THURSDAY

8-8:30 p.m. Community

8:30-9 p.m. Parks and Recreation

9-9:30 p.m. The Office

9:30-10 p.m. Whitney

10-11 p.m. Prime Suspect

Thursday will be filled with half-hour comedies as usual but 30 Rock was replaced for now by a new comedy Whitney, to accommodate Tina Fay’s pregnancy. The new season of 30 Rock will return to NBC later, perhaps during their midseason schedule.

Whitney is another romantic comedy, starring stand-up comedienne Whitney Cummings who brings her unique and hilarious perspective on love. The show centers on Alex and Whitney, a couple who doesn’t want to get married because it’s the number one cause of divorce and it pretty much kills relationships.

The last hour on Thursdays will be occupied by a new crime drama, Prime Suspect, a remake of the British series with Helen Mirren. I don’t know what it is with the US TV/movies when they constantly doing remakes of the British series or other international movies. Running out of original ideas or hoping to make the US versions better than the original? Sometimes the originals are already great, so my verdict: they are running out of ideas.

Prime Suspect stars Maria Bello (who I actually like quite a lot) as a NYPD homicide Det. Jane Timoney and as a woman in a man’s world. She has to be tough to contend with a male-dominated police department to get respect as an outsider, who was just transferred to a new precinct. NBC’s tagline about Bello’s character: “she’s the tough-as-nails detective who doesn’t know when to quit.”