New Fox comedy is 'Cracking Up' Tuesday

"Cracking Up," a new Fox comedy about psychiatric care, is worth your scheduling at least a session or two.

The action revolves around Ben, a soft-spoken, idealistic psychology grad student handed a plum assignment from his professor: move in with the Shackletons, a wealthy Beverly Hills family, to provide home counseling for the troubled son, Tanner.

Quickly enough this little boy sets Ben straight.

"I'm not the whack job around here," he declares. "But you'll see."

Ben sure does. Tanner is perfectly normal. The rest of the family, Ben quickly realizes, is comically insane.

Can he stand living in this loony bin, with the mother a bipolar alcoholic and the teenage son obsessive-compulsive? With the father a hail-fellow-well-met sociopath and the cheerleader daughter a repressed erotomaniac?

An unlikely idea for a comedy, its success is all in the treatment, which is funny and fresh. The single-camera production is handsome. And the cast is solid, including Jason Schwartzman as Ben and Molly Shannon ("Saturday Night Live") as the mood-swinging matriarch.

Therapy begins 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Other shows to look out for:

Another promising new comedy with a therapeutic bent starts a half-hour earlier. "Significant Others" is a "mockumentary"-style series featuring varied sets of married couples who are in and out of marriage counseling. (In the therapist's office, She announces, "I'm pregnant." He, incredulously: "With a baby?") It's funny, too true for comfort, and spontaneous -- especially since the actors are improv performers largely working off the cuff. (He: "You're shaving for the gynecologist?" She: "It's rude to go in with hairy legs.") It premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday on Bravo.

Jill Hennessy fans will be glad to hear that her crime drama, "Crossing Jordan," is back. Premiering a new season Sunday at 9 p.m. on NBC, Hennessy resumes her role as Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, described as "a sexy, smart and fearless Boston medical examiner" who has an irresistible need to examine not just dead bodies but unsolved crimes. Needless to say, Jordan's approach is never by the book. Unfortunately, "Jordan" (whose premiere episode finds a man dead in what appears to be a ritualistic, satanic murder) is nearly always by-the-numbers.

TV's coolest drama is back for a new season! Oh, you thought we were talking about "The Sopranos," returning Sunday at 8 p.m. on HBO. But we're also giving "The Shield" the warm reception it deserves.

What "The Shield" demonstrates at the outset of Season Three is what set it apart from the beginning: It's an action show that's character-driven, with every character richly drawn and all of them compromised, if only by blindness, to the villainy pervading the force.

LAPD Detective Vic Mackey (played by the terrific Michael Chiklis) continues on his freewheeling, often ferocious ways, still qualifying as the precinct's best lawman even while he breaks the law to carry out his job. A big new problem for Vic and his anti-gang strike team: How to hide all the piles of cash they stole last season from a drug cartel. "The Shield" returns at 8 p.m. Tuesday on FX.

Based on the 1997 British miniseries, "Touching Evil" is touching but also preposterous when the script doesn't measure up -- which is the case on the two-hour premiere Friday at 8 p.m. on USA. Detective David Creeghan has returned to work for the FBI's new Organized and Serial Crime Unit after suffering a grievous injury: a gunshot to the head that not only left him dead for 10 minutes, but then restored him to life in an altered state.

Now lacking the ability to censor himself, Creeghan pretty much does or says whatever he feels. Although he's nutty as a fruitcake, and often dangerous to others as well as himself, this new condition is supposed to make him a valuable cop. (Think: "Monk," but brooding, rather than playful.)

Creeghan has a no-nonsense partner and handler, of course: Detective Susan Branca. "Touching Evil" also has a lot of style. It could just use a little more substance. Jeffrey Donovan and Vera Farmiga star.