‘K-Ville’ puts Big Easy in spotlight
Set in New Orleans two years after the deluge, “K-Ville” (9 p.m., Fox) just may be the first new cop show of the post-“CSI” era. At the very least, it wears its anti-“CSI” credentials like a badge of honor.
A city still pockmarked by moldy ruins and beset by poverty, violence and corruption is no place to play with the latest forensic gadgets. The cops have to work the old-fashioned way, trusting their instincts, their fists and their trigger fingers – roughly in that order.
The camera shows both sides of New Orleans, the vibrant tourist center of the French Quarter as well as the unreclaimed squalor of its abandoned districts. And if the first two episodes are any indication, both sides of the city share the same atmosphere of corruption. “K-Ville” is a place where rich and powerful puppet masters wield enormous power with a callous cruelty befitting petty colonels in a Third World banana republic. This may or may not reflect the true state of things in New Orleans, but “K-Ville’s” rich gumbo of cynicism and doom fits in rather nicely with Fox’s Monday-night buffet of “Prison Break” and “24” – shows shot through with paranoia and conspiracy, where the treachery and treason reach all the way to the top.
Tonight’s other highlighs
The preschool favorite “The Backyardigans” gets its own prime-time feature-length movie: “Super Secret Super Spy” (7 p.m., Nickelodeon). And Cyndi Lauper sings the theme song.
Charlie Sheen appears on “Inside the Actors Studio” (8 p.m., Bravo).
It’s back behind bars as “Prison Break” (8 p.m., Fox) enters its third season.
Can four raw garlic cloves a day keep the Viagra away? Find out on “The Truth About Food” (8 p.m., Discovery Health).
“Most Honorable Son” (9 p.m., KSPS) looks at Japanese-American soldiers during WWII who faced dangers in battle and discrimination at home.
Can you truly develop individuality when you share a body and part of your brain? “Science of Conjoined Twins” (9 p.m., National Geographic) aims to find out.
A murder victim appears to have been tortured on “Saving Grace” (10 p.m., TNT).
Anthony Bourdain savors Low Country cuisine in South Carolina on “No Reservations” (10 p.m., Travel).
Mary-Kate Olsen joins the cast of “Weeds” (10 p.m., Showtime) for 10 episodes.