No matter how much bad press the pilot of 'Terra Nova' received, I had to watch. When someone spends $20 million on a pilot, you watch it. But in all the negativity around the show -- the exorbitant price tag, the repeated delaying of the premiere date -- everyone seems to agree that the visual fabric of this show is top-quality. The 'Blade Runner'-esque state of ruined future Earth, the ...

House - Monday October 3, 9PM ET/PT, Global/Fox The season premiere picks up a year after we last saw our favourite angry doctor, and he' s now serving time for all that crap he pulled. It's refreshing to see House finally suffer a few consequences for all his crazy behaviour, and giving Hugh Laurie the chance to play House behind bars is absolutely inspired. Jaleel White guests as his cellmate ...

Suburgatory - Wednesday September 28, 8:30PM ET/PT, Citytv/ABC A little bit 'Mean Girls,' a little bit 'Easy A,' this new sitcom goes for the fish-out-of-water gambit, when a single dad (Jeremy Sisto) pulls his precocious teen daughter out of Manhattan and settles them both in a suburban town where the social scene is even more broken. The father-daughter relationship is as warm and lovely ...

The highlight of the fall premiere season for me so far is 'Ringer' - and I'm so glad. I wanted to like it and was worried I wouldn't, but the pilot impressed me. I like the film noir feel, the fantastic cinematography and the (admittedly plot-heavy) set-up for a cracking good thriller. Like so many others, I loved Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy, but I've been underwhelmed by her film roles, ...

Roast of Charlie Sheen - Monday September 19, 10 p.m. ET/PT, Comedy If anyone out there is still interested in the Charlie Sheen train-wreck tour of 2011, it's making a stop on Comedy this week - about 30 weeks too late. Sheen's appearance at the Emmys proved he lost his sense of humour along with his dignity around the time he got fired from 'Two and a Half Men' but hopefully the professional ...

Maybe I've become complacent as medicine has progressed and diseases that used to be terrifying -- cancer, AIDS -- have become survivable. Even though actor Andy Whitfield had, for a second time, bowed out of his lead role in 'Spartacus: Blood and Sand' to fight non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, it never crossed my mind that he would die at 39. Too young, too fit, too strong. I think of a lot of TV fans ...

Survivor: South Pacific - Wednesday September 14, 8PM ET/PT, CBS/Global 'Survivor' returns, looking a lot like last season. The Redemption Island twist is back, as are two previous castaways, Coach and Ozzy. Which is a far cry from Rob and Russell, but I can see why the producers would be eager to reproduce the experiment that led to such an interesting game last time. Another round of Coach ...

I keep expecting this whole 'Eddie Murphy hosts the Oscars' thing to be a faulty meme, but now that the news is confirmed, I guess I'll have to come to grips with it. Okay -- done. After all, Murphy is one of the highest-grossing movie stars of all time, can be very very funny, and has proven he can still be funny without using swears ('Shrek'). He has been nominated for "The Statue." (And ...

9/11: Ten Years Later -- Sunday, September 11, 8PM ET/PT, CBS/Global Of all the specials airing this week, this one, narrated by Robert De Niro, may be hard to watch, but not as hard as others (like the hour on History playing all the phone calls out of the towers). This is an update to a special that aired not long after 9/11, and told the story of Engine 7 Ladder 1. It's also the only special ...

After 8 years away from TV, Sarah Michelle Gellar returns this fall in 'Ringer,' one of the more talked-about pilots of the season. Never one to back away from a challenge, our girl comes back not as one character, but two -- identical twins Bridget and Siobhan. As SMG herself pointed out at Comic-Con, she's doing this for the love of the game, not the paycheck (only soap stars get paid extra when ...