Blake Lively in Gossip Girl

Superbad geeks aren’t just dominating the box office. This fall’s TV lineup features series about tech nerds (turned superspies, on Chuck) and series for tech nerds (Bionic Woman), not to mention the return of Heroes and Lost. Yet while most of America dorks out, the rest of us will be secretly enjoying this fall’s other big trend—maybe while eating ice cream and closing deals on our iPhones, clad in our silk pajamas. Forget dweebs—hot girls are in charge. It’s the season of chick lit on TV.

The most buzzworthy entry: Gossip Girl (the CW, Sept 19), produced by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the duo behind The O.C. Based on Cecily von Ziegesar’s teen book series about students at a chichi New York prep school, the show could finally elevate the CW from also-ran to cooler-than-Fox. With a Wednesday lead-in from America’s Next Top Model, it’s got a shot.

“I’ve had some luck in that time slot before,” says Savage, who adds that she was inspired by some old favorites. “The O.C. debuted on a Wednesday. I think Wednesday night is the best viewing night. It goes back to my college days, we loved Wednesday nights. We had 90210 and Melrose Place.”

Unlike those shows, in which women were usually portrayed as one-dimensional bitches or Goody Two-shoes, the new crop of series depicts women as…women. Cashmere Mafia (ABC, Nov 27) feels like Mamet for chicks, with heavy emphasis on the workplace and the bond among four friends (including Lucy Liu) who met in college and are each other’s pillars of strength.

Creator and writer Kevin Wade (who wrote Working Girl) loves the Mamet comparison. “These characters are trying to balance a 60-hour workweek and have a full family, social and romantic life, but not at the risk of sacrificing the brains they were born with and the educations they worked hard to get.” So how does a woman do that? “Hell if I know. In a practical sense it helps to compartmentalize, to prioritize.”

Therein lies the drama. In Mafia, an overworked woman dashes from a black-tie event and sneaks past the vicious PTA security mom to make it just in time for her daughter’s dance recital. In another scene,  a wife says to her husband—right before he receives an award—that she plans to cheat on him with one of their friends, since he slept with another woman.

You could call it a Desperate Housewives rip-off, just as you could call Women’s Murder Club (ABC, Oct 12)—starring Law & Order’s Angie Harmon—a Housewives clone with a little of The Closer thrown in. But these new series have more heart—something good chick lit never lacks. In Club, for example, Harmon wears her badge on her low-rise jeans pocket, juggles two cell phones, tries to catch a killer and deals with her ex who, after sexing her up, says he’s getting married again and asks her to return some furniture. Seeing this crack detective cry “It’s not about the bed!” to her friends as she loses her professional facade is a breakthrough Sipowicz didn’t get to have in his pilot episode.

For more on the fall TV lineup, see Time In.