It plays at its own pace, a little more deliberate than other TV dramas, and its strongest moments are often understated.

It's a brand new ballgame. It looks to be a winner.

While many shows that have reached this point in the road have left their creative peak behind, Mad Men shows no such erosion. It still has things it wants to say and it still has the poetry to say them well.

Treme, created by "Wire" mastermind David Simon, may not ultimately get to the level of those others, because it's going to take a while to sort out the characters and lay down the themes. It also looks to have a deliberate pace, and it doesn't seem to be setting up for a lot of blood-and-guts action, so it may end up attracting a more cerebral crowd.

It's so intensely focused on these specific girls and their "Sex and the City" dream, though, that at times it may not resonate as much with a larger audience.

It's not comfortable. Just compelling.

ABC's dense, unblinking and occasionally surreal tale of plane-crash survivors on a strange tropical island moves into its fourth season Thursday with its compass still in good working order.

As with the Gervais-Merchant "The Office," the more time you spend with the characters in "Extras," the more you feel their pain as well as laugh at their expense.

The question, still open, is whether the writers can pack enough comic caffeine into the next 21 weeks to keep viewers along for the ride.

Easy Money has some promise. But it won't be an easy sell.

It's like three, maybe four sitcoms all squeezed into one, and quite an enjoyable one.

This 10-hour production on World War II in the Pacific is an ambitious, imperfect, intense and often compelling look at combat that gets dirtier and more ragged with each episode.

Top of the Lake doesn’t fully get rolling for a while. Happily, Moss doesn’t let us become disinterested.

The drama has more false frights than a student horror film, and such an uneven and incompatible tone that it's tough to tell which is funnier, the scenes of alleged humor or the scenes of alleged drama.

It's a show where neither the world being created nor the characters populating it are remotely convincing - or interesting.

What the show doesn't say, but wouldn't mind our noticing, is that even today we should be very careful about giving up some part of our freedom because someone tells us it will "solve" some other problem.

Pushing Daisies is perfect.

The show still occasionally talks about this stuff more than real-life guys probably would. But mostly it lets the action speak for itself. Men of a Certain Age is aging well.

To say we actually like any of these characters would be stretching it. But we're drawn into their lives, and as it starts its second season, Sons of Anarchy can't be left out of any conversation about the golden age of cable drama.

It's still not a show for everyone, since 99% of the action is conversation. But it's intelligent conversation, and the problems of the patients, including Weston, are multilayered and compelling.

Fox and K-Ville creator Jonathan Lisco get credit for setting their new police drama in post-Katrina New Orleans--but future episodes will have to settle down and get serious if the show is to do justice to its setting and potential.

A viewer who knew nothing of the earlier incarnations could come to this one and find it immediately engaging, like a good modern police buddy-team drama.

Curb remains an acquired taste. Still, even if you never watched a minute of the previous seven seasons, you can tune in and get some laughs. Guilty and otherwise.

He has always been wrapped a little tight but now he's about to explode, and Chiklis plays it beautifully, making it sound as if he must measure every phrase so that just opening his mouth doesn't release all the frustration in a nuclear blast.

The truth is that at this point, the complex subplots and nuances of all the backstories make it more satisfying for longtime fans than for recent drop-ins.

Bryan Cranston's Walter remains one of the best-played characters on television, and he's surrounded by a strong cast that, knowingly or unknowingly, plays off his desperation.

Nashville plays as a smartly written and well-appointed soap.

Short scenes [are] designed to suggest we just walked in on random real people. It's a raw look that is, nonetheless, a look. It also, inevitably, says scripted TV drama.