Titans

Because "No Ordinary Family" has far more in common with "Swiss Family Robinson" than NBC's Chuck or its flash-in-the-pan "Heroes," it comes as little surprise that this family drama with superpowers comes to life on Disney-property ABC. Culled, of course, from the world of graphic novels, "No Ordinary Family" introduces us to Dad, Mom, and two teenagers beset with the normal collection of post-modern developmental and relational complaints, the youngest boasting the added difficulty of a learning disability. After surviving a light-plane crash in the Amazon, the family returns home to discover their ordeal has invested them with super-powers which seem to compensate precisely for their previous inadequacies. Still in its infancy, "No Ordinary Family" faces an unusual challenge: Can it continue developing the lives and times of a typical Southern California family even as it sets the fearsome foursome in hot pursuit of villains culled from the most frightening pages of graphic novels? If it succeeds, "No Ordinary Family" will have added a twenty-first century dimension to Walt Disney's concept of "the plausible impossible."

The Division is a secret organization and is the center for a new television series called Nikita. With story ideas taken from a French film titled Nikita and a TV series that ran back in 1997, La Femme Nikita, this time around we find thaqt assassins, spies, and troublemakers abound and it's the job of those who train as recruits at the Division who will fight to win. But it appears that the organization has gone rogue and many of the young recruits have troubled pasts. Nikita escapes and vows to get to the root of problems within the Division. Characters who were on the 1997 version, La Femme Nikita, are back in this version including Nikita who is played by Maggie Q otherwise known as Margaret Quigley (Balls of Fury, Deception), Michael played by Shane West (ER, Echelon Conspiracy), and Alex Udinov (Lyndsy Fonseca from How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives) all young fresh faces with great futures ahead. Nikita is the central protagonist and herself an assassin and former spy familiar with dealing with corruption. She needs a top notch crew to back her up and finds a family atmosphere in the Division.

Peter Sutherland returns as a top-level operative navigating the highest and most treacherous corridors of American intelligence in this third season of Netflix's hit thriller.

John Grisham knows law and lawyers well because he is one himself. When he writes it usually centers around attorneys and courtrooms. The Firm was a hit movie starring Tom Cruise back in 1993 and was based on Grisham's second novel which became a best seller of the same title in 1991. When a young straight arrow Memphis attorney is hired by an organized crime related enterprise he has no idea what he's getting into until the Chicago mob ties become all too apparent. He then becomes a "whistleblower" for the FBI and helps bring down the Memphis law firm Chicago based mob ties. As the TV series begins Mitchell Y. McDeere (Josh Lucas from A Beautiful Mind, Glory Road) and his family emerge from the witness protection program only to encounter challenges, both new and old, that still threaten him and his family. Also starring in The Firm are Molly Parker (Dexter, Shattered) as Abby McDeere wife of Mitch, Callum Keith Rennie (Rookie Blue, The Killing) as Ray McDeere, Natasha Calis (Gone, Alice) as Claire McDeere, and Juliette Lewis from Natural Born Killers, From Dusk till Dawn as Tammy. Perhaps they should have remained in the security of Witness Protection.

Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks already had saved Private Ryan and had shown the relatively tame exploits of a brotherly band in the Pacific Theater when they bravely took-on the challenge of recreating the bitter, brutal battles that made Pacific Islands household names in the darkest hours of World War II. Most Americans can trace the broad outlines of the Allies' liberation of Europe, but few can recall the highlights of American Marines' fierce struggles over "tiny specks of earth that we have never heard of." HBO's ten-part mini-series, "The Pacific," retrieves the war against Japan from the threshold of obscurity. Based on survivors' accounts of the battles, and rendered as vividly as the small screen will allow, "The Pacific" tracks three Marines' odysseys from Guadalcanal through Cape Gloucester to Peleliu and ultimately to the epic battle for Iwo Jima. Testifying to "The Pacific's" intense realism, the mini-series collected Emmy Awards for Art Direction, visual and sound effects. More amply testifying to "The Pacific's" overwhelming genius and power, however, the Television Academy awarded it the 2010 Emmy for Outstanding Mini-Series.

As a sequel to the popular Spartacus: Blood and Sand, we find Spartacus: Vengeance is more about how and why he became a gladiator. Determined to free the slaves owned by the Roman Republic, the Romans need to stop Spartacus before he does them more damage. And now Spartacus, himself a former Thracian slave, has a huge decision to make which is whether to help free the slaves or seek vengeance on those who condemned his own wife into slavery then death. Starring as Spartacus is Liam McIntyre from Neighbours and The Pacific, Peter Mensah (Avatar, Tears of the Sun) is trusted friend and former trainer of gladiators Oenomaus, Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess, Battlestar Galactica) is Lucretia Batiatus, widow of Quintus Batiatus who now hold a gift known as prophecy, and Dan Feuerriegel (Australian TV's McLeod's Daughters, Stupid Stupid Man) playing the part of Agron, German gladiator who was the first to join up with Spartacus and his revolt. Others in the cast include Manu Bennett as Crixus, Viva Bianca as Ilithyia, and as Gaius Claudius Glaber, Craig Parker. It's rousing and entertaining while not especially true to history.