January Programs

January has been quite a month for new shows. And my hope has been restored concerning SciFi now that Caprica is up and running. It's a great show with a lot of potential. Here are just a few of the new shows:

- Caprica, SyFy, Fridays at 9pm ET/8pm CT
- The Deep End, ABC, Thursdays at 8pm ET/7pm CT
- The Inbetweeners, BBC America, Wednesdays at 9:30pm ET/8:30pm CT
- Life Unexpected, CW, Mondays at 9pm ET/ 8 pm CT
- Spartacus, Starz, Fridays at 10pm ET/9 pm CT

And Damages also returned in January for its third season. Yes, it has been a great TV month and staying on top of all these shows is not easy. However, I have already dropped The Deep End as too sophomoric to merit additional attention. Misbehaving lawyers? Nothing new here, folks. But the others have a lot of promise. Of course, The Inbetweeners is already in its third season over in the UK, so we are a bit behind the curve in this country (as is the case with Merlin and other shows). I am already surprised with the quality of acting as well as the decent storyline in Life Unexpected, and even Spartacus is full of heart (and blood, of course). While the acting and sets in Spartacus are not those of HBO's Rome, it has its own qualities (think 300) that may keep it around for awhile.

What Should We Remember?

This is a time of lists, and we all have our own set of special TV shows from the past. For my part, I want to highlight a few sci-fi shows that ended last year and will be missed. While there may be more, these are the ones that stuck with me. They include the following:

-- Battlestar Galactic (my earlier comments)
-- Kings (my earlier comments)
-- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
-- Kyle XY (my earlier comments)
-- Defying Gravity (my earlier comments)

I have mixed feelings about each of these, but I would have liked to see more of each. I tend to agree that Battlestar Galactic ended at a good time, and with spin-off series as well as movies it is not really gone. However, Kings was prematurely killed, Terminator lasted only two seasons but restarted itself in the last episode (so there may be hope), Kyle XY fell off a cliff, and Defying Gravity was never really given a change (except in Canada). And I did not even include Virtuality, a show that never went past the pilot stages. Very odd.

I cannot say the new shows V or Dollhouse gets me excited, but at least we have Fringe to keep all of us sci-fi fans interested. Not much else of this genre that is still alive and worth watching. And yet I remain hopeful (and still somewhat saddened by the treatment of sci-fi in 2009). As always, stay tuned.