The Client List

Sunday, 10 p.m. (Lifetime)

I like shameless soap operas as much as the next guy, and The Client List is more shameless than most. Jennifer Love Hewitt plays Riley, a former Texas beauty queen who works as an erotic masseuse (read: prostitute) to support her two…

Enlightened

Sunday, 9:30 p.m. (HBO)

In Enlightened, Amy (Laura Dern) is a troubled woman making crazy-ass stabs at transcendence. This season, she has committed herself to doing something meaningful on this Earth by exposing corruption at the company where she works. Friends and relatives think she’s out of her…

Golden Boy

Tuesday, 10 p.m. (CBS)

Golden Boy is a new cop drama that takes an original approach to its protagonist. Walter Clark (Theo James) is not only a smart, capable police officer with a vulnerable streak (nothing new there), but an opportunist. He has a lean, hungry look,…

Cult

Tuesday, 9 p.m. (CW)

Cult offers one of the 2012-13 season’s most intriguing concepts. It’s about a tv series, itself named “Cult.” The show-within-the-show portrays a creepy cult run by a psycho who kidnaps and brainwashes his followers. “Cult” has inspired a legion of fans, some of whom…

Touch

Friday, 8 p.m. (FOX)

If you love tv, you have to love its grand follies. These are the shows that throw caution to the wind to make REALLY IMPORTANT STATEMENTS ABOUT HUMANITY. Touch is one of those shows. Kiefer Sutherland plays the father of a mute boy who…

The Americans

Wednesday, 10 p.m. (FX)

We’ve seen many dramas about married couples living a lie in the suburbs, with tensions cracking the cheery façade. The lie in The Americans, however, is bigger than most. Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) are KGB agents passing as a…

The Carrie Diaries

Monday, 8 p.m. (CW)

The Carrie Diaries is a prequel to Sex And The City, featuring a 16-year-old Carrie Bradshaw (AnnaSophia Robb) in place of Sarah Jessica Parker’s adult version. In 1984, Carrie obsesses on “finding her voice as a writer” as she discovers makeup, boys…

The Following

Monday, 9 p.m. (Fox)

I’ve always argued that a Kevin Bacon performance is never without merit, no matter the production. But I’ve finally lost the argument with the premiere of The Following, a horror series from Kevin Williamson of Scream fame. It’s written so badly that even…

Girls

Sunday, 9 p.m. (HBO)

Part of me would love to be 26-year-old Lena Dunham: widely hailed as a comic genius when her series Girls premiered on HBO last year. Another part of me wouldn’t want to be Dunham at all: forced to show that season one wasn’t…

Masterpiece Classic’s Downton Abbey

Sunday, 9 p.m. (PBS)

“Downton Abbey,” Masterpiece Classic’s period soap opera, returns amid post-World War I turmoil. Money troubles and personal crises abound in the grand country estate, requiring a stiff upper lip from both the aristocrats and their servants. And if you doubt the…