The best new TV show of the 2006-07 season.

The Pacific groans with technically preposterous battle scenes, but it is the minute behavior of ordinary men both in and after those extraordinary circumstances that takes your breath away and helps put The Pacific in a class of its own among war movies.

The perfect marriage of television and literature.

Boston Med operates at the edges of real life in a way scripted shows can only approach. It is the single must-see broadcast-TV show of the summer.

In so many ways, it's as good as television gets.

With the tormented Luther, it's sometimes tough even to identify who is the cat and who is the mouse. Writing and acting come together to produce characters, more than stories, who are powerful, surprising, ambiguous, and all that other stuff.

It's no lie to say you don't get this sort of stylish and challenging stuff very frequently on TV, adult subject matter treated maturely in a series that makes you squirm and think.

Sherlock strikes a perfect--and delicious--balance among comedy, pathos, murder, and mystery.

A wonderfully complex drama, with plenty of sly humor, that showcases slick performances from its two stars, and magically straddles the parallel universes of film noir and high school high jinks, while generously tossing out amusing asides. [22 Sept 2004, p.D1]

Foul-mouthed, violent and potentially depressing with its unvarnished characters, The Shield also shocks your heart with pounding action and tickles your brain by presenting a cops-and-robbers world where almost everyone is at least morally ambiguous, at worst corrupt. [12 Mar 2002]

Home Box Office has telecast several of the most scintillating series of this decade, notably The Larry Sanders Show, Oz, Arli$$, and Sex and the City. You can safely add The Sopranos to that glittering gallery. [10 Jan 1999, p.F01]

The sumptuous two-hour opener to Season 6 is a remarkable piece of work--beautiful, provocative, and deep. It's an unexpectedly exquisite distillation of the show's themes and aspirations.

Among the most stimulating and entertaining series of the last 10 years and far and away the best new network show of the 1992-93 season.

The first new drama series ever produced by Home Box Office, Oz, is a powerhouse. It will probably push the quality standards for television drama as far as HBO's masterful Larry Sanders Show has expanded the parameters of TV comedy series. [9 July 1997, p.C01]

This sparkling saga of an extended dysfunctional family has more laughs than regular characters.

The best sitcom this year, and one of the best in a lot of years.

This season's best new show.

This may be one of the most beautifully crafted and original TV shows ever to get fall consideration on a big network.

The monumental production is worth bragging about.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, whose pilot is the first feature-length film made in Botswana--a movie that starts off one of the most glowingly original, kindhearted, and genuinely engaging TV series of this fading decade.

The song and dance spills over everywhere, even onto the football field, in this season's best new TV show, Glee.

Justified itself stays on target all the time, too, an instant entrant in the best-new-show sweepstakes in a TV season that already has several solid candidates.

The Killing is also the least prepossessing, an eerily quiet, yet compelling and complex, tale of the way the murder of a teenager affects the lives of many people.

More than any of Burns' documentaries except The Civil War, Prohibition provides viewers with a real feel for the times as well as new and surprising information.

Another heart-stopping adventure show from "Alias"'s J.J. Abrams...Lost undertakes the ambitious assignment of developing 14 characters, including the usual tough guys and brave gals, as well as a rotund, lovable dolt, a 9-year-old boy, and a Korean couple who don't speak English, all suddenly thrust together to fight for survival. If anybody can meet the challenge, it's Abrams. [22 Sept 2004, p.D01]

It takes about 20 minutes for Lynch's TV debut, an eight-episode series, to wrap you in its clutches. After that, it's as easy to watch as a good Murder, She Wrote, but 100 times more interesting. By the end, you'll feel you know a lot less than you did at the beginning.

One of the best new series of the season. [30 Sept 2001, p.H01]

A stunning, richly textured, feminist existential epic.

Angel is more straight-ahead action than Buffy, but it is a spin-off that twirls terrificly. Plunked behind Buffy, it completes the most joyously entertaining two hours on television. [5 Oct 1999, p.E01]

One of the best new series this fall. [2 Oct 2001, p.C04]

The best traditional sitcom to arrive on the tube since "Everybody Loves Raymond." Perfectly cast, sharply written. [22 Sept 2003, p.E06]

Amy Brenneman, as Licalsi, is the dark-haired, more visceral contrast to Kelly's wife, Laura, played by Sherry Stringfield. Both women add depth to the drama, as do James McDaniel as the precinct commander, Nicholas Turturro as the new kid in the cop shop and Tom Towles as the guy from the Organized Crime Squad.

One of the best new TV shows this season.

It's likely to startle you the way no show has since The X-Files.

How I Met Your Mother is that rare TV comedy that relies more on character than jokes.

Invasion has great production values and is tops among the three new alien series.

Let's get this straight. Everybody Hates Chris is not the Second Coming. But it is one of the season's best new series.

[Rollergirls] skillfully convey[s] the ups and downs of everyday life, man trouble, hard partying, athletic rivalry, in an unfamiliar culture. But the show adds a layer of visceral excitement, as superb camera work and editing bring the intensity of the competition into genteel living rooms.

The predicaments of Jack and those unlucky enough to be associated with him are wholly preposterous. But the show's creators make it so much fun to watch that only the fussiest fussbudgets protest the fantasy.

Only an occasional over-spicing of melodrama keeps The Unit from TV's top echelon. Even so, it's the best new dramatic series of a TV season that started way back in September.

It demonstrates the potential of reality television to go beyond determining who can eat the most worms or scream the loudest, to illuminate important social and cultural issues.

Frequently hilarious.

Thief is in a different league, simultaneously intense and flamboyant, propelled by Braugher, who's even better here than in Homicide: Life on the Street.

[It] is sure to occupy a special place in Emmy voters' hearts.

You've never seen anything quite like Ugly Betty.

One of this season's best new series.

A well-made rocket ride that's closer to 24 than anything else on TV.

The show is equal parts silliness and satire.

A challenging and satisfying legal thriller.

Torchwood doesn't disappoint: After tonight's slam-bang premier, subsequent episodes only get more outrageous.

Reaper is right up there with the best new shows of the season, better, actually, than NBC's "Chuck" because it dares to be more radical.

It may not be a creative breakthrough, but it's lots funnier than the universal equation would predict.

Cane, at 10 p.m., stars ever-hunky Jimmy Smits and a huge cast that ranges from a 12-year-old to Hector Elizondo and Rita Moreno, in a tale of--what else?--lust, money, romance and family intrigue. We've seen it all before, but never this appealingly.

Aliens in America, a darling and delightful sitcom with a social conscience.

It's a cornucopia of fanciful sets and costumes and more computer graphic imaging than you'll find anywhere else on TV, and a lot of it is pretty cool.

Glau's the best part of Chronicles, playing the robot who seeks to understand human stuff with a beguiling bemusement reminiscent of Jeff Bridges in "Starman."

It's unpredictable and stimulating, like the drug that White manufactures, but it produces a much safer high.

It is a finely crafted serial about contemporary and supposedly representative people in the same decade of life.

The Tudors is loads of addictive fun, filled with intrigue, the delicious papal stylings of Peter O'Toole, and that old stand-by, hot sex.

The episodes, each supposedly one day in the life of America, should leave viewers squirming, not just with laughter at the failings they portray, but with anticipation that Ullman and Showtime will hurry up and make some more.

A shockingly good series about a motorcycle gang in the apocryphal California valley town of Charming.

Worst Week is a dandy confection, as slight and silly and flat-out hilarious as anything that's come along on TV in a few years.

You ain't seen this stuff on TV before, my friends, and if you're smart, you'll search it out and enjoy.

Valentine puts a modern twist on family drama that's edgy and fun without being overwrought or vulgar.

Insightful, smart and lyrical, Spectacle soars when so much of cable TV seems intent on locating the most distressing nadir of human culture.

The shows are fun and exciting, Mr. Blow, perfect for a stay-at-home Friday night, having a few guys over for beers, or recording and watching when you wake up Saturday afternoon, after all that hard partying.

It's "Sex and the City" London-style, but with a darker edge, and more brains and gravitas.

Breaking Bad is tougher to watch than Showtime's "Weeds," about a suburban-mom drug dealer, or "Dexter," whose serial killer wields his bloody blades with good intentions. But the rewards of Breaking are great.

The first episode is entertaining and promising enough that viewers may get excited about seeing the second one.

There's art aplenty in a film that elicits emotion as it slowly draws you into a place you've certainly never been before, even if it may leave you wondering why you made the journey.

The storytelling and visual gloss we have come to expect from Mad Men are stronger than ever. If this eventful, fast-moving episode is any indication, we're in for a savory season.

Comics have been doing this sort of thing on TV since I Love Lucy and The Jackie Gleason Show in the '50s, but never with the hilarious depravity of Sunny.

Four sitcoms - two returning and two premiering - start new seasons between tonight and Sunday. The news: In a TV environment that has seen a handful of decent comedies in the last 10 years, they're all funny.

It's about the ultimate outcast and his efforts to become human. Like all good drama, it uses heightened characters to magnify struggles we all have.

A meaty drama in the same vein as The Shield, where some of the police are perps and there's no telling who's on the up-and-up.

Andrew Davies, who made 2006's Bleak House one of the best TV shows of the year, crafts another superb script, with characters and incidents squeezing out the sides, just the thing to satisfy close observers, which anyone joining this maxi mini-series should be.

Action and tight-squeeze situations outweigh eloquent pronouncements about 100 to 1 on this drama from ER's John Wells. It may not be the greatest show on Earth, but it's the most powerful cop drama in a few years.

Ken Jeong plays the Spanish professor, Mr. Chang, the kind of quiet joke in the topsy-turvy world that characterizes this sweetly funny show.

Ted Danson recurs as a skewed version of himself on Curb, and on Bored to Death, he's a pot-addled cross between Seinfeld's Mr. Peterman and Donald Trump. What a pleasure to find some humor in a culture that makes that guy a hero.

Of course she cracks the fascinating weekly case, but it will be her continued efforts to make it again in the world of work, now that she's so old and doddering, and deal with her family, that will make The Good Wife worth watching week after week.

Any one of these families has the potential to power a decent sitcom, but Modern Family manages to juggle all three in a balancing act that is not just funny, but heartwarming, and when was the last time you saw that on TV?

That's a diverse enough crowd to interest almost anybody. Combine it with the fascinating plot and the action and emotional turmoil it promises, and you don't need to flash forward to see a show finally giving Survivor a Thursday-night ratings run for the money.

A lively show with no canned laughter, where love has no chance to conquer all the family deficiencies but does make them not only bearable, but fun.

The likable show has something for everyone: handsome young star, sympathetic "older" costar, pretty former TV hottie, easy-to-follow caper plots, a little humor.

Treme takes us beyond the tourists' view, beyond the canned performances and ersatz Big Easiness, into the soul of a uniquely fragile American city built on a bedrock of pride.

Some viewers will wrongly believe they need this absorbing and thoroughly entertaining show like a hole in the head.

The sitcom is funny and fresh, and the actors appear to be having the time of their lives.

Danza's charges come alive in all their teenage complexity, and an actor best known as a doofus with a Brooklyn accent displays deep sensitivity while trying to navigate the intricacies of one really challenging job.

It doesn't take a fanboy to appreciate the well-crafted AMC series, populated with capable, if lesser-known, actors, including Sarah Wayne Callies, who spent a couple of years running from less-apparent deadly threats on Fox's Prison Break.

The one-hour show has as much comedy as drama, providing a satisfying and unusual viewing experience.

By the second or third episode, it evolves into another Hollywood rarity: a TV show that is truly about relationships, complex and captivating for the long haul.

Absorbing, if not squirm-worthy.

It's just a touch of the veddy, veddy humor that helps make everything so delightful before the world intrudes into Masterpiece Classic's revival of Upstairs Downstairs.

Falling Skies generates its own excitement, very much worth the ride, like Lost and Jericho, to watch characters develop as they struggle under confusing and life-threatening circumstances.

National Geographic has a fascinating hour, George W. Bush: The 9/11 Interview, in which the former president describes the whys and wherefores of his actions in the time immediately following the attack, and during the subsequent days.

Of course, it all sounds preposterous, but so did a movie about a guy who remembered everything backward, and Jonathan Nolan was nominated for a writing Oscar for Memento.

A hilarious family fish-out-of-water tale that fits seamlessly Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. on 6ABC between The Middle and Modern Family.

American Horror Story may not rank that high on a TV list, but fans of this kind of thing will want to chop themselves in half, strangle in a bathtub, and slit their throats--just to name a few of the things that happen in the first two episodes--if they miss it.