The new season isn’t wasting any time getting started, with Labor Day week the catalyst for at least 10 major network and cable series, new and returning, to get a jump on the fall rush. The list includes the CW’s Gossip Girl, America’s Next Top Model and the new 90210 (not available for preview); HBO’s Entourage; and a delightful two-hour Bones set in London (9/3, 8/7c, Fox). This week’s scorecard focuses on an eclectic array of shows finding new twists on the crime-drama format. (All but True Blood are available online via video.tvguide.com.)

Prison Break Season premiere: Monday, 9/1, 8/7c, Fox

TV’s most ludicrously overextended caper series reinvents itself again in Season 4. It’s now “The Dirty Dozen” (give or take a few bodies), as our fugitive heroes are reunited in the United States and recruited by feds for a secret near-suicide mission to break in—for a change—to high-security enclaves and bring down the corrupt “Company.” The frantically violent mayhem, including a tasteless cannibalism gag, is paced swiftly enough that you can almost ignore the silliness of a show that isn’t above resurrecting characters long thought dead. Still, it beats last year’s miserable detour in a Panamanian sweatbox. My score (0-10): 5

True Blood Series premiere: Sunday, 9/7, 9/8c, HBO

In a Louisiana backwater, someone’s killing women who are getting it on with vampires—a minority now living openly after the invention of a synthetic-blood drink, but facing persecution (think gay allegory). Graphically sexy and scary, and often wildly funny, True Blood, from Six Feet Under’s Alan Ball, turns Charlaine Harris’ rollicking mystery novels into a broadly entertaining, deliciously twisted slice of modern Southern Gothic. Anna Paquin leads a colorfully eccentric ensemble as a telepathic waitress taking girlish delight in her instant attraction to a soulful vamp (Stephen Moyer) whose mind is blissfully closed to her. My score (0–10): 9

Sons of Anarchy Series premiere: Wednesday, 9/3, 10/9c, FX

Beware of testosterone overload given all of the macho, tough-guy posturing in this minor-league, leather-clad Sopranos about a gun-running biker gang that rules a small California town named Charming. That joke’s about as subtle as it gets in this grim, bloody saga of brotherhood and uneasy family loyalties. Charlie Hunnam (British Queer as Folk) stars as the young heir to the club’s throne who’s rethinking the Sons of Anarchy’s criminal priorities, which causes his fiercely combative mother (the excellent Katey Sagal) no end of concern. Well-made, but heavy-handed and hardly inviting. My score: 6

The Shield Season premiere: Tuesday, 9/2, 10/9c, FX

Nothing about the seventh and final season of The Shield feels like a show running out of gas. Which makes it even more exciting to contemplate just how it’s going to end for crooked cop Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis). The plotting becomes ridiculously convoluted as Vic plays Armenian and Mexican bad guys against each other in a desperate attempt to save his badge. But the meat of these final chapters lies in the tensions primed to explode within Vic’s estranged family, his skeptical coworkers at the “Barn” and especially between his Strike Team colleagues Ronnie and Shane, whose murderous mistrust leads to an unbearably suspenseful series of confrontations. My score: 8

Raising the Bar Series premiere: Monday, 9/1, 10/9c, TNT

This shockingly ordinary new legal drama from Steven Bochco should seem right at home amid TNT’s ubiquitous Law & Order reruns. It feels like something you’ve seen before, maybe from way back when L&O was new. A whiff of mildew permeates this earnest ensemble piece about young public defenders and prosecutors who are best buds (and then some) off the job, even when they clash at work. Jane Kaczmarek, playing the sort of wacky, mercurial judge we’ve come to know from lesser David E. Kelley shows, has a grand time bedeviling disheveled upstart lawyer Mark-Paul Gosselaar on case after case, but it’s never terribly convincing. Raising the Bar doesn’t. My score: 3

Get premiere dates, previews and editors’ picks for the coming season in our Fall Preview!