Young Sheldon

Ted Danson stars as a recently widowed professor who goes undercover at a retirement home in this warmhearted Netflix comedy from the creator of The Good Place.

Sketches are a comics best format for television and Nick Swardson has a show that's loaded with them. Each episode displays some sort of rank and raunchy humorous ingredients that will make 7th graders giggle and adults cover their heads. But along the way some of it is actually funny even if rather dark. Skits about cats in wheelchairs, snipers who masturbate, and incestual dreams involving the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are unusual fare for family television nights and when the show's main character sits and tells us about what we are about to see we begin to wonder what world this is. Nick's dead cat, Fitzgerald, is fair game for another episode as are a fatherly bucket list for a dying son, urine powered cars, and even a Gay Robot. Never one to be short on "off the wall" ideas, Nick Swardson's Pretend Time will give viewers a peek into a rather weird place, the mind of Swardson. Imagine, if you will, recovering a time capsule full of sex objects, or following Gay Robot as he buys airplane tickets to visit the alien probe site (area 51 come to mind?), or maybe learn how a forest ranger steps in to break up intimate moments between homosexuals. All this and more can be found on the Nick Swardson's Pretend Time show.

"Martin" is a popular American television sitcom that aired from August 27, 1992, to May 1, 1997, for a total of five seasons. The show centers around Martin Payne, a wisecracking DJ, and his relationships with his girlfriend Gina Waters, his best friend Tommy Strawn, and his wacky neighbor Cole Brown. The show's setting is in Detroit, Michigan, where Martin hosts a radio show.

Lisa Kudrow has been a busy gal since she was part of the ensemble cast of Friends! She now produces as well as stars in a new concept in sitcom on Showtime Television titled Web Therapy. Kudrow is Dr. Fiona Wallice, a therapist who contrives a new therapy form in which she spends three minutes on a web cast with patients who were formerly treated to those long and overly "talky" 50 minute sessions where nothing really happened. Her idea is to abbreviate those unproductive bouts down, thus leaving out most of the irrelevant chit chat. Kip Wallice, Fiona's husband, is played by Victor Garber (Ugly Betty, Nurse Jackie) shows up occasionally and her mother Putsy Hodge is well played by Lily Tomlin (stand up comedienne "Ernestine"). Apparently her newly devised condensed version of has some therapeutic value as she works with various patients who have guest starring roles in each episode. Names like Meryl Streep, Phylicia Rashad, Courtney Cox, and Jane Lynch fill in the 30 minute situation comedy and the results are hilarious and especially innovative due mostly to the level of talent involved. Well worth catching if you have Showtime.

Just as we all began to wonder whether or not William H. Macy ever would land a role as juicy and delicious as playing Felicity Huffman's real-life husband, he scored arguably the greatest part of his entire career, starring as Frank Gallagher on Showtime's gritty new "Shameless." Frank drinks. Frank drinks shamelessly, intrepidly, relentlessly, recklessly and irretrievably while his six motherless children learn to fend for themselves on Chicago's unforgiving south side, "back of the stockyards," as they say, although the cattle have long-since gone. In the first episode, a properly burly Chicago police officer deposits Frank on his entryway floor, noting his incontinence and suggesting, "I wouldn't put him anywhere near a carpet until his pants dry." This ain't no Wisteria Lane. Adapted from its British companion, the American version of "Shameless" fulfils producer John Wells's long-standing desire "to make a television show where familial love, juicy cursing, casual sex and drug use, bluntly put humor, mega-alcohol bingeing and total chaos reign." The subject matter and setting naturally lend themselves to that treatment, and the entire casts rises to the occasion. "Shameless" depicts abject poverty, incurable alcoholism, and hopeless co-dependence as grimly and accurately as they deserve, yet it still persuades slightly spellbound viewers the Gallaghers genuinely love one another.

Miles Heizer and Vera Farmiga star in a heartfelt Netflix dramedy about a young man surviving 1990 Marine boot camp. Streaming on Netflix.