CHICAGO FIRE -- "Barely Gone" Episode 12001 -- Pictured: delivery truck -- (Photo by: Adrian S Burrows Sr/NBC)

Best-bets for Jan. 17: a fiery drama night

1) “Chicago Fire” season-opener, 8-11 p.m., NBC. Producer Dick Wolf gets the prize for quickly getting dramas back, post-strike. He has three “Law & Order” ones Thursday, three FBI ones next month and three Chicago ones now. This is a fairly ordinary hour, with an arson probe, a fire (shown heere) and staff changes. One person is gone, one is back, one is leaviing … and life goes on. Read more…

1) “Chicago Fire” season-opener, 8-11 p.m., NBC. Producer Dick Wolf gets the prize for quickly getting dramas back, post-strike. He has three “Law & Order” ones Thursday, three FBI ones next month and three Chicago ones now. This is a fairly ordinary hour, with an arson probe, a fire (shown heere) and staff changes. One person is gone, one is back, one is leaviing … and life goes on.

2) “Chicago Med” and “Chicago PD” season-openers, 8 and 10 p.m., NBC. And here’s the rest of the Chicago line-up. “Med” starts fast, with a crash leaving the emergency room packed. “P.D.” see Upton required to link with people who use a mental-health approach to policing. She has her doubts.

3) “Wild Cards” debut, 8 p.m., CW. It’s always fun to see a cop forced to link with a crook — especially if it’s a charismatic crook. That worked for Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in “48 Hrs”; now it clicks for Giacomo Gianniotti (“Grey’s Anatomy”) and Vanessa Morgan (“Riverdale”). Both actors are Canadian, but he was born in Italy and her dad is from Tanzania. Her good-hearted grifter is a delight.

4) “Family Law,” 9 p.m., CW. This episode (the third-season opener) was scheduled for two weeks ago, then delayed. Either way, it’s a sub-part hour, putting Abby on the wrong end of arguments in court and at home. This light drama gets better next week.

5) MORE: “Nature” (8 p.m., PBS) has the second of its three delightful “Big Little Journeys” hours. This one follows a pangolin (also called a “scaly anteater”) in Taiwan and a tiny monkey, called a lion tamarin, in Brazil. Also: ABC has basketball (Mavericks-Lakers) at 8:30 p.m. ET; Turner Classic Movies has the epic “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) from 8 p.m. ET to midnight.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *