Episode three went with something a little more personal and more interesting, with Christian Kane's character returning home to Kentucky to deal with a racehorse owner who kills horses for the insurance money. High mark of the overly complicated episode is the introduction of the show's Professor Moriarty: fellow insurance investigator Mark Sheppard (BSG, The X-Files, Bionic Woman, etc), who's scheduled to appear in at least five episodes. Sheppard is adept at the cons and investigations as Hutton but is on the right (?) side of the law, and makes an interesting addition to a show that was in slight danger of repetition and losing tension in the long run.

Most of my initial criticisms remain: it's not very hard hitting, the cons are easy to spot a mile off and there's a fair bit of duff acting. Add to that Gina Bellman's less than outstanding attempts at accents, a decreasing amount of the character interplay from the pilot and the fact that most of the cons have relied on something being obviously switched at the last moment. It's also not especially memorable, so you never really remember the cleverness of the cons or much of the plot in the same way as you do with Ocean's 11, say. 

But it's still very fun to watch. The cast are all pretty charismatic and there's an intriguing randomness and weirdness to its sense of humour (one character has a fear of horses because "they murder clowns" and there's a flashback to Kane being tortured because he wouldn't reveal the location of a monkey, for example). 

Worth watching if you want some diverting, not too heavy entertainment of an evening. 

Carusometer rating: 2
Predictions: Should last at least season

In the US: Thursdays, 9.30/8.30c, NBC
In the UK: Five, from January (probably)

Wake up, NBC! Wake up!

I don't know if you've noticed this, but Tina Fey has been something of a hot property of late. Thanks to her scary impersonation of Sarah Palin (here with Will Ferrell as George Bush), people all over the world are waking up to the fact that despite having been on and written for a recent season of SNL, she is in fact a comedy genius.

Not NBC though, because they've waited until the end of October to bring to our screens the latest season of 30 Rock. Set behind the scenes of a fictitious NBC sketch show, it features Tina Fey as the show's bewildered liberal producer and Alec Baldwin as the interfering conservative executive in charge of Fey's show, east coast programming and microwave ovens. And it's easily the best comedy on television at the moment (yes, better than The Office, etc)

Well done, NBC. Would you like to look at your ratings? Scary, aren't they? Want to start thinking a bit more in future, maybe, about how you could capitalise on events rather than simply staring at them blankly?

Of course, there may have been doubts about the show's funniness. Would season three be as funny as previous seasons?

Don't be silly. Of course it would.

It all sounds a bit dumb and it is, but the show is better than the set-up suggests. It tries its best to be gritty and to be as adult as possible, given the sci-fi foundation beneath its surface. After initially seeming like it would Slater and his other self working together to stay alive, the title's come into play and the two Slaters are having interesting little time-shifted battles against each other.

We also have Slater's spy partner, whose relationship with his wife shows that Slater and the still not well used Mädchen Amick actually have the relatively good end of the sociopathic secret agent-hausfrau relationship spectrum. This is actually quite a poignant sub-plot of spousal neglect that works quite well in context.

The spy stuff's all a bit uninspiring compared to CBS's The Unit, but Slater's good, there's an interesting series arc developing – finally giving Saffron Burrows something to do – and it's quite dark, which always gets the thumbs up from me. But it doesn't yet have that magic 'something' necessary to make it a must-see, a theme common to most of the Fall's new shows. Close, but no cigar.

Predictions
Could well make it to a full season, but unlikely to make it to season two without more oomph.

Carusometer rating
Two or Partial Caruso

It's just not very interesting. Nothing remarkable about it at all. Oh well.

As predicted, it is indeed shaping up to be the new Doomwatch, although it's also the new CSI, which is handy, given it's on CBS. While episode one was less daft and science-fictiony than the UK original script, episode two was pretty much an episode of CSI – and a stupid one at that – with a science label hung on it; episode three, however, was a relatively interesting piece on GM food with overtones similar to the Doomwatch pilot The Plastic Eaters.

Rufus Sewell is a good lead; Marley Shelton can't really act, but her character's more useful than Ashley Jensen's original, offering FBI skills rather than simple "falling over" skills, and she could plausibly do the job, at least. Not really interesting dramatically, yet, but the science in the plots separates it from a standard procedural – just. There needs to be more chemistry between Sewell and Shelton for the show to be of true interest though and they need to steer clear of the science-fiction UK originals as well as the more obvious "who's the techno crim?" scripts, too.

Predictions
Already booked for a whole season, but needs to make the central format more interesting for it to really appeal.

Carusometer rating
Two or Partial Caruso

The new first episode wasn't bad at all and ironed out many of the problems of the pilot and episode two did enough jiggering around with the UK script and added enough new elements to the overall set-up that the show started to feel increasingly different – even if it was word-for-word and shot-for-shot the same at times.

Episode three, the first original episode, decided to venture into the treatment of gay men in the early 70s. Although pretty clumsy in places, with none of the regulars revealing any truly horrifying prejudices and Gene Hunt delivering an awesomly bad speech at one point on the subject, it did allow the producers to deliver an episode that focused on truly American concerns, making it a show in its own right, rather than simply a relocation.

Jason O'Mara, previously one of the weak links in the show's set-up, is proving a reasonable lead, since he's veering more towards a comedy portrayal of Sam Tyler than John Simm did, something he actually seems quite good at. Oddly, the weakest link is Harvey Keitel who veers between non-comitted, frail and spaced out with no apparent reason. He's starting to make me wonder whether David Caruso could do a better job, which is something that should never happen.

On balance, it feels like a weaker version of the UK Life on Mars that's still trying to find its feet. It's still pretty good and there are aspects of it that are better than the UK's version, such as Gretchen Mol's more interesting and brighter Annie. But as of yet, it still hasn't got the magic of the original.

Predictions
Could limp on for at least another season, but could go on for a whole lot longer if it finally finds its mojo.

Carusometer rating
Two or partial Caruso

In the US: Fridays, 9/8c, NBC

Setting's very important to a story. Stick Crusoe on Saturday evening in a teatime slot in the UK and it would be a whole load of family fun. Sure, the purists would be complaining that this adaptation of Robinson Crusoe plays extremely fast and loose with the book - and indeed starts halfway through it - and seems to have been crossed with Pirates of the Caribbean and The Admirable Crichton along the way.

But this is a post-Merlin age and we'd have been quite happy with a big budget escapist bit of tatt that might at least get a couple of kids reading books and thinking about history and issues.

However, it's not going out on Saturday night ITV1. It's Friday night NBC fun in the US. They're aiming it at adults, the fools. That's never going to work.

Essentially each show has an A-plot and a B-plot, one for the immortals and one for the mortals they're trying to match-make. The mortal plot is invariably dreadful, with drippy dork usually falling for woman out of his league and having to woo her somehow with the help of the gods. The immortal plot, however, is usually much better, showing signs of imagination, originality and some actual research (although not an overwhelming amount).

The only problems here are:

1. the woeful miscasting, with Jaime Murray (Aphrodite) ruining pretty much every scene she's in (as well as helping to turn the title sequence into one of the most cringeworthy in history) and most of the other gods failing to convince, with perhaps the exception of Eros. Indeed, Ares, god of savage war, is played by a weeny English bloke. What's going on there?
2. the tedious mortal romance-writer the producers have partnered the gods with

The general expectation given to us by the really rather bad first episode was that mortal romance would be A-plot, god-squabbling the B-plot – indeed that's how episode three worked. That would have been an almost unbearable show.

But episode two was almost revelatory. Not only was it an arranged marriage episode that wasn't totally insensitive and insulting, but the two plot strands swapped places in priority. And as predicted, it was a whole lot more interesting than the first episode as a result, even if there was an absolutely dire Bollywood dance sequence that cost it nearly a full mark on the Carusometer.

Now whether it's Kevin Murphy's background on shows like Reaper, but episode two felt like Pride and Prejudice would have done if the bloke from Saw had turned up. Suddenly, instead of the pink-tinged fluffy wuffiness of the first episode, suddenly we had an episode where if the gods fail, the wife-to-be ends up topping herself with sleeping pills, with her body being discovered by her youngest son. WTF? Where did that come from?

Better still, we had an ending of prophecied vicious bloodletting, Ares talking about a threat to the gods from outside and the suggestion that mortal hanger-on might be behind it all. So now we have a nice dark underbelly to the fluff that actually makes it worth watching and which will, at least, be an arc that carries on through future episodes.

There are still obvious problems, Jaime Murray being one the most obvious. But if the writers can slowly ditch the mortal sub-plots – just as Charmed did before it – in favour of the gods and their issues, it could actually turn out to be a pretty entertaining show.

Predictions
Could last a whole season at least, provides it stays off the tedious mortals and focuses on the gods.

Carusometer rating
Two or Partial Caruso

Like No Heroics, this is a show which if the main character were removed completely from the proceedings and the whole thing left to the supporting characters (especially her foxy history teacher friend and her boyfriend, who have quite an interesting relationship), it would actually be quite fun. Unfortunately, it's not and things have only got more boring since the initial episode, with dull woman's mountain-biking and cop boyfriends not even as interesting as the rock-star boyfriend of the pilot.If she, both actress and character, had perhaps just a bit more spark, the show would seem less interminable. But I'm not sure her vacillations and constant psychic consultations are appealing to anyone at all at the moment.

Not badly put together, and it has a nice sense of place (although San Diego struck me as having a few more Latinos when I was there) but hampered by the original Israeli format into being something less than it could be.

Predictions
Will get cancelled in the not too distant future

Carusometer rating
Three or Minor Caruso

In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: SciFi, probably (season 1 now airing)

Eli Stone was a show I really disliked at first sight. A high-flying lawyer gets a brain aneurism and starts to have visions of the future, usually involving singing, dancing and/or George Michael, that enable him to save people or fix problems in their life. Where are these visions from? God? Somewhere else? Eli Stone didn't seem to want to make an actual decision on that one because then it would, you know, have to be saying something.

But it improved slightly and by the third episode had started to have a few moderate things going for it, even if it had got both wishier and washier. By the sixth episode, the producers seemed to have worked out that the format needed a bit of tweaking and by the season finale, the show was actually pretty good and occasionally moving as the producers got progressively bolder.

Now it's back, just as fluffy as before, but willing to lay down a few hard "this is what we stand for"s, along with a few properly tear jerking moments - and Sigourney Weaver.

Since then, we've had what can only be described as relatively mediocre episodes, in which generic crim-chasing scripts get a little psychic goodness sprinkled on them, usually in the form of a magic trick at the beginning, as a sop to the format. Otherwise, you'd be hard pushed to differentiate them from any other police near-procedural, beyond the fact the format allows the writers to skip whole chunks of working out and leap scenes, simply through Jane's skills (which often aren't really explained).

The one exception to this been there, done that feel is Simon Baker, who manages to make every scene better just through his mere presence. Nevertheless, while everything feels like quality, it's pretty much an illusion. There's not much wrong with The Mentalist – it just needs to have something right as well, and all that was right in the pilot seems to have been forgotten about.

Predictions
The show's now been acquired by Five in the UK and has gone to a full season, so should be around for a while for both UK and US viewers.

Carusometer rating
Two – a Partial Caruso

In the US: Mondays, 9.30/8.30c, ABC
In the UK: E4?

Samantha Who? was one of those show that came out last year, that wasn't bad but which I didn't think I'd stick around for. But my wife started watching it on E4 a few weeks ago and thanks to a realisation that Christina Applegate is one of the best comedic actresses on TV at the moment, we ended up watching the whole first season. And it wasn't bad and it was quite funny.

Applegate plays Samantha Newly (there's a clue in that name) who wakes up after a car accident with amnesia. She can't remember any of her old life and discovers, much to her horror, that she was an evil bitch - which is something she no longer wants to be. Sam (I am) tries to build a new, nicer life, with the help of her formerly estranged parents, her best friends and her ex-boyfriend.

Most of the fun comes from the evil old Sam and the fact all the people who knew her can now tell her what they really thought about her. But new Sam is entertaining in her own right, as are the supporting characters - mainly Sam's mother (Jean Smart) and her party-girl attorney best friend (Jennifer Esposito).

The second season is set a year after the first which is all a bit confusing since everything seems to have gone backwards - in fact, there's more than a hint of déjà vu here...

In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, NBC

I can't imagine the NBC planning meeting behind this.

B: "What have we got on Monday nights? We need something in the 10pm slot"

A: "Chuck at 8pm, Heroes at 9pm"

B: "Hmm. Tell me about Chuck"

A: "It's about a guy, a regular Joe, who accidentally becomes a spy"

B: "Huh. Cool. You know - and this is a completely unrelated idea - how about we made a show for the 10pm slot about a regular Joe who accidentally becomes a spy?"

A: "Um. Don't we already…"

B: "No, I won't hear any complaints. Let's commission it!"

So now we have on what turns out to be "Accidental spy night" in the US, a straighter version of the comedic Chuck in which Christian Slater turns out to have multiple personality disorder and one of those personalities is a spy. For real.

I did say it wasn't a comedy, didn't I?

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: I'm guessing the Beeb will buy it. What do you think?

This is the one we in Britain have all been waiting for. Despite running for only two series, time travel cop drama Life on Mars became something akin to the crown jewels - a national treasure to be revered by everyone. Even the awfulness of spin-off Ashes to Ashes couldn't dull our love for it.

So when we heard that the US was going to adapt it, we all feared the worst and assumed terrible things were going to happen to our precious*. "Take your hands off our crown jewels, Yanks," was the general reaction.

To be fair, once we saw the trailer and the pilot, we actually had a good reason to be dismayed. The trailer was truly awful and the pilot was bland. Relocated from Manchester to LA, the show ditched most of the characters, took away a lot of the fun bits without adding anything, and didn't really have any style of its own.

And ABC agreed. It took one look and said, "Guys, do you want to try again? Because this is sh*t." So the producers did try again. They changed production team, relocated the show to New York, brought back all the old characters and rewrote the script. Then they brought in heavyweight acting talent Harvey Keitel, Gretchen Mol and Michael Imperioli – and reshot the entire thing.

Wow. They say pilots can be unrepresentative of the series that follow, but that's all pretty unprecedented – although unsurprising given just how few new dramas ABC is running with this Fall.

Has that been enough though?

In the US: Thursdays, 9pm ET/PT, CBS
In the UK: Five, Five US, Living, etc, ad infinitum

It seems that just about every time I review an episode of CSI, I make the following points:

• It's the only smart series in the CSI canon, with CSI:Miami being dumb, conservative propaganda with minimal resemblance to reality and CSI: NY being little more than live action fan fic now
• It does dark and nuanced well
• The characters feel like characters rather than plot advancers

And this time's no different. We open, as we have in most previous years, with a big character-related episode. And my, isn't it a tear-jerker?