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With time travelers, vampire detectives, grim reapers, and bionic women, the new TV lineup runs from intriguing to absurd.

In a bunker beneath Cardiff, in a convenient rift in the space-time continuum, Captain Jack’s supersecret �Torchwood� team of young scientist-investigators use scavenged alien technology to identify and eliminate unwelcome alien invaders.

Meet Ben Kuroki, now 90 years old. A Nebraska-born Nisei he volunteered for the Army after Pearl Harbor, served on an elite B-24 bomber unit, was captured in North Africa and escaped, and flew 30 missions over Europe and another 28 over Japan.

In the cop drama K-Ville, New Orleans serves as a stormy backdrop for low-rent noir and pent-up rage.

In Californication, another cranky novelist goes Hollywood, bamboozled by sun and skin.

The Company is a plodding look at the CIA, enlivened only by Michael Keaton as the spookiest spook.

Jon Hamm stars as a hotshot creative director at a New York advertising agency that is equally eager, in 1960, to sell cigarettes and Richard Nixon.

The Kill Point bucks a trend. Hostage shows have not fared well as series television. The combination of claustrophobia and suspense seems to wear everybody out.

Two new shows saddle great female leads (Holly Hunter, Lili Taylor) with far-fetched premises.

Heartland asks us to sit still for a Treat Williams who, while once again practicing medicine, is even more of a noble noodle than he was on Everwood.