The L Word: Generation Q

The escapades of a hard-partying Chicago father of six and his tight-knit but dysfunctional brood, who muddle along with adult supervision provided by the eldest daughter.

Thirty years after the cancellation of the landmark science fiction-fantasy anthology The Outer Limits, the property was revived in a full-color, state-of-the-art version by cable's Showtime network. Debuting March 26, 1995, the new Outer Limits emulated the old by utilizing a narrator known only as The Control Voice ("There is nothing wrong with your television set...do not attempt to adjust the picture...we are controlling transmission") Because original narrator Vic Perrin had passed away in 1989, it fell to Kevin Conway to provide the offscreen openings and closings of each hour-long episode. Surprisingly (given the remarkable advances in the art of special effects since 1965), the revived Outer Limits downplayed effects in favor of human interrelations and suspense. This was partly due to the fact that the new series, filmed in Canada, was produced on an extremely limited budget. For the most part, however, the decision to avoid special effects unless they were dramatically justified was because the producers felt that space aliens and other monstrosities had become rather commonplace by 1995, and they hoped to set their series apart from what had become the norm. In most cases, two separate versions of each episode were filmed. The rawer, less censorially restricted version was seen first-run on Showtime, while the less explicit version was prepared for commercial TV syndication. (This practice was followed on such other dual-market series as The Hitchhiker and Sex and the City.) Generally, the new Outer Limits avoided remakes of the classic episodes from the original version. There were, however, three noteworthy exceptions: season one's "I Robot," with Leonard Nimoy repeating the role he'd first essayed 31 years earlier; season three's "Feasability Study," originally filmed in 1964; and season five's "The Inheritors," a one-hour abridgement of a 1964 two-parter. Showtime had so much faith in the new Outer Limits that the network commissioned two seasons worth of episodes (44 in all) before the series even made its first appearance. This show of confidence paid off; Outer Limits proved to be one of the cable network's most popular series, lasting six seasons and 132 episodes. After departing Showtime in 2000, the series was renewed for a final 22 episodes by another cable outlet, the Sci Fi Channel.

The single-camera comedy United States of Tara stars Toni Collette as Tara, a wife and mother who discovers that she has disassociative personality disorder - also known as multiple personalities. Penned by Oscar winning Juno writer Diablo Cody, the series follows the ups and downs of Tara's family life as she traverses personalities of various age and gender.

Dramatic depiction of the lives of sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson.

Critically lauded drama about life and pressures at a prestigious Eastern law school, with an imperious contract-law professor named Charles Kingsfield (John Houseman, reprising his Oscar-winning role), who alternately inspires and terrifies first-year students. The series premiered on CBS in September 1978, and was yanked after one season, only to be resurrected four years later for a three-year term on Showtime, making it the first network dramatic series to make the jump to cable.

First filmed theatrically in 1962, F. Scott Fitzgerald's final novel, Tender Is the Night, was given a lavish (seven million dollars) treatment in this British-Australian-American miniseries version. Set in Europe's waning days of the Roaring Twenties, the plot focused upon the tempestuous marriage between jaded psychiatrist Dick Diver (Peter Strauss) and the beautiful, schizophrenic socialite Nicole Warren (Mary Steenburgen). An international cast did an excellent job impersonating the "Lost Generation" for which Fitzgerald was the principal spokesman (the author was himself all but burned out by the time the original novel was published, and his desperation oozes through every page). The script, by the iconoclastic Dennis Potter (Pennies From Heaven, The Singing Detective), was based upon the 1951 "chronologically re-edited" version of the novel prepared by Malcolm Cowley. First broadcast by Britain's BBC2 in six 55-minute installments from September 23 to October 28, 1985, Tender Is the Night subsequently aired in a five-part version (albeit unedited) over America's Showtime network from October 27 to November 26, 1985.