This show earns its laughter with sharp writing, brilliant casting and characters that hit very close to home while often striking a nerve (mostly the funny bone).

It raises its emotional game almost instantly, as Alicia (the enigmatic and compellingly subtle Julianna Margulies) makes a fateful choice between her disgraced husband Peter (Chris Noth) and amorous boss Will (Josh Charles), though the decision is clouded by another character's manipulative deceit.

This fall's best and most original drama taps a gusher of intrigue and twisty romance, with star-is-born James Wolk the most irresistible con man since Lost's Sawyer.

Trust me, Damages is worth it. And for those without access to DirecTV, worth the wait.

There's always a surprise in baseball," says one of the game's biggest fans, Boston scribe Mike Barnicle. His lifelong emotional roller-coaster as a Red Sox loyalist--years of disappointment turned to rapture by the team's 2004 World Series victory--is one of the most enjoyable narrative threads in the glorious four hours of Baseball: The Tenth Inning.

It's a brisk, naughty little show, among the freshest of genre parodies. Despite its vintage look, Archer feels very modern.

Everything about New Girl, from her goofy costars to the distinctively quirky writing, is irresistible.

This is sleek, sexy, smart, densely written and deliberately paced adult entertainment.

This is a gorgeous piece of storytelling that requires and rewards patience.

With deft detail, and the usual sparkling mix of vivid archival footage and jazzy period music, we're treated to an evocative portrait of a young nation wracked by alcoholism and a debauched saloon culture, taking drastic measures to ban the manufacture and sale of alcohol.

Though the subject matter is wrenching, the tone here is more about emotional uplift, emphasizing the importance of bringing loved ones along for the fight.

An endlessly fascinating seven-part foray into the most remote and unforgiving regions of the Arctic and Antarctic.

No matter the language, or the decade, AbFab lives up to its title, and its reputation.

The River is a terrifying heart-stopper, a cleverly cinematic supernatural adventure that takes us on a wild ride into an exotic heart of darkness.

Excellent questions propel us back into the world of one of TV's most uncompromising dark comedies.

For Fringe's small but loyal following, resistance is truly futile. We'll stick with this remarkable series to the end.

Four seasons in, The Good Wife remains a marvel of clever plotting and tremendously witty ensemble acting.

Dexter's quality has ebbed and flowed over the years (peaking in the John Lithgow season), but so far, this season is looking like a riveting winner.

An electrifying military-gone-amok thriller that bridges the macho hardware of Tom Clancy with the suspense of paranoid Cold War classics from the '60s like Fail Safe and Seven Days in May.

If you can handle it, The Walking Dead is grade-A terror.

Community is undimmed in its marvelously inventive wackiness. Trippy as ever as it continues to send up sitcom conventions with surreal zeal.

The Hour teems with flawed but driven professionals who, even at their worst, never come off as ridiculous as Newsroom's fools' gallery. The hours just fly by

This is a fascinating experiment that feels like first-rate TV, and for subscribers old and (I'm betting quite a few) new, Cards is a great deal.

A fourth season of wryly amusing but often shockingly brutal backwoods mayhem.

The show may be titled Hannibal, which for commercial branding purposes makes complete sense, but this is Will's story. And an absorbing, psychologically rich one it is, too--immeasurably smarter than The Following, more haunting than Bates Motel.

Rectify is touching in so many ways, and the only drawback is that six hours is not nearly enough to tell this story, with an open-ended conclusion that's more disturbing than satisfying.

24's first four hours, airing over two nights, aren't quite as electrifying as last season's opening act.... But none of these problems diminish the pulse-pounding pleasures of watching 24.

Nothing about the seventh and final season of The Shield feels like a show running out of gas.