Boardwalk Empire has everything you'd expect in an HBO drama--sharply drawn characters, large-scale stories intercut with intimate moments and a sense that you couldn't find something like it anywhere else on the guide. It's maybe the best new show HBO has launched in several years.

Justified is well-written and well-produced, so it would be good with any decent actor in its lead role. But the show got Timothy Olyphant for the role, and the match could not be any more perfect.

It's extremely well cast, uses its Windy City locations beautifully and has an energy that grabs you pretty much from the first scene. Monday nights are really, really crowded, but you need to make room for this show.

While there's a little something lost in translation, the show retains enough of the core of the original that--bolstered by strong performances from top to bottom--it's as good a remake as any import since "The Office."

It's stunningly rendered and very well-acted, and though the first few episodes have a tendency toward telling rather than showing, the pace rarely feels slack.

It's a somewhat old-fashioned and pretty kick-ass hour of TV, with great action sequences in the first two episodes and, probably more important, well-turned performances by its three regulars: Mark Valley, Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley.

Its first two episodes do give the show a very strong foundation on which to build.

Through three episodes, there are enough funny, frustrating, sad and beautiful moments to make me hope Treme sticks around for a while.

It's fun, but it's best in moderation.

The location shooting and some very strong performances lift it above standard cop-show fare.

It's a great, gory and surprisingly emotional ride.

There aren't a lot of hints as to whodunit by the end of the first three episodes, but the accumulation of these little things adds up to a very engrossing story.

It's definitely a flight worth booking.

Veep is a show, though, that finds great comedy in the space between that idealism and the reality they face every day.

The show has one of the most thrilling pilots of recent years, but there are a few growing pains in the subsequent two episodes as the show sorts out the weight it gives stories involving the sub's crew, the locals on the tropical island they commandeer and the people back home who have connections to the sub.

Chiklis ("The Shield," "Fantastic Four") and Benz ("Dexter") are appealing leads, and "No Ordinary Family" will most likely rise and fall on their backs.

What is there in the premiere of Blue Bloods is the aforementioned cast, which also includes Will Estes ("Reunion," "American Dreams") and Len Cariou ("Damages"), and some sharply written and acted scenes between the family members. Those more than make up for a pretty standard-issue case in the premiere.

Three good lead performances (including one from "Friends" star Matt LeBlanc) and enough sharp writing about both show business and relationships give the show a comedic bite that makes up for the stuff you've seen before.

The new Dallas isn't a game-changer, but it's a solidly built, easy-to-take soap that does right by its predecessor.

Through its first three episodes, The Carrie Diaries works quite well as a coming-of-age story, thanks in no small part to Robb's winning performance and a pretty solid cast of young actors around her.

It's anchored by several great performances, and it's among the more distinctive and gorgeously filmed shows on the air right now.... What did turn me off a bit in the first couple episodes of Hannibal was the victims were all young women.

Like several new shows this season, the ABC comedy is neither cover-your-eyes bad nor set-the-DVR-season-pass good. It just sort of is what it is, which is occasionally cute and amusing--thanks mostly to a cast of comedy veterans--but largely forgettable.

While the show is clearly still finding its footing, there looks to be enough raw material there to make Perfect Couples, if not an instantly vital cog in NBC's Thursday comedy lineup, at least a reason to stay put between "Community" and "The Office."

The show is no better or worse than "Perfect Couples," "Mad Love" or "Traffic Light." Which is to say it's populated with likable actors and rarely out-and-out bad, but it's also never much more than mildly amusing.

No other new show this fall is attempting to tell a bigger story, and we're hoping the rough patches smooth out and it fulfills the potential that's there in its very strong cast and premise.

There's enough in the premise and the performances (particularly those of Garcia and Neill) to keep us watching, but to really hook us in Alcatraz needs to decide what kind of show it wants to be.

Where the show stumbles a little is in the case itself.

A cool premise can only take a show so far, and there's some work to do on the character front to make the show worthy of using all available technology not to miss.

Once you get past the idea that the bad guys are working for the good guys, it's a pretty by-the-numbers crime show.

It's a not always comfortable mix of action, drama and comedy, and if it's far from the worst new series to hit the airwaves this season, it's also not at the top of the list. It's a little too middle of the road for its own good.

It still carries a decidedly throwback vibe, and the ongoing bluster about the state of manhood in the world feels, at best, two steps behind the times.

It's a show I would really like to like, and there are elements present in the pilot that make me want to see how it's doing by, say, episode four or five, but it's not there yet.

It's a fairly standard crime procedural whose hook doesn't really add much--and actually seems like it could be an obstacle further down the road.

Lucas is actually quite good as Mitch, as is Molly Parker as his wife, Abby. The issue lies more with the mechanics of the plot.

The show feels like it should be better.

The cast is good enough and the premise strong enough to carry it. Right now, though, Deception is a show that doesn't know what it is.

Despite being populated with likable actors giving mostly solid performances, it's hard to escape the feeling that you've seen this before.

Now that finished episodes are out there, we can tell you that it's not great.

Just know going in that you'll be far better served by acknowledging the towering silliness of the plot, because it's just about impossible to take it seriously.

The show is so overstuffed and dancing so fast in its effort to achieve cultdom that it forgets some basic things, like making us care about the characters in the middle of this whole mess or drawing some clear stakes for what happens.