Amazing stuff on television

You know, for a vast wasteland of 47,000 channels with nothing on but QVC, there's actually a remarkable amount of really good television coming out, and not all of it requires pay cable or even basic cable!

Of course, HBO earns high marks for Real Time with Bill Maher, The Sopranos, and Rome, and Showtime for Penn & Teller's Bullshit! and Queer As Folk [ended after five seasons] and Dead Like Me [reaped before its time, just like its main character], plus the new Weeds, and I am counting the days before Comedy Central's new Colbert Réport, but not all of the broadcast networks are napping. ABC has Commander in Chief, plus the surprisingly entertaining Jimmy Kimmel Live (I say "surprisingly entertaining" because I was no fan at all of The Man Show.), not to mention Boston Legal. (After all these years, William Shatner finally demonstrates that he can act in something other than Third Rock from the Sun.) NBC has My Name is Earl, but not much else new of note. Fox seems to have a lot of Friends and Seinfeld reruns, but CBS has little more than that.

If you're watching nothing but crap, you either don't get more than two channels on your old rabbit ears, or else you ought to get yourself a TiVo right now. [Full disclosure: TiVo has not paid me $240,000 to produce fake news segments touting No TiVo Left Behind. In fact, if they paid me $2.40, that would be bus fare and a small Coke more than they've given me so far.]