Jermaine Fowler and Judd Hirsch star in "Superior Donuts"

Sweet comedy: Watch out, Chicago, there's a new donut shop in town. After percolating at CBS for some time, topical comedy "Superior Donuts" is set to premiere on a special night, Thursday, Feb. 2, before moving to its regular Monday night slot Monday, Feb. 6, on the eye network.

Based on the hit 2008 play of the same name, "Superior Donuts" is set in a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood with an iconic-but-aging donut shop. 

Judd Hirsch ("Taxi") stars as Arthur Przybyszewski, the shop's gruff owner, and Jermaine Fowler ("Friends of the People") plays the store's newest employee, who boasts an enterprising spirit and a whole lot of energy.

Much like the play that it's based on, "Superior Donuts" doesn't shy away from the issues that dominate today's headlines. Its plotlines deal with race and gun control, hate crimes and culture wars.

This is a comedy, though, and the producers are keen to avoid preaching to their audience. "It's not a political thing. We're never going to say if they're Democrats or Republicans, in order to keep this out of the political realm," producer Garrett Donovan said to reporters at January's Television Critics Association's winter press tour.

The supporting cast includes Katey Sagal ("Sons of Anarchy"), David Koechner ("The Office"), Maz Jobrani ("The Interpreter," 2005), Anna Baryshnikov ("Manchester by the Sea," 2016) and Darien Sills-Evans ("Treme").

"Superior Donuts" premieres on a special night -- Thursday, Feb. 2 -- before moving to its regular Monday night time-slot.

Return to the red planet: Syfy is heading back into space. The first season of "The Expanse," the science-fiction series based on the novels by James S. A. Corey, was a hit with critics and audiences alike, and with six novels to date and several more planned, the show has no shortage of source material for its second season, which premieres Wednesday, Feb. 1, on Syfy.

With the new season comes new characters, and that means new actors playing them on screen. New Zealand native Frankie Adams ("Shortland Street") headlines the new cast members as Bobbie Draper, a Martian marine. She's joined by fellow newcomers Dewshane Williams ("Defiance") and Mpho Koaho ("Falling Skies").

Of course, most of the first season's cast is back, too. Thomas Jane ("The Mist," 2007), Cas Anvar ("Source Code," 2011), Dominique Tipper ("Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," 2016), Steven Strait ("10,000 BC," 2009) and Wes Chatham ("The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1," 2014) all return to their roles for the sophomore season.

"The Expanse" is set two centuries in the future, when humanity has colonized the solar system, including Mars and the asteroid belt. In the first season, a vast interplanetary conspiracy was uncovered against a backdrop of a brewing war between Earth and Mars.

Details of the second season's plot for the critically praised drama have been kept tightly wrapped. "The Expanse" returns Wednesday, Feb. 1, on Syfy.

There goes the neighborhood: As if things weren't already bad enough for Earth's inhabitants, they're about to get a whole lot worse -- on a nuclear scale. The fourth season of CW's post-apocalyptic drama "The 100" launches Wednesday, Feb. 1, and the premiere episode features a global catastrophe threatening to destroy everything that the show's heroes have spent the past three seasons working towards.

Starring Marie Avgeropoulos ("Cult"), Eliza Taylor ("Neighbours"), Bob Morley ("Home and Away") and Lindsey Morgan ("General Hospital"), "The 100" tells the story of a group of people who have been living in The Ark, a massive orbiting space station, ever since human civilization was wiped out in a nuclear catastrophe nearly a century before the show opens.

The first season followed a group of 100 youth convicts sent to live on Earth's surface to determine if the planet's radiation levels had decreased enough for a full-scale recolonization, but in the seasons since, the story has expanded dramatically.

Season 4 promises to pick up right where the previous one left off. Season 3 was filled with conflict between the former residents of The Ark, now called the Sky People, and the various tribes of people who have been living on Earth all along, the Grounders.

With the discovery of the cause of the global cataclysm decades before and the realization that a second disaster may be on the brink of happening, it's become apparent that both the Grounders and the Sky People have a more urgent concern than their feuds over resources.

Of course, as any fan of "The 100" knows, things are rarely as they seem. If the trailer for the new season is any indication, it's going to be a dark and grim time for the survivors, with plenty of death and despair to go around.

With the world on the brink of a second apocalypse just as it's beginning to recover from the first one, "The 100's" fourth season is shaping up to be a doozie.