So is "The Wire" as good as ever? Perhaps even better.

Wright says. "After the Vietnam War ended, the onus of shame largely fell on the veterans. This time around, if shame is to be had when the Iraq conflict ends--and all indications are there will be plenty of it--the veterans are the last people in America to deserve it." Generation Kill makes that point so powerfully as to stand among the truest and most trenchant war movies of all time.

what else can I do but yap excitedly and try to get you to watch one of the best shows on TV right now? The first four episodes of the new season will not disappoint fans.

Creator Vince Gilligan's much-lauded meth lab saga Breaking Bad, which is back for what looks to be another superior season Sunday night on AMC, is one of those shows that comes from such a dark hole of the American cultural psyche that you sometimes have to wonder how it ever made it on TV.

Once Upon a Time is a smartly-crafted reward for fans of light fantasy, with the right mix of cleverness, action and romance.

It joins "Planet Earth" and "Life" to reign as a triumvirate in Best Buy showrooms. Nothing looks better, sounds better.

Nashville never strays too far from its real story--the ups and downs of glitzy stardom, with Britton and Panettiere performing their own vocals.

The cast is marvelous, the gritty, post-war set pieces are meticulously recreated and, even with all the warm-water enemas and splattered afterbirth, the story always has its eye on uplift and good cheer.

A captivating blend of the existential and the pulpy, the surreal and the neo-real, the grim and the farcical, Twin Peaks is new age music for the eyes, a show that careens off the wall and out into left field and yet supplies some of the basic satisfactions we humans have demanded of our storytellers since we first wriggled out of primordial goop.

Sparse, tough, nuts-and-bolts, hit-and-run TV. You'd need a magnifying glass to find a nuance. But it works, and grippingly.

An outstanding crime drama. It has all the trappings of a good show and then, of course, one staple of a great one: An absolutely terrific star in the lead role. Kathryn Morris can go through my files anytime. [27 Sept 2003, p.C01]

The most electrifying new main character to hit television in years. [16 Nov 2004, p.C01]

With Boomtown, you are likely to feel a much stronger emotional investment than with lesser crime dramas. In the final moments of the premiere, the drama reaches a level that is almost poetically tragic and terribly haunting...Ambitious, artful and sometimes ingenious, Boomtown is the best and least compromised new network drama series since "ER," and in its own way, just as much of a breakthrough. [28 Sept 2002, p.C01]

Even though Scrubs is the best of the season's new comedies, it may not have the most laughs. But oh mama, it has the most heart. Scrubs is to the average sitcom as a steak at the Palm is to a Big Mac. We are talking an entirely different, and superior, species. [2 Oct 2001, p.C01]

Game of Thrones is like no other TV show around right now--brilliant, exasperating, enthralling, and, if you let it become so, hard work.

A compelling and sometimes harrowing hour of high-tension urban trauma, different from Bochco's "Hill Street Blues" and at least as good as any other drama series now on the air. It delivers a good, stiff shock now and then, and what's wrong with that? It's surely preferable to shows that lull you into numbness. [21 Sept 1993, p.D1]

Six Feet Under establishes from the start that it will be unflinching and brazen and, as it happens, scorchingly brilliant. [3 June 2001, p.G01]

So rousingly well done that it seems to come from a different solar system than most contemporary episodic television shows, and yet too many rapturous panegyrics could spoil some of the fun. The two-hour pilot for the series...is so terribly and industriously entertaining that you hate to see the program lumped in with things that are supposedly "good for you." This isn't a John Chancellor commentary. This is living, breathing matter -- clever, thoughtful, ribald and hard-boiled. [15 Sept 1986, p.B1]

You needn't be the least bit interested in sports to enjoy Sports Night, the best new ABC sitcom of the season. [22 Sept 1998, p.E01]

Homicide isn't only riveting drama; it's really about something, and it says what it's about in credible and haunting ways, sometimes with a dramatic jolt, sometimes with a painfully funny jab, almost always with compelling command. It is, in short, a killer. It's murder. That is meant as a compliment.

What makes Homeland rise above other post-9/11 dramas is Danes's stellar performance as Carrie--easily this season's strongest female character, who is also hiding some personal secrets of her own. The latter half of the first episode is exhilarating. I'm hooked.

Though imbued with epic sweep, Hell on Wheels is a western at heart, even if that heart is cold.

Everything about The Mindy Project is so very Kaling and happily spot-on, starting with the strength of the jokes and dialogue.

It's got edge galore, but it's the kind that sneaks up on you and proves again that Gervais has the subtlest kind of brilliance, hard to categorize but easy to enjoy.

A stand-up, standout piece of work, one that works wonders on a seemingly tired genre.

Extraordinary in just about every conceivable way.

"Extras" lives up to expectations and to its own lunatic traditions.

Big Bang is the funniest new sitcom of the season.

The lovingly and imaginatively produced pilot has to be the most gorgeous piece of television airing anywhere tonight.

The absence of gimmickry and the presence of respect for the story and the audience give The Wire organic advantages over nearly all other TV dramas, whether they deal with cops and crime or birds and bees. Which is to say: If you want to see the television of tomorrow, it's on HBO tonight.

John Adams is the kind of classily intelligent production that can be happily recommended to everybody. The filmmakers, including executive producer Tom Hanks, have attempted to re-create and enliven history--and they succeed grandly.

Although Recount is a smashing success on almost every level, it's also a brutally disheartening experience for the story it tells.

Working something of a miracle, Danny McBride, who plays Kenny and is one of the creative talents behind the show premiering tomorrow on HBO--the most recklessly funny comedy of the year--makes us kind of like Kenny Powers.

You know you will laugh, but you know you will cringe. You know you will guffaw, but you'll also likely wince. It's hard to imagine comedy that's any edgier, without being topical, than this.

Lie to Me seems an unusually meaty, thoughtful and thought-provoking crime drama--another police procedural, yes, but one with a dramatic and mesmerizing difference. The strength of the premise combined with first-class production make this easily one of the season's best new shows.

Southland is a show of high caliber and riveting brilliance, instantly one of the finest hours of TiVo-worthy drama anywhere on the tube.

Yes, it's quite good. Sunday's episode is nearly flawless and a textbook example of how to launch an ensemble saga that may eventually embroider itself into a haunting tapestry.

Great Migrations lets us be amazed rather than telling us to be, and the amazement quotient is, yes, amazingly high.

Boardwalk Empire is doing what I wish Prohibition had done--it's tempting me to stick around for one more.

Community stands on its own intangible excellence.

As television, Girls is disturbing, sharply honed and even wickedly funny.

Thanks to Louis-Dreyfus, and the show's remarkable knack for dialogue and timing, Veep is instantly engaging and outrageously fun.

Take a look at the second season's first episodes, and you'll see it in a nervy concoction of writing and acting.

Enlightened comes through with a triumphant eight-episode arc that broadens its characters, quickens the pace and finishes strong.

Lost actually gives every sign of knowing where it's going and what it's doing. It's solid, suspenseful and fraught with frights. The Big Scary Monster may be a corny touch, but who's to say what does and doesn't exist on those mysterious uncharted islands where, for example, King Kong once holed up. Lost has the capacity to bring out the kid in adults and the adult in kids. [22 Sept 2004, p.C.01]

So much in the Freaks and Geeks premiere is shrewdly, tenderly and sagaciously observed that one wonders whether there'll be enough material left for additional episodes. Probably. [25 Sept 1999, p.C01]

The reason it works so well is that performers and script are ideally matched; they join forces to obliterate resistance. [14 Sept 1985, p.C1]

It's to the network's credit that it undertakes projects that aren't necessarily big crowd-pleasers but have a palpable artistic integrity and social significance. [1 June 2002, p.C01]

It's a beautiful downer of a show that becomes more revealing and absorbing as it moves along.

Overdoing things is one of Murphy's trademark flaws, but this show has a captivating style and giddy gross-outs.

Bartha and Rannells's characters display yin/yang neuroses that keep their characters interesting, but as Goldie, the would-be surrogate, Georgia King is unfortunately bland.

Elementary exhibits enough stylish wit in its mood and look to quickly distinguish itself from the latest British "Sherlock" series.

Stylish, intricate and entertaining.

Smart, sassy and delightful.

No matter how opulent this production, Mirren is never upstaged, and she is the best reason to keep watching.

"Entourage" returns with feathers fully unfurled, zooming and soaring across the Sunday-night sky and elevating escapism to dizzy new altitudes and basically untroubled new attitudes.

"Shark" is one of the season's best and fastest-moving new dramas.

It's sweet, touching and deliriously cheerful -- the best new show of the year and a great big blast of happiness.

"The Knights of Prosperity" is knee-slappingly and side-splittingly funny stuff, or as close to that as TV gets these days.

What it lacks in edge, it makes up for in charm.

Gripping.

Nearly everything is done right, most conspicuously in the casting of Glenn Close as Patty Hewes.

Here and there, The Company is so evocatively dark and creepy it approaches the artistry of a John le Carré thriller, at least as adapted for TV back in the '80s and '90s.

The movie is as good as the first one, with even better dancing and a story line that engages.

Tell Me You Love Me is not only more provocative than any of the broadcast networks' new fall shows, but also more sophisticated--even than those shows that aspire to be "adult."

At times, it's overboard and maybe a bit giggle-inducing, like watching little kids play dress-up. But overboard is exactly where Gossip Girl wants to be--and what viewers must embrace when taking the guilty plunge.

The show has a happily palpable likability going for it, a lot of that courtesy of Zachary Levi, who plays the unlikely and in fact unwilling hero.

Reaper works on its own cleverly devilish level and proves one of the happier, snappier surprises of the season.

NBC's lavish and splashy new version of Bionic Woman, is not, as one might fear, a BW stripped of everything that fans loved about the '70s original.

It isn't high literature nor even perhaps high television, but In Treatment does have a welcome, and occasionally riveting, pulpy streak, perhaps inevitable with its promise of peeks behind doors that usually remain closed.

Factory is the network's first try at a situation comedy and, surprisingly enough, it's neither perfunctory nor primitive. It is, in fact, one of the few pleasant surprises of the summer.

True Blood isn't meant to be an exercise in good taste. Just a romp and a wallow--and a bloody good one.

As superbly superior as Shannon is (a comparison to Lucille Ball, while inevitable, would not be overreaching), the whole cast shines, and not just in refracted glory.

The cable network might have found "Chappelle's" worthy replacement in Chocolate News.

It still isn't quite the hugely confident, competent hit one longs for--especially considering that "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels is an executive producer--but it's high in quality, as well as in spirit.

Lilley's script and performances are rife with recognizable personalities, neuroses and human absurdities.

A chilling and riveting essay on the evils that men do and continue doing, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium.

Whatever it is, it's fascinating, the television equivalent of the book you can't put down and maybe the jigsaw puzzle you never quite complete.

Think the deadpan Steven Wright, only cheerier and more versatile. A stand-up comic and sometime cartoonist, Martin seems cursed with endless postgraduate cleverness.

Long story short: These girls are golden.

A new limited-run series from HBO that is engaging, charming and intoxicating entirely on its own.

The fact is, Harper's Island is a cunningly constructed, habit-forming mystery that makes for an intriguing departure from normal episodic television.

Grey Gardens is tragicomedy of a very rare and rarefied kind--priceless, precious and, thanks largely to Lange, potentially unforgettable.

Whatever else it is, the show is supremely entertaining. Smartly edited and cleverly constructed--the George Washington Bridge serving as a visual transition--the series marks another auspicious entry to television's vast stockpile of Guilty Pleasures.

We can only be assured that Gunn's presence in the workroom will keep Project Runway's creative fires burning bright and any maudlin meltdowns to a satisfying but tasteful minimum.

Men of a Certain Age proves a powerful yet mercifully amusing experience--bittersweet, poignant and wise. It's not just a series, but something of a tonic.

There's enough going on in Caprica to keep a sci-fi fan, or anyone who likes to settle into a good story, satisfied and even beguiled--and though it's shot too dark those watching on an upscale, big-screen TV will be treated to a visual spectacular.

The casting, like the writing and direction, is impeccable, and includes Eve Best as Jackie's doctor friend Eleanor; Peter Facinelli as cute but semi-competent ER physician Fitch "Coop" Cooper; Merritt Wever as a bleeding-heart novice; and Haaz Sleiman as a gay Muslim orderly.

I never stopped smiling while watching the first few episodes of this pitch-perfect comedy, which finds that elusive sweet spot between snark and heart.

Everything feels exactly right in this drama, to an almost clinical degree, especially Julianna Margulies's tough-but-wounded portrayal of Alicia Florrick.

This is Cox's best gig since the end of "Friends" and she clearly knows it, attacking the material at full tooth-and-nail.

[The mockumentary style is] used not to excess but to success, which is just what this wise, clever and bighearted comedy ought to be.

A smart and funny sitcom....Heaton is splendid as Heck, with a high-profile supporting cast.

Unlike a raft of recent adult-themed cartoons, Ugly Americans offers surprising laughs with its premise, and it is profanely whip-smart in a way that recalls the network's much-missed "Drawn Together" series.

I wouldn't have predicted this, but it turns out that it's a whole lot more fun to watch people paint on deadline than it is to watch them make deadline clothing ("Project Runway") or cook deadline food ("Top Chef").

Thanks to Adams and Kreskoff's delightfully wicked power struggle, Hung feels fresher now than it felt last summer and more textured.

Louie intelligently harnesses the dark cloud that follows a truly funny man everywhere he goes.

Without feeling like it's leading us on, Rubicon is a tightly woven and urbanely acted tale for people who like to mull.