Round up the prime suspects

What has Rizzoli & Isles done to us?

You might as well point a finger at Mad Men too. They're as much to blame as those two crimefighting BFFs from Boston for the trends engulfing the new fall TV season this month.

You see, contrary to popular opinion, TV execs actually do have brains. They see shows that are successful on other networks. They make notes. Then they go out and try to copy the hits as closely as possible in the faint hope that we, the sheep they fly over, will love their knockoff version as much or more than the originals. We call this unimaginative, infuriating, even cowardly. They call it the sincerest form of flattery.

The network nabobs noticed that The Closer on TNT is one of the most successful scripted series in cable history, but it's going away after next year. Rizzoli & Isles, with the arresting duo of Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander, the show that essentially is replacing it, currently ranks alongside The Closer as the most popular, most watched series in all of basic cable.

So what's the new buzz on network TV this fall? Girls, girls, girls!

Women rule prime-time air this season, from Maria Bello in the ill-conceived rip-off of the acclaimed British cop series Prime Suspect (10 p.m. Thursdays, NBC/Channel 4, beginning Sept. 22) to the three relative unknowns in the ill-conceived resurrection of Charlie's Angels (8 p.m. Thursdays, ABC/Channel 7, Sept. 22). There's Two Broke Girls on CBS (9:30 p.m. Mondays, Channel 62, next week), New Girl on FOX (9 p.m. Tuesdays, Channel 2, next week), one of TV's favorite girls, Sarah Michelle Gellar, playing twin girls on Ringer (9 p.m. Tuesdays, The CW/Channel 50, premiered last night). Don't get me wrong, I enjoy looking at pretty girls on television. Quite a lot, actually. But do the networks have to make their strategies so obvious?

Then there's the marvelous '60s period drama Mad Men, which won't return with new episodes until early 2012. Mad Men has won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series three years in a row. "Oh!" the TV bigdomes register. "The people must like shows set in happier times of the past!"

But they still think we want beautiful babes, too, so they decided to hedge their bets. They're giving us The Playboy Club (10 p.m. Mondays, NBC, next week) with a pack of bouncy bunnies, and Pan Am (10 p.m. Sundays, ABC, Sept. 25) with a planeful of sultry stewardesses (they weren't called "flight attendants" in the '60s). We should be thankful they're not attempting an R-rated version of Happy Days. ABC has gone so far as to reach waaaaay back in time for the original hottie, Snow White (as played by Big Love's Ginnifer Goodwin), in the modern-day fairy tale Once Upon a Time (8 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 23). Did ABC learn nothing from the high-concept, short-lived Pushing Up Daisies, a fundamentally cooler show?

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