• Kath & Kim, 8:30-9 p.m. Thursday, WTVJ-NBC 6

• Life on Mars, 10-11 p.m. Thursday, WPLG-ABC 10

• The Eleventh Hour, 10-11 p.m. Thursday, WFOR-CBS 4

• Testees, 10:30-11 p.m. Thursday, FX

The good news is that this is the last big night of an abortive fall television season that still bears the scars of the Hollywood writers' strike earlier this year. The bad news is that it's the worst evening yet. And the worst news of all is that there's only one show where the lead character is in a coma -- the rest of them just feel that way.

That 100-day writers' strike that began last November coincided almost exactly with the developmental season when studios are looking at scripts for the fall. The consequences of that have never been more clear than in Thursday's debuts: Of the four new shows, three are copies of British and Australian dramas, one a sitcom developed in Canada. Considered together, they make a compelling case that some immigration definitely should be illegal.

`LIFE ON MARS'

The coma victim is Sam Tyler, the hero on ABC's Life on Mars, the most heavily promoted of the four shows. He's a New York cop who, after being hit by a car, wakes up to discover his iPod has turned into an eight-track tape deck and he's got really wide lapels: He's back in 1973, where the foundering president is Nixon, the unpopular war is in Vietnam, and the product of corporate greed that threatens the foundations of Western civilization is disco music.

Viewers may be forgiven if they think they've awakened in 2007, when NBC's Journeyman did the time-travel bit, or 2006, when ABC tried it with Day Break. Like the protagonists of those two shows, Tyler is pursuing a mystery that, if solved in the past, could send ripples of unforeseen consequences into the future. A serial killer who's kidnapped his girlfriend in 2008 seems to be hiding out in 1973, so Tyler -- instead of just flying to Vegas to make a fortune betting on the A's to win the '73 World Series -- has to keep working on the case in a world where DNA testing, cellphones and Diet Coke haven't been invented.

Jason O'Mara, the Irish actor whose breadth has grown exponentially since he surfaced on American television as a stony CIA paramilitary officer in The Agency six years ago, is enormously appealing as the determined but befuddled Tyler, who's never quite certain whether his 1973 life is real or simply a product of his suddenly unchained subconscious. (Threatened by a gunman, he merely smirks: ``You don't exist -- you're just a symbol of my anger, or metaphor for my inability to commit.'')

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Life on Mars' writers, who seem to have been knocked considerably deeper into history than their character. The conversations Tyler overhears among his colleagues about Dr. Kildare and Peter, Paul and Mary seem to be drawn from 1963, not 1973. And the bullyboy cops (including Harvey Keitel and The Sopranos'Michael Imperioli), kicking in doors without warrants and giving suspects a knuckle sandwich instead of Miranda warnings, are straight out of an episode of The Untouchables.

`ELEVENTH HOUR'

A little old-fashioned police brutality may seem downright appealing compared to the pseudointellectual runamok of CBS' cop drama Eleventh Hour, in which British actor Rufus Sewell plays a scientist who has regrettably turned his genius to fighting crime. Marley Shelton of Sin City is an FBI agent who assists him by making squinchy faces. No wonder -- in the first episode alone, she and Sewell have to figure out if the pubescent boys of a rural Georgia town are being murdered by Catherine de Medici, dying of an overdose of ''homeopathic erectile-dysfunction medication'' (the first time, I'll bet, that phrase has ever been spoken on television), or perishing of sheer stupification from accidentally reading Nietzsche. Apparently nobody in Georgia ever just, like, shoots you.

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@