This is what ABC will now look like in its tear-up-the-schedule midseason programming panic: Prey (Thursdays, starting January 15; 8 to 9 p.m.), in which bio-anthropologist Debra Messing discovers among us a brand-new hominid species, at least one specimen a serial killer and another an agent of the FBI, with a 1.6 percent “DNA differential” from ordinary folks, determined not only to survive but to prevail over and extinguish Homo sapiens. Thus, a whole lot of black palettes, CT scans, Christ symbolism, and Chris Carter-style paranoia. Even the credits are X-Files-rated and sort of millennial. Prey will be followed immediately by On the Line (Thursday, January 15; 9 to 11 p.m.) -- clearly the two-hour pilot of a hoped-for series -- with Linda Hamilton as a single-mother LAPD cop, time-shifting Robert Pastorelli’s cop shrink Cracker (Saturdays starting January 17; 9 to 10 p.m.).

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• Archive: “Television”
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