Beech Tree News Network

Have you seen the commercials for the fall television lineup? If not, you’re either not watching TV or taking breaks during commercials. I confess that during the first couple of weeks of the fall season, I watch more prime time TV than normal. I like to choose my favorites for the season.

NBC has one show that I enjoyed last year, Harry’s Law. Harry is a female attorney, and the show is entertaining. FOX has a couple of good shows, too: House and Bones. Both shows have strong characters and involve solving mysteries.

ABC has several programs that are enjoyable. Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives have been popular, but the story lines have became too bizarre for me. The network has three new shows scheduled: Revenge, Charlie’s Angels, and Pan Am. We’ll have to see whether they have the characters and story lines to keep us watching. Some of my past favorites are Castle, Body of Proof and Extreme Makeover. Castle’s Castle and Beckett make fighting crime fun to watch, and Body of Proof’s medical examiner Megan Hunt (Dana Delany) solves mystery after mystery. Extreme Makeover is a leave-you-feeling-good show. Giving new homes to families in need is just nice to watch.

CBS also has good programming. Unforgettable is new in their lineup and looks promising. Of course, CSI, CSI: New York, CSI: Miami, and Criminal Minds are quality shows. They have good character development and good story lines. I also like The Mentalist and NCIS: Los Angeles. But my personal favorites last season were NCIS, Blue Bloods and The Good Wife. NCIS has great character development and a continuing story line for its characters as well as a mystery or two per episode. Over the past few years, NCIS has been the program I didn’t want to miss. Blue Bloods is about a four-generation New York police family, the Reagans, and how the family’s work affects them. The Good Wife is a well-written story with plenty of twists and turns. The main character is Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), a disgraced politician’s wife who resumes her career as an attorney and faces many of life’s challenges.

Finally, my standby channel is HGTV. I like most of its programming. Some of my favorite programs are: Bang for Your Buck, Designed to Sell, Holmes on Homes, House Hunters, Property Brothers, Property Virgins, Spice up My Kitchen and The Unsellables. The program names are descriptive of the program content. My late husband used to tease that he was going to ground me from HGTV. It didn’t happen.

In a couple of weeks, the television schedule will be predictable again. And, we’ll have nights when many of us think that there’s nothing on TV. But, for a couple of weeks, I’m actually going to enjoy prime-time programming.