“Downton Abbey”

When last seen at the end of season two, the characters of Downton Abbey were once again coping with all manner of disasters: the arrest of Mr. Bates for the murder of his wife, a rocky engagement between Lady Mary and newspaper man Sir Richard Carlisle and Sir Matthew Crawley’s conflicted sorrow over the death of his fiancée Lavinia Swire.

Yet, all was not lost, as fans were thrilled by Matthew’s somewhat surprising marriage proposal to Mary at the end of the Christmas Special episode, and the servants were happy to discover Mr. Bates would not receive the death penalty. As the series picks up with season three, marriage plans are in full swing, Bates is adjusting to prison life and the house is busy as ever.

Unfortunately, things can never be dull around Downton and there may be trouble lurking for Lord Grantham that could change things forever. What’s more, Lady Sybil returns to Downton with her bourgeois chauffeur husband, and Lady Grantham’s mother travels to the Abbey for Mary’s wedding. The creators of “Downton Abbey” have generated a great start for themselves in season three, as plot lines move along quickly and the show picks up nicely, almost as if it never left the airwaves.

In all, the show’s newest episode contains all of the elements fans of the program have come to know and love: romance, deceit, drama and more. These things combined make for an episode worth watching – returning fans will surely be anticipating the rest of the season, and for those who’ve never watched, now would be a great time to start.

“Girls”

Adorably annoying, preciously pretentious and the voice of our overqualified, unemployed generation, season two HBO hit “Girls” premiered on Sunday and immediately reminded us how Lena Dunham’s palm-to-the-forehead protagonist Hannah won our hearts – by letting us laugh at hypocrisy we don’t want to see in our twenty-something peers.

Season one ends with a knock-down, drag out fight that forces Marnie to move out of Hannah’s apartment, with a shocking shotgun wedding between Jessa and a past bad date, and a breaking point in Adam and Hannah’s relationship that ends with Adam accidently being hit by a truck.

A few weeks have passed at the start of season two. Not shockingly, Hannah has begun a new melodrama – although she is no longer with Adam, she continues to nurse him after his car accident while hooking up with a new and refreshingly reasonable guy, Sandy (Donald Glover, “Community”). Not to leave things too uncomplicated, she has also moved into gay-best-friend heaven with Elijiah, her college boyfriend. Marnie hits bottom after being fired by her feminista boss and feels lost without Hannah to anchor her. After Elijiah fights with his sugar daddy at a drunken housewarming party, he and Marnie attempt a desperate hookup that falls flat. Finally, while Shoshanna attempts self-help spiritualism to recover from the loss of her hymen, she can’t help but fall once again for Ray’s unconventional charms.

Dunham has no shortage of critics, who are sure to roll their eyes at another season of Millenial entitlement on HBO. However, if the premiere is any indication, “Girls” fans are in for another spirited season of Dunham’s off-color comedy and literary cleverness, full of Tumblr-worthy quotes, laughs and maybe even a few tears.

“Pretty Little Liars”

This year’s Halloween special left “Pretty Little Liars” fans with a few answers but mostly more questions – who murdered Garrett Reynolds? Was Aria Montgomery’s father somehow involved in Aly’s death? And how the heck did they get Adam Lambert to play on the Halloween Train?

After Aria’s kidnapping at the Halloween Party, the Liars ended the first half of season three determined to discover the truth about the new “A.” This year’s mid-season premiere follows suit, with plenty of mystery to go around.

Most shocking of all, Mona has returned from Radley Mental Institution and is quickly regaining her popularity by playing a helpless victim of high school bullying. Meanwhile, the Liars encounter some faces that are new to Rosewood High, but not so new to them, and they become ever more resolute on investigating the secrets. That being said, viewers may find the mid-season premiere holds little information that wasn’t available to viewers before now, and lacks the potent suspense of the Halloween special and previous episodes.

Overall, this year’s mid-season premiere was enjoyable, but lacked a certain fear-inspiring quality the show is known for. Hopefully the drama will build as the season progresses and “Pretty Little Liars” will begin to move just as quickly as it has in past seasons.

“House of Lies”

As a high powered business consultant, Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle) knows the game: “Consulting’s like dissing a really pretty girl so she’ll want you more. We need them to think they’re almost perfect so we can … get them on the tit, thinking that their business is going to fail without you.”

Along with his minions, Jeannie Van Der Hooven (Kirstin Bell), Clyde Oberholt (Ben Schwartz) and Doug Guggenheim (Josh Lawson), the show documents the roller coaster, shark-eat-shark world of Marty. At the end of season one, Jeannie successfully stopped a merger between their firm and a large bank by exposing the “sex for promotion” culture at Galweather & Stearn.

Though Jeanie might have successfully stopped the merger, Kirstin Bell can’t do anything about the shows 30-minute format, a hallmark of ShowTime dramedys. The show tries to parody itself with the same style of fast cut scenes and gratuitous nudity in shows like Entourage. But unlike Entourage, which develops its characters on a full-hour show, Don Cheadle’s character seems to slog from one problem to another; his character has drowned in scene-after-scene of melodramatic tension.

Season two, which started last Sunday, tried to heed the warning of critics by slowing things down, but the show still seems too shallow for the superior acting crew.