TCA 2018: The New Season's Big Stars (PHOTOS)

1. Paging Dr. VanCamp? Starring in a hospital soap was never quite on Emily VanCamp’s acting bucket list. “I don’t think any of the cast thought we would be doing a medical drama,” VanCamp said of The Resident (January 21, Fox). “But it’s not your typical medical show. We are really pulling back the curtain on hospitals.”

2. Lucy Hale was the life of the party when she posed with the cast of her new dramedy, Life Sentence, which tells the story of a cancer survivor with a sweetly dysfunctional family (March 7, The CW). “The show is about everyone trying to find their place in the world,” said the Pretty Little Liars alum (center, with, from left, Carlos PenaVega, Jayson Blair, Elliot Knight, Brooke Lyons, Riley Smith, Dylan Walsh, Gillian Vigman and Nadej Bailey). “Life is hard at times.”

3. Divorce is played for laughs in the new sitcom Splitting Up Together (March 27, ABC). Jenna Fischer and Oliver Hudson star as a couple raising their three kids post-breakup. “I don’t think you have to be divorced to relate,” Fischer said.

4. The musical drama Rise (March 13, NBC) follows the overhaul of a school theater department, led by How I Met Your Mother’s Josh Radnor (right). The young cast has impressed Rosie Perez (Damon J. Gillespie, Auli’i Cravalho and Radnor). “When they sang, it was beautifully shocking.”

5. New Girl kicks off its seventh and final season (April 10, Fox) with a three-year time jump, and Lamorne Morris’s Winston is now married,expecting a baby and dealing with his estranged father (played by comedian J.B. Smoove). But what about his beloved cat, Ferguson? “He’s just chillin’,” joked the actor.

6. American Idol has a new network and new judges (Katy Perry, plus Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan), but the reality competition (March 11, ABC) is still about trying to find the next great singer. Given the many avenues to launch a music career, Perry said Idol is still vital “to separate what’s good and what isn’t.”

7. Former CIA operative turned author and professor Dylan Reinhart is the NYPD’s secret weapon in solving crimes on new drama Instinct (March 11, CBS). Star Alan Cumming (with Bojana Novakovic) is excited to break new ground. “Instinct is the first broadcast drama with a lead gay character,” he said, “but that’s the fourth or fifth most interesting thing about him.” —Reported by Jim Halterman, Damian Holbrook and Marisa Roffman