“V”
Tuesday 8pm, ABC
One of my earliest TV memories is watching that lady alien devour a hamster whole on the original version of “V” from the 1980s. (My parents also let me watch the original Alien movie when I was 6, and A Nightmare on Elm Street not long after that. Hello, sleep terrors!) So I’m very excited to see how ABC’s new version of the alien invasion drama turns out. So far so good: The pilot got such rave reviews it was bumped from mid-season to late fall, and the cast is solid, including “Lost”’s Elizabeth Mitchell, “Party of Five” alum Scott Wolf (who seems to be morphing into Michael J. Fox), and the ravishing Morena Baccarin from “Firefly” as the leader of the reptilian race that’s come to take over our planet. Hey, it’s not like they can screw it up any worse than we have.
“The Wanda Sykes Show”
Saturday 11pm, Fox
Wanda Sykes won me over by giving Larry David a hard time on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Although she’s continued a very successful career as a stand-up comic, she hasn’t fared so well on TV, with several failed series to her name (although she has a regular gig as the second banana to Julia Louis-Dreyfus on “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” or as I call it, “Where Do I Pick Up My Paycheck?”). So Fox recruited her to head its latest foray into the late-night game with this once-a-week show that will be a mix of Sykes’s stand-up, taped comedy bits and a “Chelsea Lately”-style panel of guests who will discuss the prominent issues of the week.
“CSI: Miami”
Monday 10pm, CBS
The “CSI” shingle has tarnished a bit over the past few years, especially since William Petersen left the original series last season, to be replaced by Laurence Fishburne. (This puzzles me, because no matter how you cut it, Laurence Fishburne > William Petersen. Oh, America. You flammer me.) In an attempt to juice up the franchise, the three “CSI”s will cross over this week with interrelated cases. On Monday, Fishburne’s Ray Langston heads to Miami, where missing body parts from a missing Vegas girl pop up. Then on Wednesday, the action shifts to the Big Apple for “CSI: NY” when a human trafficking ring gets involved. Things wrap up Thursday on “CSI,” where it all inevitably comes back to prostitutes.
