Another Friday night and I was too goddamned tired to watch TV. Thank goodness for the DVR (assuming it's working).

What I did watch this morning, having recorded it last night, was the second episode of Law & Order: Trial By Jury, the twenty-seventh consecutive L&O spin-off series. (Seriously, it's only the third, making a total of four prime-time hours a week NBC devotes to Law & Order, not counting the nights they rerun it, plus the reruns of all the shows on various cable networks...)

Yes, you heard right: I watched two whole episodes of a Law & Order spin-off. How did NBC force me to do that which I hate? They cast Bebe Neuwirth in it. That's right; Fraser Crane's ex-wife, Lilith, is now a NYC prosecutor. And she's such a fantastic actress--like so many of the L&O cast members--that she manages to rise above the incredibly wooden lines flying around her. And, of course, like any L&O show, the dialogue continues to be crap. It's the same stilted, trying-too-hard dialogue that continues to drive me away from the CSI family, the school of writing that insists that if someone is killed by decaptitation, someone has to say something like, "He'll never get ahead in life." It's the kind of stuff that you expect to hear with an Austrian accent in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, but not coming from folks we're expected to believe are real people.

Still, it's got Bebe Neuwirth as Robotrix Prosecutor, and that's just fine. (And Amy Carlson, who starred on Third Watch and the underrated series Peacemakers (or CSI: Deadwood), rerunning on CMT, of all places.) And it featured Jerry Orbach's last performance--making lame cracks about his ex-wife, still; who'da figured?--so it's kind of bittersweet.

Anyway, not recommending it, but I'll probably stick with it as long as it's replacing Medical Investigation, and not adding something to my schedule.

And I got the new Doctor Who Magazine yesterday, the first with tons of new photos and previews of the new TV series. March 26, it's supposed to premiere in the UK. And they're saying the DVDs may come out as soon as October. (Hopefully, I'll be able to catch it online before that, otherwise I won't be able to read my magazines...) I'm all giddy with excitement.