been seen on network television, and where the question of her likability, or lack thereof, is deemed completely irrelevant on the strength of Viola Davis’s masterful performance. Annalise is an idealist and a hypocrite, passionate and calculating, funny and terrifying. But is she a good person? The creators trust their audience’s intelligence not to even bother asking that question.

How to Get Away With Murder, the new ABC drama from writer Peter Norwalk and executive producer Shonda Rimes, has the potential to drive off the rails at any moment. The premise it sets up for itself (spoiler alert: it’s a murder) cannot sustain itself for more than a season. Its characters, a group of ambitious law students, are pitched at tones ranging between frantic and rabid. Its procedural elements are nothing that would be out of place on a Dick Wolf show. But the one element that gives me utter confidence that this show is worth watching, besides Shondaland’s unquestionable track record, is the central performance of Viola Davis, one of the great American actresses of our time. Her role as Annalise Keating, criminal law professor at Philadelphia’s fictional Middleton University, shows herself to be charismatic, intelligent, and supremely manipulative in just a handful of scenes. She’s a predator with flashes of humanity. If the writing holds up, Davis will be able to create an antihero in the league of Tony Soprano and Walter White.

Several network series return this week, but the fall season starts in earnest next week. Before the premieres kick off, here are SoS TV Editor Kate Kulzick and SoS Managing TV Editor Deepayan Sengupta’s initial impressions of the networks’ new offerings. Note: Our thoughts are based on pilots that are works in progress, so there …