television

"Big Brother 11" will make high-school socializing look complicated when the new season begins (8 p.m. EDT Thursday on CBS).

"You may have graduated, but the truth is, we never leave high school and this summer we are going to prove it," says executive producer Allison Grodner.

Among late-1990s teen movies, "10 Things I Hate About You" has a better reputation than its peers. Ten years later, that also holds true for a new ABC Family TV series based on the movie.

Here are 10 things to know about the new half-hour show (premiering 8 p.m. EDT Tuesday):

1. "10 Things" is easily the network's best comedy to date.

They can change the name of the network but evidently not their often-bland programming.

Sci Fi Channel re-brands itself as Syfy this week, a silly name that's appropriate for silly new show "Warehouse 13," which has its two-hour premiere at 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

Back in the 1980s, networks often used summer as a dumping ground for failed pilots -- TV shows that don't make the cut for the fall schedule, the TV equivalent of concept cars that never go into production.

HBO is bringing sexy back.

With "Hung" (debuting 10 p.m. EDT Sunday), the pay cable channel is doing the kind of provocative programming it has built its reputation upon (think "Sex and the City" and "Six Feet Under"). It's the story of a down-and-out public-school teacher who, when pushed into a corner, uses what nature gave him to make ends meet.

TV undeniably is a copycat medium, but there's something so brazen about this week's ripoff show that it's impossible to ignore.

Oxygen's latest foray into reality competition is the love child of "The Biggest Loser" and "So You Think You Can Dance." And its title? The vaguely vulgar "Dance Your Ass Off" (10 p.m. EDT Monday).

PBS's "American Masters" trains it lens on an icon of the heartland: Garrison Keillor, host of public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion" and raconteur of the doings in fictional Lake Wobegon, Minn.

Willow Palin needs your help. Thousands of viewers expressed outrage recently when David Letterman cracked jokes about Eliot Spitzer and Alex Rodriguez taking runs at the Alaska governor's daughter.

There are plenty of reasons to suspect NBC's "The Philanthropist" will be awful: It's airing in the summer dumping ground; it was part of NBC's terrible 2007-08 development season; and executive producer Tom Fontana ("Homicide: Life on the Street") wrote the pilot teleplay, got fired and then got rehired.

It's tempting to give NBC credit for putting a family-friendly series like "Merlin" on the air, but the network wasn't acting out of any generosity toward families. NBC announced this British import a year ago when it went on a buying spree of low-cost co-productions. And the saying is true: You get what you pay for.