Four Original Cable Series You Should Be Watching

For a long time, I found most original programming that was produced by cable networks to be cheesy at best and unwatchable at worst, on par with some of the most painful public television shows around. Then Battlestar Galactica showed up and raised the bar on the "original programming" genre. Over the last two years or so, both USA and TNT have raised the bar such that there are some great shows being produced that you should probably be watching. They are, in no particular order:

• Burn Notice (USA) - Burned ex-spy does freelance jobs for people in need while trying to figure out who burned him and get his old spy job back. If you're needing a Bruce Campbell fix, this show is for you.
• Warehouse 13 (SyFy) - Two Secret Service agents track down mysterious and powerful artifacts of famous people in history for safe-keeping in a government warehouse a la Raiders of the Lost Ark. Part X-Files, part Indiana Jones.
• Leverage (TNT) - A team of five lovable former thieves run scams on the scammers who bilk innocent people out of their money. Fans of Ocean's 11 will like this weekly heist caper show.
• Dark Blue (TNT) - Enter the shady world of an LAPD deep cover unit to ask yourself where the line between cop and criminal lies and whether the ends really do justify the means.

Most of these shows have only run for one or two seasons (Burn Notice might be at three now) and a few of them are going into summer hiatus soon, so now might be a good time to surf the network sites, Hulu, or Netflix to catch up on the previous seasons so you can get right into the current runs. That is, if you're the tv-watchin' sort...or, say, if you don't have a job and are lookin' for some entertainment.