Adorably quirky and emotionally surprising, Eli Stone is a legal drama the same way Pushing Daisies (how I miss it) is a mere whodunit.

Law revels in reckless, rude antiheroics. But Margulies also excels in giving her character emotional depth, with a tragic backstory and a rocky personal life involving a long-suffering husband (Aidan Quinn) and a hot private eye (James McCaffrey) on the side.

This show lives up to its franchise's reputation for suspenseful action.

Tell Me You Love Me is an engrossing, searing, sometimes squirm-inducing study of intimacy, told with a fly-on-the-bedroom-wall realism that is both clinical and wrenching. Voyeurism has rarely felt so unnerving yet ultimately rewarding.

Chuck is a terrifically appealing, super-slick mix of comedy, action and (often thwarted) romance.

Duchovny is as rakishly appealing as any cad can be.

Worth the price of admission? Absolutely.

I find I’m even more enthralled by Showtime’s costume melodrama The Tudors than I was a year ago.

This captures the original series’ vibe nicely.

By the time the sing-along version of High School Musical 2 airs Sunday (8/19, 8/7c), two nights after the first screening, many kids already will have memorized the lyrics--and probably many of the dance moves. It's going to be that addictive.

It's Broadbent as Longford, made an outcast for his empathy, whom you'll not forget.

This darkly engrossing and quietly suspenseful six-hour miniseries packages its chilly, cynical overview of international Cold War espionage in a brisk parade of sumptuously produced historical set pieces.

If the season premiere is heavier on atmosphere than plot, by the second week, stories begin to kick into full gear, and you’re caught up again in the turbulent marriages, personal secrets and caustic office politics that make Mad Men so madly, marvelously mesmerizing.

This bizarre character study, created by Diablo Cody, also works as a terrifically quirky family serio-comedy, with fine support from John Corbett as Tara’s very patient and loving husband, Brie Larson and Kier Gilchrist as their screwy teenage kids, and Rosemarie DeWitt as Tara’s easily exasperated sister.

Grisly and wacky, suspenseful and sorrowful, this darkly compelling cautionary fable of very abnormal chemistry is infused with a Coen Brothers-like flavor of macabre humor.

It’s titillating without being truly trashy, because it also has heart--for that, thank Bil-lie Piper (formerly of Doctor Who), who brings wit and warmth, but also a crisp and unpredictable edge, to the tricky role of Belle by night/Hannah by day.

As Shrek wishes "A smelly Christmas to all and to all a gross night," you may be appallingly charmed.

The women are the main event here, including the wonderful Audra McDonald (also a Tony winner) as Walter Lee's long-suffering wife and Sanaa Lathan as his spunky sister. It would take a hard heart not to root for this family, to cry with them or to rejoice when they finally get their moment in the sun.

Director Kenneth Branagh's culture-clash gimmick doesn't get in the way of the play's many intoxicating pleasures. This isn't samurai Shakespeare.

HBO’s crisply told, colorfully acted Recount wants to be both legal thriller and nightmare farce as it recounts, with news footage and dramatic re-creation, the cliff-hanger aftermath in Florida of the 2000 “squeaker” election between George W. Bush and Al Gore (both mostly off camera).

This show is shocking in all the right ways. It's monstrously entertaining.

Darwinians, take note. Even the fittest don’t have it easy on this show, which is down-to-earth sci-fi at its gritty best.

Collision is a terrific example of an unconventional and original story, weaving suspense, irony, mystery and emotional turmoil in the aftermath of a deadly multicar freeway pileup.

With its scenic photography, slick editing and relentless pop-rock soundtrack, Carrier has the feel of a movie, or maybe the world's longest recruitment video. It's also an engrossing, rewarding and addictive study of personal endurance and sacrifice.

[An] evocative six-part crime thriller.

Fans who feared they'd seen the last of Matt Groening's cult classic will be thrilled to see the show return in good form.

The comic relief we have come to rely on in the macho camaraderie has more of a tinge of gallows humor this season, which isn't to say that Rescue Me feels like a show on its last legs, more like it's nearing its natural (or, given the frequency of Tommy's post-traumatic hallucinations, unnatural) end.

Top Chef is the best-produced of TV's many cooking competitions (with Emmy nominations to attest to that fact), and the D.C. edition is already capital entertainment.