Now, with Lopez, Connick and the returning Keith Urban taking control, "Idol" is all sweetness and light. Can a show of this kind thrive without an edge? The next few weeks will be enlightening.

The great Cablevision-WFSB dust-up in Connecticut is now in its third week. Accurate information about it is increasingly difficult to come by. But the gist of it is this: Meredith Corporation-owned CBS affiliate WFSB in Hartford wants Cablevision customers in far-off Fairfield County, Conn. to pay to receive both CBS Corporation's New York City affiliate WCBS as well as WFSB. Cablevision has said no, asserting it is unfair to charge customers extra to receive two channels that offer largely the same programming.

Can anyone solve the perplexing puzzle of Fox's poor performance with its sitcoms? I'm not talking about "Dads," arguably one of the most disappointing comedies on television today -- or "New Girl," or "The Mindy Project." I'm referring instead to "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," "Raising Hope" and "Enlisted" -- three shows that by all accounts should be entirely more successful than they are. This season it's as if Fox's comedies are premiering and playing in some shadow world where nobody wants to go -- they are shows people get around to watching when they have nothing better to do.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't noticed very much attention being paid by the media to the upcoming Syfy series "Opposite Worlds." It seems to me that this show has the potential to be one of the most fascinating television programs in years. It is clearly one of the riskiest shots any network has taken at a totally new kind of TV show in years. That means even if it bombs it's worth paying attention to, so why the cone of silence around it?

Every year when I watch the Golden Globe Awards -- and especially these last two years when they have been boosted by the invaluable and irreplaceable Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as co-hosts -- I can't help but wonder why so many of the other big award shows that fail to impress on an annual basis simply cannot get it right. The Globes have been an annual hot topic since 1982, the year I began watching them. Fey and Poehler are the perfect hosts for this show, as they are not afraid to mock it throughout without coming down too …

Concluding my look back at the ten best television series of 2013, here are the final three -- and ten more that could have easily made the cut.

I began my look back at the ten best television series of 2013 yesterday with special praise for CBS' "The Good Wife," AMC's "Breaking Bad" and PBS' "Downton Abbey." Here are four more.

2013 may be behind us, but memories of its very best television series remain fresh even as a number of those shows continue with their current seasons or get set to return for new ones. Narrowing this list down to a mere ten shows is an insurmountable task, given the wealth of extraordinary work being done today in scripted drama alone. Here are the ten best series of 2013.

Following yesterday's column, here are five more shows that really made a difference in 2013 -- yet didn't show up on many (if any) best-of year-end lists. Every one of them will be with us in 2014, and they all deserve ongoing attention.

As we careen into 2014 with dozens of new and returning shows suddenly crowding network schedules and many more set to debut in late February after NBC concludes its coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, let's take the opportunity this week to look back on the best of last year, beginning with my annual Alternate Ten Best list. Later in the week I'll offer a more formal list of the year's very best.