TV is the New Reading

Many happy returns

Fall welcomes series returns, premieres

First off, it's great to see “Glee” back in the lineup -- I’ll have more on that little gem down the road -- and also to see the FOX network participating in the public life of the community by running a dance competition while the other channels operating on national public-interest FCC licenses are airing the president’s address to Congress on health care next Wednesday. Stay classy, FOX!

Also on its way back this week -- FOX encored its sneak-peek pilot episode of “Glee” last week so this week will feature the first completely new episode of the angsty teen musical dramedy -- the CW premieres something called “The Vampire Diaries,” in which there are vampires and they keep a diary and they’re always trying to keep it hidden from their mummy. No, I kid. But like “Glee” they’re all in high school and like everything else on television -- especially the CW -- they’re all pretty. I couldn’t watch another 10 minutes of “Gossip Girl” on a bet, so I hope this vampire thing is worth it. I’ll check it out and let you know. Oh, it looks like there’s a new “Supernatural” on the CW too, which is about as much attention as I generally pay to that.

FX premieres the return this week of “Sons of Anarchy,” featuring Ron Perlman and Katey Sagal as Clay and Gemma, the leathery king and queen of Samcro, a biker gang in Charming, California, with Charlie Hunnam as Jax, their very own Hamlet. Previews show Jax confronting Claudius, er, I mean, Clay, about his murderous past and one imagines a few chickens coming home to roost in that exchange.

On the BBC America, “Robin Hood” returns Saturday as I mentioned elsewhere with some anticipation, and while I’m at it I thought I should mention despite some initial misgivings, the BBC America's vampire, werewolf and ghost entry “Being Human” ended with a resounding bang, and a nice redirect for a second season if they air one.

Top Gear

Another very pleasant return from BBC America is new episodes of “Top Gear,” a show now into its 13th season over in Great Britain and one of possibly the best shows about cars I’d care to see. Largely because cars are often so incidental to what’s going on.

That is, hosts Jeremy, Richard and James know their stuff and put all makes and models of cars through their paces, but they also get into it about all aspects of the cars -- what’s cool, what’s not, really the most subjective aspects of motoring they form strong and instant opinions about and hold forth on them throughout.

In taking a trio of supercars through France -- that is, the Pagani Zonda, a Ferrari F430 and a Ford GT -- part of their discussion as to which was the better car, quite apart from speed, sound and fuel consumption, was in gauging the reaction of Parisians as they traveled through Paris on their way to drive across the Millau Viaduct as a celebration of art in design.

Top Gear is essentially three overgrown boys who get to play with exciting new cars and races and challenges. Past episodes have featured vacationing in an RV (where they crashed into and then set fire to a neighboring RV), cruising across Iceland in souped-up all-terrain vehicles, flooring it through the Bonneville Salt Flats, and converting conventional vehicles into amphibious vehicles and taking them across a lake. Another enjoyable outing featured their mothers taking three cars out for a race.

And then there’s the Stig, their intrepid speedster, the driving ace who redlines cars out on their track to see what they can do. Some of the best comedy on the box is when Jeremy introduces the enigmatic helmeted one. These are a few of my faves:

· Some say he is illegal in 17 U.S. states, and he blinks horizontally

· Some say he’s wanted by the CIA, and that he sleeps upside down like a bat

· Some say his skin has the texture of a dolphin’s, and that wherever you are in the world if you tune your radio to 88.4 you can actually hear his thoughts

· Some say that on really warm days he sheds his skin like a snake, and that for some reason he’s allergic to the Dutch

· Some say he's banned from the town of Chichester

And apart from the jokes and japery, there’s sport when guests come on the show to try their hand at the Top Gear track. These are drawn from a mixed bag and can be men or women from the world of racing or entertainment or politics -- virtually any walk of life. They lap the track, log their time and then they are then immortalized on a magnetic leaderboard. Similar leaderboards exist for high-power cars driven by the Stig.

Here’s the vaguely confusing part. Billed on BBC America as the “new season,” this week’s episode first aired in 2005, which also partially explains the “brand new” Ford Focus ST segment, available in the UK in “air-hostess orange” and also in blue. Jeremy was actually driving the left-side driver version, making me wonder … why did Ford even send such a car to the UK?

Things that make you go Hmmmmm …

Home media

Apart from shows returning to the grid, progress continues apace on my home media project, which is the conversion of a personal library of hundreds of VHS tapes into DVDs. There’s already some payoff. For instance, between current recordings and the conversion of old tapes, I’ve cleared approximately 425 tapes in the course of a year and a half, which now fit into seven CD cases. If you think about how large a VHS tape actually is, that’s already a rather significant saving of space.

The process continues with cataloging the processed DVDs so I know what’s on them, but I’m enjoying the time-capsule feel to the project. The batch of tapes I’m converting now range in the 2006 era, which isn’t so long ago, but you reflect that I’m seeing series like Peter Ocko’s short-lived neurosurgical drama “3 Lbs,” and I’m encountering Mark Feuerstein who this summer helmed the reasonably engaging “Royal Pains,” which I understand is returning on USA as one of the most watched shows this summer -- although for this summer that really isn’t saying much at all -- this summer, ratings points were measured in individual viewers. I’d spaced his being the star of that other show completely, but however short-lived it was, he was really good in that one, too.

And then I saw an episode of Bravo’s rebroadcast of “Six Feet Under” featuring Ricardo Antonio Chavira, who plays Carlos from “Desperate Housewives” -- from three years before “Desperate Housewives” premiered, and of course the inimitable Peter Krause, who has been in a few different projects since then, most recently the ABC series “Dirty Sexy Money” which didn’t end or conclude so much as it just sort of stopped. Indeed, it ran headfirst into a wall. A show that was all about keeping and revealing secrets was written to a towering cliffhanger, with such confidence it was going to be picked up for a second season, and then it wasn’t. Anyway, it’s interesting to trip back through memory lane like this, and I’m enjoying it.

“Top Gear” airs Mondays at 8/7c on BBC America. “Sons of Anarchy” premieres its second season Tuesday at 9/8c on FX, “Glee” airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on FOX, and “The Vampire Diaries” airs at 8/7c on The CW, followed by “Supernatural.

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