Both Morse and the actor who played him, the superb John Thaw, are gone now. In “Inspector Lewis” — the smartly done sequel series airing at 9 p.m. Sundays on PBS’ “Masterpiece Mystery!” — Lewis (Kevin Whately) is the top dog. And his young sidekick, Sgt. Hathaway (Laurence Fox), has a cerebral, musical bent that Morse would’ve enjoyed nurturing. Or not.This delicious sense of completion is just one of the many pleasures of this series,  in rerun on THIRTEEN. The new season begins with “And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea” (Aug. 30), which crystallizes all the series’ strengths. There’s the magnificent Oxford setting, with shadowy goings-on amid the light-dappled courtyards and sculpted spires and domes of the university. Rarely is place given such principal importance in American television.

No, American TV is more interested in pretty people. In “Inspector Lewis,” the characters, and the actors who play them, have a lived-in look. And yet, they still manage to be interesting, even sexy people. Fancy that.

Apart from the sense of place and character, what really makes “Inspector Lewis” work are the meaty plots in which the seemingly unrelated crimes nonetheless always have a cultural link. In “Moonbeams,” the murder of a library custodian with a gambling problem and a fey student who lives for art are connected by the great  Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. (The title is a line from one of his poems.)

The rebellious, impractical Shelley was one of Oxford’s more notorious students, having been expelled for writing a pamphlet on atheism, although smarty-pants Hathaway says it was for an affair with a married woman. (Being a romantic — with a small “r” — I  prefer Hathaway’s interpretation, don’t you?)

Hang on for the twisting, poignant conclusion, in which you’ll also be rewarded with a view of the university’s stunning sculpted tribute to Shelley, who drowned off the coast of Italy in 1822, a month short of his 30th birthday. But don’t weep for him. Shelley believed life was but “the painted veil.”

Or as he wrote in “Adonais,” his elegy for another Romantic poet, John Keats:

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken’d from the dream of life.

With all do respect to Meryl Streep, I can’t imagine a greater impersonation of Julia than Dan Aykroyd’s on the old “Saturday Night Live,” and that’s because he hit on her essence: The chicken might’ve fallen on the floor. The saucepan may have slipped off the counter. But Julia sautéed on.

The result was a life excellently – though not perfectly — lived, with some good eats in the bargain.

Tomorrow night at 8, THIRTEEN has David Frost’s actual interviews with President Richard Nixon that inspired the “Frost/Nixon” movie. I can’t wait for that. I always thought Frost was a penetrating conversationalist. His interviews with the likes of Orson Welles and Richard Burton in the ‘70s were fascinating stuff.

If you missed “Frost/Nixon,” rent it. Frank Langella got most of the kudos for his deserving turn as Nixon. But Michael Sheen — who was a fabulous Tony Blair and a transcendent Mozart in the 1999 Broadway revival of “Amadeus” — matches Langella as Frost, the seeming featherweight who finds his inner Ali to bring down a titan.

Last week’s foray into a Parisian prostitution ring was a solid outing and convinced me — as it has other bloggers – that Purefoy might’ve made a good James Bond.

Tonight’s episode (10 p.m., Channel 4 locally) finds Purefoy’s Teddy Rist back in Nigeria and back in hot water — perhaps another chance to glisten.

Whereas “La Sonnambula” has one of the dopiest productions in recent memory. But it’s saved by the magical Bellini score and the incandescent warbling of French soprano Natalie Dessay and Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez, the Fred and Ginger of bel canto.By now you’ve heard all about this “Sonnambula,” which was simulcast into White Plains and New Rochelle movie theaters in March as part of The Met’s “Live in HD” series. It seems someone thought the story about a Swiss village girl who sleepwalks her way into charges of being a hussy, thereby jeopardizing her forthcoming wedding, was in need of an update. So production designer Mary Zimmerman set it in a rehearsal hall that looks just like the studios you find in downtown Manhattan. The 1831 opera is now about a rehearsal of the opera, in which the story parallels the lives of the opera’s stars, who are also named Amina and Elvino and are also engaged to be married.

Yeah right.

The problem with this art-imitates-life scenario is that modern-day New York isn’t a 19th-century Swiss village. The plot of the opera hinges on Amina’s — and to a certain extent, Elvino’s — purity. Whereas we assume a certain intimacy and sophistication between modern engaged couples. Here the real Amina’s disgrace in innocently sleepwalking into the bedroom of Count Rodolfo — the opera’s third star — and the real Elvino’s outrage make little sense.

And why are successful opera stars sleeping in a rehearsal hall anyway? The original opera is set in an inn. So why not make the update about a touring company and set it in a hotel on the road? Must the viewer think of everything?

I believe the word “disaster” was the one critics most commonly applied to the production, which was roundly booed on opening night at The Met. (Check it out on You Tube.) The snarky New York Times review wondered if the contemporary set, right down to the ubiquitous coffee-maker, was a reflection of our tough economic times. I told my editor that I thought Dessay and Flórez were wearing their own clothes. And sure enough, some of them are. (See the stars’ charming intermission interview with colleague Deborah Voight.)

The ironic miracle here is that 10 minutes into the production you forget it and begin to concentrate on the music. Bellini is that mellifluous, and Dessay and Flórez — singly and together — are that good.

Indeed, they are virtually peerless when it comes to both the spun sugar of the bel-canto line and the coloratura fireworks. His rendering of Elvino’s passionate, despairing Act 2 aria is a deserved show-stopper and her sleepwalking number wrings every drop of emotion from even the softest piannisimo.

Married to other people, they are nonetheless completely believably as lovers. (And as friends. Watch the way he swings her around backstage after the performance, clearly delighted by their work.)

And well they should be. All of the singing is good. So this “Sonnambula” is worth it, despite the revolving blackboard and the spinning bed. (Don’t ask.)

Just listen and savor.

Photo courtesy of PBS’ “Great Performances at The Met” and THIRTEEN

I’m glad some bloggers have mentioned his demonic sheriff in the underrated western “One-Eyed Jacks,” as his best performance, though. There he once again played against Brando (in his only directorial effort.) Malden excelled at decent guys like Mitch in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Father Barry in “On the Waterfront.” But it was that very decency, that very Mitchness that made him so chillingly terrifying as the outlaw-turned-smiling-sheriff who betrays and brutalizes Brando, his former partner in crime, in “Jacks.” And you’ve got to think that Gene Hackman’s sheriff in “Unforgiven” owes something to Malden’s work.

Anyway, rest in peace.

Think about it: Rosalind is a redhead. John could be a boyfriend’s name, a maternal surname or a nickname. The blue-and-white teacup balanced on the TV where Red gets his (her) joliies watching the victims (s)he tortures is the same as the set in Rosalind’s house.

Plus, Rosalind could easily pretend to be blind to suggest that she is just another victim of the serial killer’s con. As for why the Holmesian Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) would be thrown off the scent and see her as a victim, well, his judgment could be clouded by the fact that his wife and baby were murdered by John. (The victims are all women or children, easier for a woman to overpower.)

Also, women often draw smiley faces (Red John’s calling card). And anyway, who’s better at mind games — or more to the point — who is more likely to have to use mind games to get what he or she wants, men or women?

Thoughts anyone?

As Butterfly and Pinkerton, Racette and Giordani in no way suggest a delicate teenage geisha and her hotshot American Navy boy. Plus, they have absolutely no chemistry. But then Act II begins, and something unexpected and miraculous happens. With Giordani’s Pinkerton offstage — back in America, where he has betrayed his Japanese bride by taking an American wife — Racette alights and digs deep to create an astounding portrait of a deluded yet noble woman whose strength and faith are not returned. Possessed of real acting ability as well as a voice of power and beauty, Racette does what few singers in my memory have done before with this part. She helps you to understand through facial expression, gesture and vocal emphasis that “Madama Butterfly” is really about race and gender. Butterfly — pinned by the strictures of Japanese culture and the prejudices of her time — wants to be a modern woman in turn-of-the-20th-century America. And that misplaced hope defeats her as surely as her love for Pinkerton does.

So when it’s revealed that Butterfly has a 3-year-old son by Pinkerton, born in his absence — a child that the returning Pinkerton and his American wife want to take home with them — it comes as something of a shock to see a puppet instead of a child performer. I saw the “Live in HD” simulcast of this opera in a White Plains theater, and I cannot tell you how outraged some of the women in the audience were. How can you not have a real little boy — the very poignant proof of the vast gulf between Butterfly’s dreams and Pinkerton’s crushing reality?

(In an intermission interview, choreographer Carolyn Choa — Minghella’s widow — said that the puppet was in keeping with the conventions of Japanese theater and also, easier to direct than a real child. Alas, the HD interviews are cut from the PBS broadcasts to fit the operas into a certain time slot, which is too bad. They’re really enlightening.)

I, too, disliked the puppet the first time I saw it, him. But the great thing about being a critic is you’re regularly proven wrong. The puppet — more like a doll — has such a pleasing, expectant expression on its face and is so masterfully handled by three puppeteers clad in black that its presence and movements are just heartbreaking. Adding to the pathos are its interactions with Racette’s Butterfly; mezzo-soprano Maria Zifchak, admirable as her skeptical but loyal maid, Suzuki; and baritone Wayne Croft as the compassionate, rueful American consul, Sharpless.

As the opera built to the inevitably tragic climax, I couldn’t help but weep in the theater. I wept watching the DVD. I bet you will, too.

NBC is seeking to change all that with “The Philanthropist,” bowing at 10 tonight on Channel 4 locally, with the sensual James Purefoy (Mark Antony in HBO’s “Rome”) as the Tony Stark-like protagonist. As presented in the pilot, however, he’s more Tin Man than Iron Man.Like Tony Stark, Teddy Rist (Purefoy)  is something of a jerk — a drunk womanizer giving to throwing his weight and his money around. (Rist is so powerful that he has Michelle Obama’s private number, forget the prez.)

Purefoy — who has played Beau Brummell as well as Mark Antony and was Reese Witherspoon’s good-time hubby in “Vanity Fair” — is very, very good at playing louche characters. An early scene of him on business in Nigeria, boozy and naked in bed with some fetching woman he only half-remembers is particularly realistic. It’s also intriguing since he wakes up to a storm and a room filled with water.

That scene plays like something out of a promising movie. But this is television, and just as nature abhors a vacuum, TV can’t stand an unlovable lead. So, of course, it turns out that Rist is a haunted, tragic figure, whose young son is dead and whose marriage is over. There’s nothing wrong with this as a plot device per se. (The death of a wife and baby drive Simon Baker in CBS’ hit “The Mentalist.’) But here it seems like a cheap tug at our heartstrings, in part because the pilot spends a lot of time telling us things, instead of showing them to us.

For instance, we learn that Rist’s business partner, fellow billionaire Philip Maidstone (Jesse L. Martin), and Maidstone’s wife, Olivia (Neve Campbell), who runs the company’s foundation, are concerned about Rist’s fragile emotional state. But Martin — who had chemistry with everyone in his previous incarnation as a knowing cop on “Law & Order” — and Purefoy never click as “best mates,” and Campbell is out of her depth as the kind of sophisticated New York society woman — think Annette de la Renta — who would head a charitable organization.

Indeed, so much information is crammed into the show’s setup that we also don’t quite believe Rist’s on-the-road-to-Damascus moment — an encounter with an orphaned Nigerian boy during the aforementioned storm that spurs him on a dangerous journey to deliver a vaccine supply to a cholera-ridden village.

It isn’t until the lowest point of the journey, with Rist lost, delirious and barefoot in the jungle, that he and we find our footing. And you begin to think, This could work. Purefoy might just pull this off.

Let’s hope the show calms down and allows the characters to unfold. Otherwise, the pilot reminds me of Jesus’ saying that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Depicting a rich man is no easier.

I’m pulling up by beach chair and pouring myself a tall pomegranate lemonade, so to speak.Really, this stuff is so good it needs no review. But a couple of points. To say it is as if we just saw David Suchet’s Poirot yesterday is to say how easily he slips back into the bowler, the spats, the little upturned mustache, the penquin waddle, the skewered English syntax, the references to himself in the third person. (I interviewed him some years back when he played a particularly malevolent Salieri on Broadway to Michael Sheen’s transcendent Mozart in “Amadeus.” I found Suchet to be as charming and erudite a lunch companion as he is a masterful performer.)

But that’s the thing about the Brits: They know their craft. They have a life outside of acting. And they understand there are no small parts, only small actors. Among the players in the series that you’ll recognize from other, bigger roles are Joan Collins, Natalie Dormer, Rupert Graves, David Haig, Matthew MacFadyen, Prunella Scales and Zoë Wanamaker.

As for McKenzie, who starred in “Cranford,” her Marple is more solid than the fragile-looking McEwan, but also less romantic and more wistful. The producers have done away with the allusions to Miss Marple’s tragic, romantic past. (Well, not everything relates to your own experience, does it?) In its place is a kind of luridness I didn’t realize was part of the Christie repertoire. One case alone features incest, rape and several murders; another, heroin addiction and child prostitution. Thank goodness these things are discussed rather than shown. (I particularly love it when the murderers stop in mid-crime to listen to Poirot or Marple explain how they did it.)

Once again Alan Cumming is back as host. In introducing Poirot, he describes him as the unmarried Belgian detective, emphasis on “unmarried,” with eyebrows arched.

Oh, Alan, you’re such a scamp!

Plus, I’m looking forward to Alexander Skarsgaard reprising his role as Eric, the Viking vamp who lusts after Sookie (Anna Paquin). When it comes to vampires, he’s more my type than Bill (Stephen Moyer), Sookie’s beau.

As for Sookie and Bill, I preferred their relationship when it was in the courting stage. Eroticisim is about the tension between the concealed and the revealed. (Think of all those Renaissance nudes.) Now that everything’s been revealed, there’s no erotic tension. That’s why I have some hope for “The Vampire Diaries,” the CW’s “Twilight”-y fall series.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten more of a thrill watching Michael Sheen’s grimy rebel werewolf in “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.” Can’t wait to see what he does with the vampire leader Aro in in the “Twilight” sequel, “New Moon.”

Amid the infectious, ABBA-style melodies and biting Rician lyrics there’s an intriguing subtext of Ugly Americanism. The American player is an obnoxious figure indeed — controlled, of course, by the all-powerful, money-grubbing American media — while the Russian is the soulful, self-sacrificing hero of the tale. (In truth, Fischer was an extremely demanding, neurotic individual who ended his days an embittered exile spewing anti-Semitic, anti-American rant.)

Though no Kenneth Branagh in the theatrical department, Grobin manages to convey the existential turmoil of a man who understands that he is a mere pawn in a bigger game. And his voice has a certain power and beauty of tone, never more so than in the Act 1-ending “The Anthem,” which brings down the house in London’s Royal Albert Hall.

It’s more than can be said for Menzel and Pascal, who co-starred in the overrated “Rent.” Her thin, angular voice and looks are suited to the Hungarian business manager who has had a hard childhood behind the Iron Curtain and finds life no easier now that she must choose between her love for one man and her loyalty to the other. Ultimately, however, the harshness of Menzel’s voice and appearance (encased in a lumpy black-and-white gown) defeats the performance.

As for Pascal, beefier than in his “Rent” days, he’s appropriately petulant. But his voice becomes strained whenever he reaches for a high note, which is often.

What’s really surprising is just how dry even the choral singing is. Apart from Groban, there’s just no lushness here.

”’Chess’ in Concert” isn’t as bad as the recent, disastrous concert “Camelot,” with Gabriel Byrne woefully miscast as Arthur. But it in no way approaches the transcendence of the concert “South Pacific,” with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Reba McEntire heading a sublime cast.

Consider it checkmated.

Art requires discipline, training and technique, so that when things go wrong — and they always will — you can go to the wellspring in your soul and produce your art, regardless of the circumstances.

Think of soprano Deborah Voigt’s recent New York appearance in “Alceste” despite the flu. Was it her best work? No. Still, it was too late to cancel, and so she soldiered on, relying on the breath control and the vocal technique she has honed over many years.

Boyle showed courage in coming back after a tough week. But she is going to have to show more than that to have a real career, and the media that have no musical knowledge and thus, no context for judging her performance do her a disservice in suggesting otherwise.

Sounds like the perfect Conan skit.

And yet, we know a great leader when we see one. Since the postwar era and particularly after 9/11, one man perhaps more than any other has defined what it means to lead — British prime minister Winston Churchill, who saved his island nation from the Nazis and thus, spared Western civilization (with a good deal of help from us).

HBO’s “Into the Storm” (9 p.m. Sunday) — with Brendan Gleeson and Janet McTeer triumphant as the irascible PM and his long-suffering wife, Clementine — is an often stirring, often moving account of Churchill’s finest hour. After watching it, you may conclude that a true leader leads as much from his want as from his strength.“Into the Storm” actually begins after the war, with Churchill on holiday in France, nervously awaiting the outcome of the election that would sweep him out of power and generally driving everybody nuts, especially the patient, tolerant “Clemmie,” whom McTeer portrays as her husband’s radiant conscience. She wishes he would be less brusque to his manservant and take more time with their youngest child, Mary, who has accompanied them on the trip. But what becomes clear to us, if not to her, is that those who are brilliant at war are often lousy at peace. As was once said of Andrew Jackson (and could also be said of Rudolph Giuliani) Churchill was “born for the storm”.

The not-so-idyllic vacation scenes are interspersed with the main story of Churchill’s rise to power in the wake of cowardly predecessor Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler and Mussolini. We’ve been here many times before — the struggle to hold on by the skin of the teeth after the fall of France; the early disasters at Dunkirk and Singapore; the wooing of the isolationist Americans through their equally commanding but somewhat enigmatic president, Franklin Roosevelt (Len Cariou); the magnificent speeches, still masterpieces of the spoken and written word; the promise never to surrender.

It’s amazing just how resonant and thrilling those speeches are. (“Not bad,” Roosevelt says to an aide after reading one of them.) Part of it was Churchill’s gift for writing. But it’s also Gleeson’s performance, which captures the man right down to the question mark-shaped stockiness, the bulldog expression and the hard cadences. (Note the use of the braying long “a” and soft “z” in Churchill’s pronounciation of “Nazi.”) If, as we’re told in the story, Churchill was born to save his people, Gleeson was born for this part.

Through the star and screenwriter Hugh Whitemore — who tackled Churchill before in HBO’s award-winning “The Gathering Storm” —  we glimpse a man driven not only by the urgency of the times but the need to be loved. (At one point, Clementine confides that her husband adored his parents, who gave him short shrift.)

Like a lot of overachievers with cold parents, the Churchill of “Into the Storm” has a odd relationship with love, pushing it away when it’s offered by those closest to him and seeking it instead from those who would prove distant and fickle — Roosevelt and the British people themselves.

Perhaps some viewers will find this interpretation psychologically simplistic. But regardless of what spurred him, “Into the Storm” demonstrates that Churchill had the stuff of a real leader. He had a bold vision for the future that he communicated clearly, and he lead from the front, taking responsibility for its execution.

Sure, he made mistakes. He hurt others and at times, was hurt by them. But Churchill kept soldiering on. “Into the Storm” suggests that often, that is the greatest victory.

Then there’s the supporting cast, somewhat unfamiliar on this side of the Atlantic but uniformly excellent. It includes Tom Hiddleston as Martinsson, one of Wallander’s more recalcitrant sidekicks. (There’s an interesting subtext here, because Branagh is prepping the upcoming “Thor” movie for Marvel Studios, and Hiddleston has been mentioned as a possible lead. With his exquisite bone structure and curly blond locks, he’d be dreamy.)

What I really love, though, is the raw emotional realism of the characters. In Sunday’s “Firewall” episode (9 p.m., THIRTEEN locally), Wallander’s daughter Linda (Jeany Spark) puts her all-work-and-no-play dad on a social networking site, which leads to a relationship with a very attractive woman (Orla Brady) and some unexpected results. This episode contains one of the most realistically violent death scenes I’ve ever seen. Usually when someone dies of a gunshot on TV, it’s much more antiseptic. You don’t hear the words sputtering and see the life gushing out of them.

In “One Step Behind,” which airs May 31 after a Memorial Day Weekend break, the father-daughter relationship comes to the fore, and we see how much of a mother Linda is to her dad. We also realize that for all his insights and intuitions, Wallander is in some ways clueless.

This episode unravels an intriguing case wrapped inside which is one of life’s great truths — sometimes we’re too busy to notice just how much we mean to others until it’s too late.

Thoughts like these make “Wallander” a cut above the rest.

Fortunately, Charlie Crews has a lot of soul brothers out there. Thank heavens one of them turns up on “Masterpiece Mystery!” this Sunday at 9 p.m. in the form of Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander.Crews and Dr. House would immediately recognize the titular Swedish sleuth — cleverly referred to in the WGBH press materials as the “Norse Morse” — as a fellow traveler. Obsessed with work. Divorced. Disappointing efforts at personal relationships with feisty daughter and Alzheimer’s suffering dad. Pasty. Doughy. Bad eater. And most important of all, compelled to view every puzzling case as a personal effront from God.

Sunday’s is a doozy as a teenage girl sets herself ablaze in a hazy field of yellow rapeseed right out of Van Gogh before the horrified Wallander can stop her. Her death and the subsequent scalpings of four men guilty of various misdeeds against women are tied to child molestation. But it’s more complicated than that. (The series is based on the best-selling novels of Henning Manskell.)

Though “Wallander” is set in summer, the grisly cases have a wintry feel that proceeds from its protagonist and star. Branagh is just terrific as the existentialist antihero. The crumpled Charlie Brown mouth sliding into two parenthetical furrows that frame a slight, stubbly blond double chin; the air of dogged determination in the face of despair: It’s all so on-the-money for a troubled times.

Branagh is also busy prepping “Thor,” which he’ll direct for Marvel Studios, and you can’t help but wonder if all these haunted superheroes and brooding tube types aren’t but reflections of our Age of Anxiety. (Interesting that Robert Downey Jr., who is currently filming “Iron Man 2,” will be showcased later in the year as Sherlock Holmes, the model for House.)

Like his more or less heroic brothers, Wallander exhorts us to keep trudging along, even as he entertains us.

Speaking of damaged men, Is Fox trying to capitalize on the success of CBS’ “The Mentalist” with a new series debuting at the end of the month?

It’s called “Mental” (9 p.m. May 26), and its about a “radically unorthodox” shrink (Chris Vance) in a Los Angeles psych hospital who clashes with his more conservative boss (Annabella Sciorra).

Shades of “The Mentalist,” “House” and a half-dozen other series, anyone?

Photo courtesy of WGBH.

Still, I wonder why CBS drove a stake through “Moonlight’s” — and my — heart. Vamps are so hot right now, what with “Twilight” and “True Blood.” And IFC is turning Laurell K. Hamilton’s novels into a TV series.

The last should really get the blood pumping. Like the “Twilight” series, Hamilton’s Anita Blake novels have at their heart a plucky heroine/brooding vampire/rival werewolf triangle. Only the vamps and werewolves in Anita’s world would consider Edward and company mere appetizers.

I got to thinking about that, especially as HBO is presenting the new telefilm “Grey Gardens” at 8 p.m. Saturday. It stars Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore as Edith Bouvier Beale, senior and junior — the Jackie relations who became famous in 1973 after Albert and David Maysles’ documentary portrayed them living in splendid squalor and delusion in the titular East Hampton manse.

Putting aside the mental illness the fictional Lucia and the real-life Edies may have suffered from, all three  are cautionary examples of what happens when women are beholden to men for their very lives, let alone livelihoods and lifestyles.Gaetano Donizetti’s opera is one of those hokey melodramas in which everyone lives in Scotland but sings in Italian. (It’s based on Sir Walter Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermoor.”) Passionate Lucia Ashton (soprano Anna Netrebko) is in love with dashing Sir Edguardo of Ravenwood (tenor Piotr Beczala). But her brother, Lord Enrico of Lammermoor (baritone Mariusz Kwiecien), who stole Edguardo’s birthright, wants her to marry wimpy Lord Arturo Bucklaw so that he can save Enrico from financial ruin. Enrico leads Lucia to believe that Edguardo has forgotten her when he heads off to France to build a new Scotland — presumably one in which everyone will speak English. Lucia is forced to marry Arturo, Edguardo returns furious at her for betraying him, everyone rushes at everyone — and sings the famous sextet. Is it any wonder that Lucia goes nuts and murders Arturo on their wedding night? And still, as Loretta might say in “Moonstruck,” she has to sing the Mad Scene aria.

The singing is so good — Netrebko in particular sounds lush and looks even riper post-pregnancy — that it forces you to take the story seriously. Why should Lucia have to prostitute herself to save her brother? It makes no sense. And yet, this is not just the stuff of 19th-century melodrama. (Though the opera is set early in the 18th century, Mary Zimmerman’s production updates it appropriately to the Victorian era.) Look at what’s happening today in Afghanistan — no country for women — where men are allowed to rape their wives. Insane.

“Grey Gardens” is the story of two real, modern women. But in a sense, Big and Little Edie were no better off than Lucia. Because they were women of a certain socioeconomic class and time, they never learned how to support themselves financially, or psychologically for that matter. (Both imagined that they were talented performers.)  When the money — and the men — ran out, the Edies were thrown back on their own fragile yet somehow enduring selves. (Big Edie’s sons seemed to have escaped somehow. They figure very little in the story. It’s left to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, played with quiet, rueful compassion by Jeanne Tripplehorn, to save Grey Gardens from being condemned.)

It’s such a sad story. And yet, in their own way, Big and Little Edie (well-played by Lange and Barrymore, despite the wavering accents) are portrayed as happy amid the cats and the filth. You get the sense in this creepy, absorbing drama, that despite the ties that bind and strangle, the real-life mother and daughter loved as well as needed each other.

Still, as “Lucia” also demonstrates, love isn’t enough. It’s so easy to fall between the cracks, particularly when you’re a woman who’s financially and emotionally dependent on a man. Both “Grey Gardens” and “Lucia” suggest that for them, the margin between success and failure, sanity and madness, is and always has been paper-thin.

Classmates at the school include the chatty, inquisitve Pepper Potts, now the daughter of an FBI agent, and lovable lug Happy Hogan, both of whom will figure prominently in Tony’s adult life. So far, only Rhodey knows of Tony’s alter ego, although Pepper surmises there’s something up with the geeky but cute new kid who has  memorized all the textbooks. She also suspects that Obadiah Stane, Howard Stark’s righthand man, had something to do with his death. (Stane remains unchanged: He’s as traitorous as ever. And speaking of villains, The Mandarin turns up in Episode 2.)

Of course, the changes here are more than cosmetic. Setting “Iron Man” in high school for, let’s face it, a much younger viewership means that we are lightyears away from the scotch-swilling, skirt-chasing, double-entendre-parlaying Tony that Downey captured so deliciously. And the weapons-manufacturing Howard Stark, whom we meet briefly, has been turned into a globe-trotting humanitarian.

Yes, “Armored Adventures” takes liberties with the “Iron Man” story. But so did the movie, which updates the location of Tony’s crisis of conscience from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Anyway, the Tony Stark character has gone through many permutations over the years, you need a revolving door and a scorecard to keep up.

This one just might help sustain “Iron” buffs till “Iron Man 2” is released next year.

Though Lear is the title role, to me the play hinges on the opaquely glamorous Edmund, Shakespeare’s most nihilistic villain this side of Iago. Often the role is played by a rising star. (Ralph Fiennes did Edmund early in his career.) Here Winchester, late of NBC’s “Crusoe,” portrays Edmund as a conventional bad guy without a shred of the abject destructiveness that makes him one of the most fascinating of black holes.

This “Lear” really only reaches its potential for pathos at the moment the exiled Cordelia is reunited with her humbled father, who at first doesn’t recognize her. Anyone who has ever loved a relative with dementia or Alzheimer’s can’t help but find an emotional resonance in this late development in their relationship and in McKellan and Garai’s handling of it.

Indeed, anyone who has ever cared for a parent — particularly an unworthy one — will sympathize with the title character in “Little Dorrit.”

Amy “Little” Dorrit (dynamite newcomer Claire Foy, seen above) grows up in a debtor’s prison, devoted to father William (Tom Courtney), who will turn out to be as clueless with money as he is without it. Though no doormat, Little Dorrit is one of those compassionate souls destined to carry the burdens of others at a cost that is no less great for being suffered silently. Even her friendship with the equally self-effacing Arthur Clennam (Matthew Macfadyen, playing against type), who’s got his own parental issues, is a source of heartache as well as joy.

It’s scary how timely this Dickens is. There’s even a subplot involving a banker who robs one fund to pay another, leading to angry, bankrupt protesters in London’s streets.

But it’s the timelessness of “Dorrit” that holds you, as does the quiet emotional restraint of the performances. The later scenes between Little Dorrit and her father, who pays a high price for his reversal of fortune, will bring tears to your eyes.
I also found myself getting all choked up when Henry VIII reunites with estranged daughter Mary in an upcoming installment of “The Tudors,” a reunion whose seeds are planted in tonight’s episode.
Historically, Mary, daughter of the ill-fated Catherine of Aragon, was a sad case — alternately cherished, neglected,  bullied and manipulated by her  father. She grew up to be a sheltered, delusional, embittered monarch, brutally (and vainly) seeking to restore England to a Roman Catholicism it had abandoned. She was humiliated by her acquisitive husband, Philip II of Spain — a man whose piety would’ve bored Jesus himself — and out-dazzled by her lively half-sister, Elizabeth, who would become perhaps England’s greatest ruler and with whom Mary always had an uneasy relationship. Here Sarah Bolger gives the youthful Mary an endearingly quiet resolve, as does Princess Diana-lookalike Annabelle Wallis, taking over the role of Jane Seymour, Henry wife No. 3. (Wallis even played the late Princess of Wales in the TV-movie “Diana: Last Days of a Princess.”)

Elsewhere, “The Tudors” is beset by its old problems — Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ repellent, one-note Henry, laughable anachronisms and fictional characters who do a lot of the unnecessary sexual weightlifting. Who are Sir Francis Bryan (Alan Van Sprang) and Lady Ursula Misseldon (Charlotte Salt)  and more important, why should we care? They’re unappealing.
Still, the series’ historical faux pas continue to amuse. At one point, Holbein (Peter Gaynor) paints a portrait of Lady Ursula in the buff that has more to do with Velàzquez’s “Rokeby Venus” than anything Holbein ever painted. When her cuckolded fiance complains to the king, who is sharing Lady Ursula’s favors with Sir Francis, Henry replies that while he could make seven peasants into one lord, he couldn’t make seven lords into one Holbein.
Well, at least this Henry appreciates art even if “The Tudors” is anything but.

Photo of Claire Foy courtesy of PBS’ “Masterpiece.”

Fleming sings well as usual — her pianissimos in particular are exquisite — and she sashays around stylishly in fetching new gold and red Christian Lacroix gowns. (You can see why she wanted this part. What woman wouldn’t?) But her particular kind of beauty gives off no sexual heat. Though she sings constantly of love, you never believe she would rend both body and soul in its service.

Baritone Thomas Hampson fares better as Athanaël, the priest who converts her only to discover too late that what he really wanted was her body, not her soul. He has, however, a sometimes pompous demeanor that suits Athanaël’s self-righteousness but not his growing ardor. (In contrast, I can still see the photograph The Daily News ran of Beverly Sills and Sherrill Milnes in the bygone Met production, with a kneeling Sills clutching at Milnes’ slightly parted robe. That was hot.)

Both leads are ultimately undone by John Cox’s production and by Massenet himself, who saves his most sensuous writing for the supporting instruments not the vocal line. It’s not surprising that the opera’s “Meditation” interlude, with its melting solo violin, is all that survives of the opera in popular culture, being equally loved by ballet dancers and figure skaters. It’s also not surprising that the biggest applause for this performance — originally simulcast into White Plains and New Rochelle movie theaters on Dec. 20 — goes not only to Fleming but to Metropolitan Opera concertmaster David Chan, who plays the “Meditation” solo with more feeling than either of the leads display in their roles. His heartfelt curtain call speaks volumes.

So does the loopy production design. Are we in Roman Alexandria or at a 19th-century costume party? What’s with the wooden desert? Sand should be soft.

And why is Thais still gussied up, albeit in sedate brown, after Athanaël sings about how he’s broken her body to purify her soul? What nun wears a fluted, form-fitting gown and cascading waves of hair?

Fleming’s Thais reminds me of all those Bette Davis and Joan Crawford heroines of the 1930s and ‘40: Oh, how they suffered. But they still always managed to look Max Factor fabulous.

Interviews with Broadway actors and such ballet stars as Mikhail Baryshnikov of Snedens Landing, Irvington’s Peter Martins and Maria Calegari and Bart Cook of Carmel help paint a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-of-it portrait of a man whose prodigious gifts and inner demons were all of a piece.Indeed, “Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About” (noon Sunday) depicts the dancer/choreographer (1918-98) as the quintessential tortured genius. But what sounds like a cliché is anything but in this documentary, partly because Kinberg — producer of PBS’ “Dance in America” series — is that good and partly because she tells a compellingly human story about what prevents us, with all our resources, from being truly happy.

The Robbins of “Something to Dance About” had an extraordinary ability — honed in summer stock, on Broadway and ballet stages and of necessity — to capture drama in movement. His comic timing was uncanny, so much so that you can see a work like “The Concert” (1956) — a takeoff on pretentious, overwrought concertgoers at a Chopin recital — a thousand times at the New York City Ballet and find it funny at every outing no matter who dances it. Why? Because the humor is all in the movement. The dancers don’t have to act it. They just have to dance it.

That said, I can still see Bart Cook in the 1970s as the hen-pecked husband, his body tortured into a question mark, as he pretends to stab his brow-beating wife (played with marvelous hauteur by Delia Peters) in one of the work’s fantasy sequences. (Only a real artist can take an unpalatable subject like spousal abuse and make it hilarious.)

And I can still see Peter Martins lifting Suzanne Farrell high above his head as the audience sat spellbound at the end of the pas de deux for the jazzy, poignant “In G Major”  (1975), set to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major and one of Robbins’ most underrated works.

Martins — now ballet-master-in-chief at City Ballet, a title he shared with Robbins after founding choreographer George Balanchine died in 1983 — talks insightfully about the profound difference in working with the two. Balanchine, he says, was physically taxing, since you danced full out for him, but mentally easy. Whereas Robbins — who expected the dancers to mark, or note, the movements — was physically easy but mentally exhausting.

His insecurities and perfectionism were such that he would have his actors/dancers perform certain minutiae over and over again. Austin Pendleton tells a humorous story about working with Robbins in one musical, in which he changed the direction over a bit of table-setting so many times that the performers couldn’t remember if the knife or the fork went down first.

But there’s nothing funny about the incident in which Robbins made the actress playing June in “Gypsy” — who kept missing her cue to move a teapot — pick up the teapot endlessly at a rehearsal just for that once action. It’s humiliating and heartbreaking.

Robbins could be a cruel man. There were dancers and actors who hated him. (And plenty of giants, including Balanchine and Leonard Bernstein, who kept deferring to him, probably to keep his cutting temper in check.)

Far more troubling than his treatment of them was his naming names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, whose witch hunt against American Communists — real and imagined — ruined careers and lives.

The documentary states that Robbins did so, because he was threatened with being outed — which would’ve set in motion another kind of witch hunt in the 1950s.  Robbins was deeply conflicted about many things — his relationship with his father, his Jewishness, his homosexuality — all of which underscored his sense of himself as an outsider.

“Something to Dance About” suggests that his deep-seated insecurities and subsequent brutal perfectionism — which drove colleagues mad even as they acknowledged it brought out the best in them and in the work —  were responses to his feelings of unworthiness.

He wanted to be loved, former City Ballet principal Violette Verdy compassionately observes.

“Something to Dance About” demonstrates the endless pas de deux between that gnawing hunger and a titanic talent.

The docudrama picks up one of the central threads in the book: What happened to the American slaves who fought for the British during the Revolution in the hopes of gaining their freedom? While the British honored their promise to many—though poignantly, not to all—that commitment left something to be desired. The former slaves were given passage to and land in Nova Scotia, where they basically became indentured servants to another group of resentful white people in another kind of hardscrabble place. That was until a bunch of do-gooders got it into their heads to transport them to a new life in Sierra Leone.

To this end, the Sierra Leone Company in London sent British Navy Lt. John Clarkson (Stephen Campbell Moore in a finely calibrated performance) to rouse the former slaves to the exodus and serve as the colony’s governor. It was a plan that angered Thomas Peters (Leo Wringer, pictured here), a former sergeant in the British Army who chafed, understandably so, at postponing self-governance for more white leadership. Still, Clarkson—one of those rare people capable of putting the interests of others ahead of his own—persisted, even seemingly coming back from the dead on the arduous Atlantic crossing to lead most of the former slaves in safety to Africa.

If this were a movie, the story would end here with a swell of music. But as Schama observes, history isn’t Hollywood. What ensued was a tale of jealousy, intrigue, betrayal and eventual enlightenment, attained at a terrible cost.

Credit for the heartache that is the centerpiece of this story must go to the Sierra Leone Company, which emerges in this telling as a group spurred more by self-centered guilt and preconceived notions than by an actual concern for the situation of others. For example, it didn’t occur to the members of the Sierra Leone Company that a. Since they were sending people to Africa, perhaps they should do some advanced scouting and preparation in the way of shelter and b. Just because the freed slaves were of African descent didn’t mean that they had actually ever lived in Africa.

Yep, a complete lack of leadership—which makes “Rough Crossings” a tale for our times.

As well as a timeless one. This is just a crackling good story, delivered in Schama’s knowing narrative style. (He’s kind of a sarcastic Jane Austen.) But like any good story, it is filled with unintentional, perhaps unavoidable irony. Though this is about black people, the docudrama centers on a white person. Perhaps this is inevitable: Clarkson was the point man in the colony, and Moore does an attractive job of playing him. More important, he’s just an intriguing guy—a man on a grand adventure who yearns for quiet life with the woman he loves only to discover, when he is forced into that quiet life by the Sierra Leone Company, that the grand adventure was what it was really all about.

Still, the irony of a black narrative seen through the prism of white eyes won’t be lost on viewers.

Nor will the scenes in which we see Schama in present-day Sierra Leone. He tells us that this tale has had an important effect on America, Britain and Sierra Leone. But this thread is really not woven into the docudrama.

And indeed, we don’t really need it. History isn’t the past. It’s the story of the past, and the story of the past resonates in the present and the future.

Programs like “Rough Crossings” don’t have to tell us that history is relevant to today. It’s up to each of us to find that relevance for himself.

The photo of Leo Wringer as Thomas Peters is courtesy of WNET.ORG.

As Oliver—a boy who, through no fault of his own, is thrust into a world of crushing poverty and savage cruelty—newcomer William Miller conveys an impervious beauty. He is so lovely and so steady as to make the orphan’s vulnerability and courage truly heartbreaking.

But he is not the only victim here. Indeed, Oliver’s two mother figures—the genteel Rose (Morven Christie), who unbeknownst to him or her, is his real aunt, and the prostitute Nancy (Sophie Okonedo)—are in surprisingly similar situations: Both are threatened by the power of brutal men. Nancy’s situation is the more dire. Her lover, Bill Sikes (Tom Hardy, better here than as Heathcliff in the recent “Wuthering Heights”), is little more than an animal, and her life amid the rough-and-tumble is dangerous and dirty. (The fact that Okonedo happens to be a black woman—a member of a group that has been doubly oppressed—underscores Nancy’s predicament.)

Rose, on the other hand, is the ward of rich, honorable Mr. Brownlow (Edward Fox). Still, she knows that his death could force her to marry his unscrupulous grandson and heir, Edward/”Mr. Monks” (Julian Rhind-Tutt). Social class can’t save her. That’s how limiting it is to be poor.

But though money can trump class, class doesn’t always accept money. That’s the tragedy of Fagin (Timothy Spall), who seduces Oliver into joining his band of thieves. Fabin thinks he’ll have enough money someday to vindicate the insults to his Jewishness, that the outsider will become an insider. (For all his brutishness, Sikes rightly intuits that cash can’t move snobbery, which may explain his “take or be taken” philosophy.)

Fagin thinks desire can transcend race, and that dooms him as much as others’ anti-Semitism and his own thievery.

Following “Oliver Twist,” “Masterpiece” airs a rebroadcast of “David Copperfield,” with Daniel Radcliffe as the young David (March); “Little Dorrit” (March 29-April 26), with Matthew Macfadyen and Claire Foy as the poignant lovers haunted by financial ruin; and “The Old Curiosity Shop” (May 3), with Derek Jacobi as debt-ridden Grandfather, Sophie Vavasseur as the iconic Little Nell and Toby Jones as the implacable money-lender Quilp.

The Rockland Dickens Fellowship will be discussing “Oliver Twist” on Feb. 23, “David Copperfield” on March 23, “Little Dorit” on April 27 and “The Old Curiosity Shop” on May 4, all at 3 p.m. at the New City Library, 220 N. Main St. For more information, call 845-268-5503 or 845-406-3117.

Can’t get to New City? There are discussions of “Masterpiece” books and adaptations online at Barnes and Noble.

Photo of (from left to right) Timothy Spall, William Miller, Sophie Okonedo and Tom Hardy in “Oliver Twist” is courtesy of PBS.

Lincoln-ologists have, of ourse, a special reason to celebrate their guy this week as Honest Abe turns 200 Thursday. As is to be expected, the tube is responding with a host of programs, many of which are enlightening. Just when you think there couldn’t be anything new to say about our 16th president, it turns out that there is.“The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln,” on PBS’ estimable “American Experience” at 9 tonight (THIRTEEN locally) is an excellent example of a fresh take on a well-worn subject. Documentarian Barak Goodman (“Kinsey”) reconsiders actor-turned-assassin John Wilkes Booth and finds a talented, roguishly handsome matinee idol rather than the cliché of the ne’er-do-well.

The life of a 19th-century actor — even a successful one — was hardly that of a movie star. Constant travel, flea-ridden hotel rooms, theater owners who might stiff you instead of paying you: It was a landscape of disenchantment in which the seeds of resentment could easily take root. And few people were more resentful than Booth, a Southern sympathizer from a family of strong Unionists and theater royalty who possessed an outsized sense of himself. (One thinks of another self-aggrandizing assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.)

Adding to Booth’s self importance was an entourage of addled friends who were less interested in conspiring to kill Lincoln and the leading members of his government than they were in being “Johnny’s” pals. Parents and children should watch this moody film — narrated by Chris Cooper, with Will Paton as the voice of Booth — if for no other reason than to reinforce a favorite parental admonition: Beware the company you keep.

Harold Holzer — Rye resident, great Lincoln scholar and born conversationalist — is among the Lincoln Virgils who are on hand to guide us here and through two other documentaries. In PBS’ “Looking for Lincoln” (9 p.m. Wednesday, THIRTEEN), historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores the man and the myth. The companion book is by the Kunhardts, a northern Westchester family that is the custodian of a treasure trove of Lincoln photographs.

“Stealing Lincoln’s Body,” on the History Channel 9 p.m. Feb. 16, plumbs one of the more bizarre chapters in the president’s afterlife — a conspiracy by a group of Chicago counterfeiters to take Abe’s remains and then exchange them for a gifted imprisoned engraver. The Secret Service — founded, ironically, by Lincoln to deter counterfeiting — infiltrates the gang. What ensues is a comedy of errors that not even Shakespeare could’ve conjured.

Ah, Chicago, that toddling town.

Researching Lincoln and Booth, I came upon a fascinating, little-known connection between the two families. Around 1863-64, Edwin Booth — an older brother of the assassin and the leading American actor of his day — saved the life of Robert Lincoln, eldest son of the president, pulling him up by his collar when he fell in the gap between a moving train and the platform at Jersey City. (Boy, a gap at a train platform:  Some things never change.)

The younger man recognized the famed actor right away, thanking him by name. Edwin Booth later received a letter of commendation from a Col. Adam Badeau — Robert Lincoln was attached to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s staff — in gratitude for his swift action. The letter was said to comfort Booth in the terrible days after the assassination.

It does make you think, doesn’t it? Two brothers, two disparate destinies forged by an unbridgeable difference in outlook. As portrayed in “The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln,” John Wilkes Booth saw himself as a star on the stage of history, playing the assassin as patriot.

Whereas Edwin Booth understood that acting Hamlet wasn’t the same as being him.

What if John Wilkes Booth has been on that train platform and Edwin Booth had been at Ford’s Theatre on that Good Friday when Lincoln was fatally shoot? Might Lincoln have lived?

For the moment, perhaps. Fate has an odd way of ensuring the outcomes it desires. The only certainty is that the play goes on.

The government now admits, sort of, that it wasn’t prepared for the digital revolution. Yet it and broadcast TV, which has a big financial stake in the transformation, continue to pretend that this is going to be so easy to make the shift, which is going to guarantee better picture and sound quality. (Indeed, the reporting on the networks and PBS has been not-so-surprisingly shoddy on this score.)

Fact: There’s no difference in quality and may be a lessening of such since the analog signal is much stronger than the digital signal. (In other words, Robert Downey Jr. will look the same on digital TV as he does on analog. We’re not talking the difference between seeing a Picasso in person and in print here.)

Fact: Some households, especially in rural areas, may have to invest in satellite and/or cable — at a time when we can least afford it — in order to get their favorite stations.

Fact: Many of the households with antennas tend to belong to poorer and older viewers, who are being discriminated against in the switch.

Fact: The real reason for the switch is that the government wanted to sell the analog signal to the wireless companies so that they can increase their offerings.

What the government should have done was to keep the analog signal as it was for households with antennas, freeing up more of it for emergency workers by switching those who already have cable and satellite TV to digital, since it will cost them nothing. The wireless companies should’ve been sold the digital signal.

This plan, however, would’ve required time, imagination and planning. As we know, these are not the federal government’s strong suits.

I predict chaos on June 12.

On a brighter note, I see there’s “Life” once again on NBC at 9 p.m. Wednesday. In last Wednesday’s episode, Det. Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) — who had been previously shot, probably by the group that sent him to prison for a murder he didn’t commit — took matters into his own hands. While I’m no advocate for vigilante justice, I sometimes wish Det. Crews were in charge of the digital switch. Perhaps then something practical might actually be accomplished.

Thanks to Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) — who seems to know House better than he knows his misanthropic self — House will encounter a patient in far greater, more pervasive pain. Will the not-so-good doctor solve this baffling case? The answer is, of course, elementary but not before we delve deeper into the quirky characters of the Princeton hospital, which only raises more questions.

Did Dr. Taub (Peter Jacobson) try to commit suicide once? Can Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) separate his feelings for Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) from his quest to treat her Huntington’s disease? Why does Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) think that she can’t be an effective administrator and an effective mom to foster baby Rachel? And if she wants to be a stay-at-home mom, why can’t House let her go?

More to the point, why does House make a distinction between himself as Rational Man and his own long-suffering Watson, Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), as Rationalization Man?

The questions persist into the series’ 100th episode (Feb. 2) as the team takes on the case of a suddenly stricken, world-renowned cancer researcher who has chucked her career to pursue her passions and be “happy”. Is happiness doing what you should or what you want?

House’s obsession with following his own inner logic — he’d rather be right than happy, or being right is what makes him happy — is very Holmesian. Like Holmes, House is a head-over-heart guy.

The problem with that is that life is rarely rational. The need to impose your own order on a disordered world can lead to some very irrational responses. (Check out Monday’s balmy subplot involving House’s plumber.)

In this life, insisting on making sense can be the most senseless thing you can do.

“Stargate Atlantis” concludes appropriately with its 100th episode at 9 p.m. Friday after a five-year run on SciFi.  I can’t say enough good things about this psychologically clever exploration of other worlds, a sort of “Star Trek” for the 21st century. A terrific cast led by Joe Flanigan as the quintessential American hero; superb villains; sharp writing; solid special effects — sigh. “Atlantis” will be missed.

But at least the show will live on in a planned movie. Which is more than I can say for the dramas that were part of the bloodletting at NBC.I don’t know. One day I was enjoying “Crusoe” and “My Own Worst Enemy”; the next, they were off the air. (This as I’m trying to recover from the fact that Channel 11 news has gone from the CW back to being PIX.)

The latest NBC casualty — although it may not exactly be down for the count — is “Lipstick Jungle,” which also finishes its first-run episodes at 9 p.m. Friday. The show may not have been “Sex and the City,” but in some ways it was a more realistic look at powerful women in love in New York. I’m glad Victory (Lindsay Price, pictured here with co-stars Brooke Shields and Kim Raver) had the gumption to ask Joe the billionaire (Andrew McCarthy) to marry her. Only he’s no longer a billionaire, thanks to the current economic crisis. Must’ve invested with Bernie Madoff.

Oh, well: At least, NBC’s “Life” goes on.

Photos of “Stargate Atlantis” and “Lipstick Jungle” courtesy of SciFi and NBC respectively.