TV Preview: Scream Queens Has Fun with Fear

There's a wide gulf in tone between Glee and American Horror Story, and producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, who created both of these series, are settling into that wide space with Scream Queens, a new series that combines Glee's light-hearted, ensemble-focused storytelling with AHS's penchant for scares.

Scream Queens is essentially Mean Girls plus psychopaths. The series is set on the campus of Wallace University, where sorority queen Chanel, played by Emma Roberts, runs the Kappa Kappa Tau house with an iron fist. She has a stable of devoted followers, but she also faces opposition from Dean Cathy Munsch, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who hates sororities in much the same way that Sue Sylvester hated glee clubs. Chanel also has to deal with new pledges who don't fit in and a mask-wearing psycho who's murdering people around campus.

Scream Queens promises to adopt the gently self-mocking tone of Glee more than it will try for the visceral horror of AHS. The violence here will be more for fun than for fright. Expect, also, plenty allusions to the horror movie genre a la Scream and appearances by semi-big stars such as Lea Michele, Nick Jonas and Ariana Grande.

Scream Queens debuts September 22 on Fox.