After a hiatus of almost 10 months, the Paddy’s Pub crawlers, Mac (Rob McElhenney), Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Charlie (Charlie Day), Sweet Dee (Kaitlin Olson), and Frank (Danny DeVito) return to exploit, harass, scheme, and rile the denizens of Southern Philadelphia. The endlessly quotable, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelpia, may have started out as a low budget sitcom with Seinfeldian itches in the most disgusting places, but the last two seasons of their nobrow antics saw the fivesome tapping into a comedic wellspring.

The people at the CW network must think they’ve hit the jackpot, or at least hold the winning lottery ticket. Cashing in on teen girls’ current vampire craze (Twilight etc.), The Vampire Diaries would seem to have the markings of a hit for the fall season. Based on a series of young-adult novels from the ‘90s, the show has all the ingredients that would seem to add up to a teen sensations: high school cliques, sibling rivalry, adolescent angst, drugs, family trauma, and of course, the aforementioned undead. Add in that it’s written by Scream scribe and Dawson’s Creek mastermind Kevin Williamson, and you’ve got what would seem like a sure thing.

Once you get past Glee’s uneven pilot, the real heart of the show starts to reveal itself with its next two episodes. What saved the hiccupping start were the musical interludes that were so jaw-dropping the rest of the story took a backseat.

The new Melrose Place falls somewhere between the yawn-fest the original started out as, and the backstab-fest it turned into after the network realized being pretty wasn’t enough to propel a show.

Showtime’s water-cooler thriller Dexter is essentially The Shield at its core, with a rogue police officer working against his own department to cover up his criminal involvement with cases of interest—in Dexter, though, that rogue cop has the added twist of being a serial killer, albeit one guided by a rigid moral code. It’s an entertaining setup with ample opportunity for cat-and-mouse intrigue, and like The Shield, Dexter understands the power of a dynamo guest star to spice up the show before the formula wears thin.

Whereas most of the main characters on teen dramas like The O.C. or Beverly Hills, 90210 seem to be pure of heart but, like most real-life teenagers, prone to mistakes, the Gossip Girl group doesn’t have the same set of morals. This is the show’s stroke of genius, and what makes it the most fun to be found in primetime television.

Kenny Powers. Man, myth, unbelievably broken asshole. From the team who brought you The Foot Fist Way comes this far superior creation starring Danny McBride as washed up MLB pitcher Kenny Powers, who ends up back home (Shelby, North Carolina) after boozing and drugging his way out of the major leagues. While there, he turns the town upside down with his outrageous behavior.

Fans of intelligent and exciting science fiction, and of compelling TV drama in general, will be well rewarded if they tune into BBC America this week for the five part Torchwood miniseries Children of Earth. It will be airing every night this week at 9 p.m. and is certainly the best five hours of science fiction television in recent memory and will also go down as one of 2009’s most memorable television events. Even those who have never seen Torchwood before, or who were left unimpressed by the show’s early episodes, would do well to tune in.

I’m not a big fan of the term guilty pleasure, but Entourage is the very definition of it. The story of Hollywood actor/superstar Vinnie Chase, his three buddies, and his agent and the agent’s assistant has lumbered along for five seasons, and season five is now available on DVD, coinciding with the start of season six on HBO.