In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC
In the UK: ITV2 at some point

Weddings can be tricky things, can't they? I don't know how yours went – or if yours went at all – but mine had a few not-so-smooth moments, even though we chose to outsource the entire process to Las Vegas to make things easier.

Now some bright spark has come up with the idea of 24 meets a comedy wedding. Yes, an entire season of shows that follow a wedding day in real-time. Feel the tension, the adrenaline, the nerves, all without having to go through the process yourself.

Wouldn't it be good if it was funny as well?

In the US: Thursdays, NBC, 9/8c
In the UK: In the usual places

Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 0
Major new characters: Maybe 1
Format change percentage: 10%
Number of babies due: 3

Here we are again. Six seasons of Scrubs. It's comedy, but in a hospital. As per usual, it's kind of hard to review a long-running comedy, since ultimately the only thing that's important is whether you laugh or not. Scrubs still raises a reasonable number of laughs, but there's a slightly bitter taste to the whole thing thanks to a “Braffisation” of the show.

In the US: NBC, 10/9c, Wednesdays
In the UK: Probably SciFi and maybe BBC1, since they've shown earlier seasons. No definite confirmation yet, though.

Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 0
Major new characters: 0
Format change percentage: 5% (Allison's haircut)
Number of dream sequences: I lost count. Sorry.

So Medium's back. I was looking forward to this, since when it's good, it can be fun and well written. With the opening episode scripted by series creator Glen Gordon and Javier Grillo-Marxuach (ex-writer for both Lost and The Pretender), it should have been good. But I think they got carried away with the two minutes of animation...

In the US: NBC, Fridays, 9/8c
In the UK: Sky One. Probably January, but who knows with Sky?

Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 0
Major new characters: 0
Format change percentage: 0%
Dramatic chances taken: None

I love Las Vegas. No, not Las Vegas. Las Vegas. It's a great town. It'll be whatever you want it to be. You want it tacky? You can have tacky. You want it sophisticated? It can be that, too.

Las Vegas tries to be like Las Vegas. It has all the elements you'd expect: magic (people being shot and having heart attacks, yet coming back to life), sex (everyone shagging everyone else, whether they're married or not), gambling (having a bunch of characters that are tissue-thin and expecting us to be interested), the stars of yester-year (James Caan, Cheryl Ladd) and Elvis.

Despite all this, Las Vegas really just doesn't work on any level for me - and it's really not like Las Vegas at all. It's completely devoid of anything surprising or clever, and you're expected to root for the house. Who does that?

Returning viewers, don't be worried. Everything is sorted out nicely in this first episode, despite its being a two-parter. There are no shocks, nothing to change the format, just the same old same old.

New viewers, it's slick, it's glossy, it'll steal your time. You can join in at almost any point and you'll be able to keep up with the plot. So watch now or watch later. Or go and watch Robert Urich in Vega$ on DVD instead.

PS Message to former CIA operatives heading to Morocco: it's a lot easier to get a stolen gun in Morocco than it is to stash one in a safety deposit box in London and try to get it through airport security. Just a hint.

Every once in a while, network executives have a sudden epiphany. They'll suddenly remember that although the 18-24 demographic is pretty cool and all, there's a whole load of older people, some of them retired, with oodles of spending money and time on their hands. So they commission a programme or two to take advantage of this demographic. But you know, they're old people. They're going in the head. What will they know or care about quality?

While's it's been a long time since the halcyon decade of greying TV power that ran from the mid-80s to the mid-90s and gave us never-ending episodes of Murder She Wrote, Diagnosis Murder, Matlock, and Burke's Law, the idea still comes back occasionally. So here we have 20 Good Years, the theme being that “60 is the new 40” and post-retirement, you've 20 years left in which you can seriously enjoy yourself again. Nice idea though that is, it's seriously lacking in actual laughs.

In the US: NBC, Wednesdays, 8/7c
In the UK: Nowhere yet. But it will.

So here's weird. On Monday night on NBC, we have a show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, that looks behind the scenes of a fictitious comedy sketch show. Meanwhile, on Wednesdays, over on... well, still on NBC, we have 30 Rock, which, erm, looks behind the scenes of a fictitious comedy sketch show.

The first is by award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing. The second is by Saturday Night Live alumnus, Tina Fey. Which one's going to be better? Go on, go on. Which one, which one?

In the US: SciFi, Fridays, 9/8c
In the UK: Sky One later in the year/start of next year.

Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 1-3, but I started to lose count
Major new characters: 0
Format change percentage: 90%
Pies eaten: All of them

The Battlestar Galactica of the late 70s/early 80s was a simple affair. Loosely based on the Book of Mormon, it featured a bunch of humans living on “the 12 colonies” who create a race of robots, the cylons, to do their bidding. The robots turn, there's a war, and almost all the humans are killed. The survivors huddle together in a few ships guarded by the last “battlestar”, a kind of spaceship version of an aircraft carrier, and this “ragtag armada”, as it was called in the opening narration, heads off to look for the 13th colony, Earth.

Each week, the cylons would catch up with them, there'd be a fight and the armada would escape, typically then finding some kind of Old West-styled planet or casino that had a disco. Formulaic but fun.

SciFi's remake of Battlestar Galactica has been running for three seasons now and has continually shifted upwards the quality bar for science fiction on television. The cheesiness has gone, replaced instead with the bleakness of a group of 40,000 people on the run from an unrelenting enemy that used nuclear weapons to destroy 16 billion of their friends, families and neighbours and seems to want to do the same to them.

The producers haven't been afraid to tinker with the format either. The new cylons create human-looking, biological versions of themselves that believe in a single God, while those pesky humans continue to worship Athena and Apollo. A second battlestar, the Pegasus, turns out to have survived, making the entire name of the show slightly redundant; and at the end of the second season, the armada finds a planet capable of supporting life, so decides to stop running and settle down. Then, for a last format tinker, the producers posed the question, “What if the cylons caught up with the fleet while their guards were down?” and left us waiting all summer for the answer.

In the US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, ABC
In the UK: Second season being repeated on E4. Third season probably a decade away from airing on C4 and E4, given their usual speed.

Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: Unknown
Major new characters: 1, maybe 2 so far
Format change percentage: 20%
Rats run through mazes: 3

When last we saw our intrepid bunch of survivors from that rather spectacular plane crash, a fair few of them were getting “blown up” and three of them were being led off into captivity by The Others. This episode we get to see what happened to Jack, Kate and Sawyer, but we're still none the wiser as to their fate. Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil you UK viewers.

Well, the fourth episode was definitely better than the third, but it still didn't quite have the charm of the first two. Maybe I've just fallen out of love with it. I suspect it's only going to be good when Jenny Bicks writes it.

A reluctant thumbs down, then. What a pity.

In the US: Showtime, Sundays, 10pm
In the UK: Acquired by FX for showing in early 2007.

You've got to hand it to Showtime. For years, the ITV1 to HBO's BBC1, it's finally got its groove back and is putting out some great stuff, like Weeds, Brotherhood, Sleeper Cell, The L Word and now Dexter.

All the same, you'd have thought serial killer dramas like Dexter would be a bit passé . They're unrealistic and pretty much all the same: bad man who attacks women gets chased by nice police people, who build up clues and an idea of the killer's mind until he's apprehended or killed.

So Dexter, if it's possible to feel welcoming towards a gory serial killer drama, is indeed welcome for providing a new twist. The eponymous 'hero', Dexter, is indeed a serial killer. But he's a member of the police - a CSI in fact. And get this: he only kills other killers.

In the US: ABC, Thursdays, 8/7c
In the UK: Don't know. Can't seem to find anyone who's picked it up. But it will be. Oh yes.

“Telenovelas” are this South American thing (apparently. I'm just taking the word of others here, since I have no knowledge of the South American TV industry whatsoever). They're like soap operas except they're of fixed length, with a pre-defined beginning, middle and end.

Ugly Betty (aka “Yo Soy Betty La Fea”) is one of Colombia's most popular telenovelas and now ABC has adapted it and made it its own. Given that the first episode cranked up 16 million viewers or so, making it the most popular of the new TV shows of the season, how much do you want a bet that ABC, the network that likes to say “Can we have more Lost? Or something that's like an anagram of Lost? Or something a bit like Lost anyway?”, is going to be able to call it a day once the story is over?

In the US: The CW, Thursdays, 8/7c
In the UK: Coming soon to E4

Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 2
Major new characters: 1
Format change percentage: 10%
Storylines rest back to zero: Many

The first episode of every season of Smallville is like a treasure hunt. Typically, many, many things happen in the previous season's finale: people die, are trapped in inescapable prisons, learn Clark's secret, declare their undying love for someone, etc. But somehow, by the end of the season premiere, everything will be back to normal again.

The trick for the viewer is to find the magic reset button. Will it be under a rock? Behind a tree? Disguised as a mantelpiece ornament?

This season, clue-hunters, the magic reset button will be disguised as a badge. A badge. A badge.

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, The CW
In the UK: ITV2 is currently showing season 1. No word on season 2.

Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 1
Major new characters: 1 (maybe)
Format change percentage: 25%
Surprisingly bleak moments: Several

The pretty boy ghosthunters are back. After chasing after the demon that killed their mum, while simultaneously looking for their dad (who's looking for the demon that killed their mum) for a whole season, they finally caught up with both only for it all to go a bit pear-shaped.

When last we left them, they were all involved in a nasty car wreck that looked a tad fatal. Have they all survived the summer break?

Not exactly...

Okay, I've already reviewed the season opener to CSI, but seeing as that was a two-parter, I thought I'd just add in a bit more non-spoiling detail.

With CSI up against soapy old Grey's Anatomy in the US on Thursdays, there's a fair old amount of soap turning up in CSI to match. Catherine's being put through the wringer for this two-parter, but the general aim of the season is to show the effects of investigating crime on all the CSIs (what a good idea for a show. Why don't we call it Touching Evil? Oh wait...).

There's also an unsolved crime that I suspect will return during the rest of the season. One of the more disturbing things about this two-parter is the “doll's house” crime, in which a crime scene is lovingly recreated in an exact model left at the scene itself. Since even the blood pattern in the doll's house is the same (and it's made with the victim's blood), we know we've got an absolute nutbag here.

I can't help but feeling there's something similar to the serial killer in the first season at work here, but since that was intellectually fascinating storyline, I'm none too fussed by that.

All the same, some intriguing things at work that should make season 7 of CSI a very interesting one. My only worry is they might push everything into realm of highly, highly implausible if they're not careful.

PS Episode two has a highly upsetting ending. Brace yourself.