One of two intense medical dramas NBC introduced in the fall of 2009, "Mercy" had all the advantages its one-named rival "Trauma" did not. First, it had talent behind the scenes. Liz Heldens from "Friday Night Lights" created the show and led the writers, proving once again that the best way to dramatize the real world is to show it realistically"”ugliness and all. Second, it had attitude and guts to stay true to its revolutionary premise, the well-informed notion "that nurses remain [not only] more generous caregivers, but that they are more intuitively apt, smarter, more committed and as technically able as their [physician] superiors, with none of the accompanying arrogance." In a winner-take-all ER smackdown, you always would go all-in with the Mercy Hospital nurses. The main character, nurse Veronica Flanagan Callahan, has just returned from a tour in Iraq, where she clearly learned more in each day than the pompous, presumptuous doctors learned in all five years of medical school. Of course, Veronica gets neither the respect nor the reward she deserves, but "Mercy" dangles the possibility of true love as just recompense for Veronica's skill and compassion. Taylor Schilling plays Veronica with exactly the right balance of toughness and vulnerability, skillfully juxtaposing her consummate skill as a nurse with her intrepid ingenuousness in matters of the heart. If only "Mercy" had survived into a second season, all the tangled threads in the story might have come to their proper denouement. If only.

That may well be the title to a dream sequence by some brilliant but unqualified attorney "want to be's" who can only imagine how they could accomplish what Mike Ross has done. He bluffed his way in by convincing Harvey Specter, one of the finest lawyers in Manhattan to hire him in spite of the fact he has no law degree. Although Ross is brilliant and extremely personable he could not afford the schooling and his choices in friends and recreational drugs did not help his situation. However he can pass the bar without attending any law school simply because he has an eidetic memory. Now clean and dedicated to becoming a first rate attorney, Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams from FlashForward, Raising the Bar) must prove himself to the man who put his trust in and hired him, Harvey Specter (played by Gabriel Macht from Love and Other Drugs, Middle Men). Mike Ross must convince the other attorneys he graduated from the Harvard Law school because that's the only place they hire new recruits from. And he is a fast learner who's wit and conviction works well in the court room.

An American crime drama, The Killing is based on a Danish television program titled Forbrydelsen which means The Crime. American writers say they used the original as a "blue print" but gave it a distinctly Americanized flair with characters that will be more appealing to the viewing audience. The setting for The Killing is Seattle, Washington and the show revolves around police investigators and their daily work load. Each episode will center on one day of an investigation into the homicide of a small girl and follows along with the investigating officers as they track down clues and work to solve the case before the trail runs cold. A dark show, The Killing is brutally honest in many respects regarding the why's and how's of a murder. The police deal with brutality and mayhem but never get used to it entirely. Cast members include Mireille Enos as detective Sarah Linden, Billy Campbell as politician running for Mayor of Seattle Darren Richmond, Michelle Forbes portrays Mitch Larsen (mother of the murdered girl Rosie), Brent Sexton as Stan Larsen (father of Rosie), and Joel Kinnaman who plays the part of Stephen Holder, Sarah Linden's partner and fellow detective

The Surgeon, one of a series of books written by Tess Gerritsen supplied the backstory for the hot new series on TNT named Rizzoli & Isles (after the two main characters in the book). Angie Harman (Baywatch Nights, Law & Order) is a homicide detective in Boston. She finds her life in danger in the first episode when a former medical student attempts to kill her as he has several other voluptuous women. The chief Medical examiner for the state of Massachusetts is Dr. Maura Isles, played by Sasha Alexander (NCIS, Dawson's Creek). Isles is a no nonsense woman dedicated to doing her job well and due to her profession those who know her tend to call her "Queen of the Dead". Rizzoli & Isles develop a good teamwork attitude and solve crimes each week but the one that haunts them both involves Charles Hoyt, a man who was expelled from med school for fondling the female corpses. Rizzoli has scars on her hands from a time when Hoyt stabbed them with scalpels, pinning her to the floor. Hoyt's role is a recurring one so watch for more of that vile character played well by Michael Massee, an actor who plays villains particularly well.

If you watched "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" before you watched "The Sopranos," you would get the uneasy sensation art was imitating life just a little too closely. They are two versions of the same story: Wiseguys attempt to balance the strange demands of life in the suburbs with the everyday business of running a criminal empire. The problem with posing as a respectable businessman is that you sometimes must actually be respectable. It's almost funny in a painfully awkward sort of way, but nothing good could come from laughing out loud. "Ayy, fahget abowt it," Tony Soprano and his New Jersey mobsters would say. Are you genuinely surprised to discover that prom dresses and cement overcoats do not easily reconcile? Are you genuinely surprised to learn "The Sopranos" is cable television's greatest financial success? "The Sopranos," in fact, was the foundation of a major cultural phenomenon and marketing franchise, which supported books, videogames, soundtrack CDs, and more than a few critical blogs. Of course, the producers and cast had to hijack a semi-trailer to cart home all of their Emmys and Golden Globes.

Lovecraft Country is a television series based on the novel of the same name by Matt Ruff. The show is set in the 1950s and follows the story of Atticus Freeman, a Black man living in Jim Crow-era America who embarks on a journey with his family to find his missing father. Along the way, they encounter supernatural creatures and face racism from both humans and otherworldly beings.