Ah, the new TV season is upon us.

Almost upon us, for the major networks. But the smaller nets have already started up their new shows, presumably to get us hooked so we'll watch them instead of series on the big three, or four, or five networks. I've seen a couple of series enough to know that I like them, one because it's done well, and one as a guilty pleasure.

"Playmakers" started on ESPN a week ago. It's the story of a football team - its owner, players, coaches, and families - in a league that really looks like the NFL but isn't (those pesky lawyers!), what people will do to get onto and stay on the team, and what happens to them as the team casts them aside. Rich production values, pretty good performances, pretty good writing, although the characterization is a bit thin: many of the characters are stock characters from sports movies: the Aging Veteran, the Cocksure Young Phenom, the Coach With a Secret, etc. The language is a bit saltier than what you'd get from the major networks, but not as earthy as you'd hear on HBO; the amount of flesh you see is similarly a bit more and a bit less. Been interesting to watch so far, and they have enough repeats of it during the week that you'll still be able to see your network favorites when their seasons start up.

The guilty pleasure started tonight, on Spike TV. It's called Joe Schmo, and the concept is that it's yet another third-rate, cheesy "reality" show - nine people living in a mansion, one voted off every couple of days, silly contests for bonuses, winner gets $100 grand. The twist is that it's not: Eight of the "contestants" are actually actors, and the goal is to keep him from figuring it out that it's all rigged. It's "The Truman Show" done as a reality game show. They've got an over-the-top mix of sterotyped reality show players - a retired Marine, a flamboyant gay, a beautiful virginal religious babe, a marriage-and-family counselor who has herself had three divorces - and they have equivalents for the other trappings of such shows: secret video diary/confessionals (when our hero does his, the rest of the cast huddles with the director and writers to figure out the day's plot twists), lots of cameras recording all the scheming going on (of which only the scheming with the victim counts), secret voting (with pre-arranged ballots being substituted for the ones cast by the actors), etc. It will be fascinating to see how much more they can do to embarrass the victim without his catching on, although as he comes across as an amiable-but-dim fellow who has no inkling that anything odd is going on, I'm guessing they'll be able to do a lot.

But for my money, what's the best TV show to have started in the past month? Reruns of The West Wing, on Bravo. As I didn't start watching the series until late in the second year, I'm really enjoying catching up from the beginning. Great writing, great acting, and four new ("new to me", in NBC-speak) episodes a week, at least until the middle of October.