Not-so Guilty TV pleasures

Recently, I posted an entry here bemoaning the loss of kids' cartoons in the afternoon.

But there are some new things I'm liking on my T.V., too. So, just because, I thought I'd share:

1. inJustice: (ABC) Another courtroom/crime procedural drama. But it focuses all its plots on the innocent people who have been wrongly convicted, instead of focussing on "making the guilty pay." It's okay, as far as writing and characterization, but I love it for simply being there, and reminding us that we have the "innocent until proven guilty" system for a reason. Every time an innocent person is wrongly convicted, the person who is really guilty is just as free as if there'd been no cops or courts, in the first place.



2. My Name is Earl: (NBC) A self-admitted jerk and petty criminal discovers the concept of Karma, though the deep, philosophical wisdom of Carson Daly (sp?), and sets out to right every wrong he's ever done in his life, one by one. Okay, so anyone who's even studied ten pages of Eastern thought would probably know that Earl has no clue about what Karma really is, but that kinda misses the point. It's all about Earl discovering how to think of others instead of himself, and the madcap, Lucille Ball-like misadventures he gets himself into as he does so (but with more subtle dialog and a wider range of characters than "I Love Lucy" ever had). Also, it's nice to have a storyline where the humor is based on people, rather than on witty and nasty comeback lines.



3. It's a Big, Big World: (PBS) A show about science aimed at pre-school kids (3-6), by the same guy who did "Bear in the Big Blue House." The setting is World Tree -- the tallest tree in the world, growing in the middle of the rain forest narrator (I guess the character playing the equivalent of Bear's part) is a giant sloth named Snook, and the other characters are animals that also live in different levels of the same tree. Instead of focusing on science facts, it focuses on the scientific method. With all the hoopla about ID, this may be a small, and nice, anti-dote. The only gripe I have about it, really, is the limited number of songs they sing.