Given the rather sophisticated allegorical treatments that TV audiences have been treated to in recent years courtesy of “Battlestar Galactica,” “The 4400” and the like, I find V’s first episode falling short, other than a fairly obvious allusion to Hitler Youth in the aliens’ outreach to teens.

If I tell you that The League is a reprehensible show, I’m not really telling you that much. The new improvised-comedy series airing at 9:30 tonight on FX wears its reprehensibility with pride.

The fourth season of Friday Night Lights (which already aired last fall on DirecTV) is as rich and dramatic and satisfying as ever.

It's the best drama pilot I saw over the summer.

For whatever reason, it’s hard for me to treat Lock ’n Load as mere entertainment. But maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Brothers really is not that bad a show.

I know there are a lot of people out there who can’t get enough of it, all the irritation and the narcissism and the racial tension and the yelling. But I’m not one of those people....Curb Your Enthusiasm leaves me just...well, a little bored.

In other words, don’t hate it immediately just because it isn’t “Curb,” because if you love “Curb” you might eventually like Bored to Death.

With its demented story lines, idiotic characters, out-of-control banter and fantastic send-ups of a spy genre that had seemingly been overspoofed already, Archer is destined to put another feather in the cap of FX.

What changes there were to the “Tonight” format seemed superficial. Otherwise, it could’ve been “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

I’ve got nothing against Vampire Diaries. Since it lacks broad appeal and hasn’t a clever bone in its body, it will probably be a hit, unlike CW shows I’ve stuck up for (like “Reaper” and “Aliens in America”).

It is a stew made from a teen-slasher base with chunks of prime-time CBS crime shows and some daytime spice stirred in. If the first six minutes work for you, you’ll probably want more.

Southland is built to be bigger, and in that sense it succeeds immediately, thanks to excellent casting (especially Michael Cudlitz and Regina King as a cop and a detective), gritty location shooting around L.A. and storytelling that doesn’t hold the viewer’s hand.

Rescue Me does everything “Lost” does. It balances character, drama, comedy and suspense while relentlessly pushing a dozen story lines forward.

The one-person-shows these recurring characters put on each week are what give In Treatment its vitality, and of course it helps that HBO can draw from top stage talent.

True, Cannavale and Paulson take some getting used to, at least among those of us who remember Piven and Marshall. But the premise still has miles more appeal than a “CSI” knockoff.

In the end, I had to give in to sheer enjoyment. My wife and I couldn’t load the next episode into the DVD player fast enough.

I hate to say it, but if it weren’t for Sanz and Mullally, there would be no reason at all to watch this sitcom.

Kings is oddly tedious, thanks to a supporting cast of uninteresting characters and a script loaded with heavy-handed analogies to health-care reform, Halliburton and the Clintons.

I know this is going to come as a shock, but when the scene is designed around Kate, the show sags. By contrast, when Rick strolls into the room, the show perks up.

Breaking Bad is not an easy show to watch. [But] this is the Cranston show, and for those of us who still see reruns of “Malcolm in the Middle” and the red-faced, eye-bulging slapstick that Cranston was put through on that show, he is quite a revelation on Breaking Bad.

After a nine-month hiatus, one of the best new shows of last season returns from the undead with a bit more of the deviled edge that made it so great when it first emerged from the crypt in the fall of 2007.

All those ingredients make for a stew that, initially anyway, needs salt....Having seen two more promising later episodes, I say give Dollhouse time. And in the meantime, enjoy the set, the so-called dollhouse.

When Lost returns Wednesday with a thoroughly entertaining two-hour barnburner, you will want to be there.

As a comedy, it’s surprisingly entertaining....But what ultimately kept me watching, through every screener Showtime provided, was this audacious bit of acting from Collette.

I have now watched two episodes of the new A&E series The Beast, and I am filled with questions. How many brain cells did I lose watching two episodes of The Beast?

There is a distinctly 2002 feel to this season of 24....But you know what? It all manages to hold together.

The secret to the show’s success is not any of the overly familiar parts, but the nutty way Leverage throws them together. Also, Hutton is a great actor who generates plenty of crackle between Nate and his fellow fleecers.