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January generally serves as a dead zone dumping ground when it comes to fresh TV. Given that FlashForward, Fringe and V are all on hiatus, sci-fi pickings are especially slim this year during the run-up to the highly anticipated final season of Lost, which begins Feb. 2.
Still, a couple of new, dead-of-winter shows surface this month that merit attention.
Spartacus: Blood and Sand aims for 300-style guts and glory with Lucy Lawless (pictured) and a heretofore-unknown structural engineer from Australia named Andy Whitfield, who stars as a toga-clad slave-turned-gladiator. The action series, which already has been renewed for a second season, updates Stanley Kubrick's 1960 Oscar-winner Spartacus just before a Clash of the Titans remake tests movie audiences' appetite for sword-and-sandal smackdowns.
Series debut: Jan. 22 (10 p.m. EST on Starz)
Caprica mines soap-opera machinations from the Battlestar Galactica mythology. Set 50 years before BSG, this prequel follows rival families the Graystones and the Adamas as their technologically advanced society heads toward the creation of the first cybernetic life-form node, aka Cylon. (Read Wired.com's review of the pilot: "Caprica Spins Religion, Race Into Worthy Galactica Prequel.")
Series debut: Jan. 22 (9 p.m. EST on Syfy)
Besides these newcomers, a couple of well-seasoned series try to refresh their now-familiar premises this month.
Heroes resumes its "Volume 5: Redemption" season Monday with a two-hour special involving the carnie freak contingent of superpowered misfits led by Robert Knepper's Samuel.
Mid-season debut: Monday (8 p.m. EST on NBC, moving to its regular 9 p.m. EST time slot beginning Jan. 11)
24 catches up with Keifer Sutherland's ferocious antiterrorist Jack Bauer during a two-night, four-hour "new day" special.
Season debut: Jan. 17 and 18 (9 p.m. EST on Fox)
What's your prognosis? Are you going to give Caprica a shot, or has the Battlestar Galactica franchise run out of steam? What about Spartacus? Is there room for another ancient-warfare epic, even if it is executive-produced by Sam Raimi?
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