New views for new year

Ed O'Neill (Married With Children's Al Bundy) is back as a patriarch in Modern Family. Photo / Supplied

TV3
The two best TV picks for next year are likely to give you a good laugh. The first, RadiRadiRah, is a local sketch show from the makers of bro'Town and the other, Modern Family, is a mockumentary starring Ed O'Neill, best known as Al Bundy from 80s show Married With Children.

RadiRadiRah stars many of the Naked Samoans, including Oscar Kightley and David Fane, along with comedian and star-for-hire Rhys Darby and director Taika Waititi, in a show that pokes fun at popular culture and modern life while "pushing the boundaries of prime time television".

Modern Family follows three diverse families with O'Neill's character Jay Pritchett linking them all. Pritchett's daughter has a traditional family made up of her, her husband, and their two kids; then there's his gay son and his partner who have just adopted an Asian baby. Meanwhile, Pritchett himself is married to a much-younger Latina woman. Let the games begin.

"The best new half-hour of funny television in a season rife with half-hours of funny television," raved the New York Times.

Elsewhere on TV3, the staples of medical, crime, and law shows are once again a feature for 2010.

First up is Trauma, an action medical drama set in San Francisco and starring New Zealander Cliff Curtis. He plays Reuben "Rabbit" Palchuck who's one of the key members of the first response paramedics team who use any means possible to reach their victims in time. Sounds like exciting stuff, like Rambo meets E.R perhaps? Judging by US critics' reactions it's not all style over substance either, with spot-on storylines to match the action.

A more traditional - but most likely more dry - medical drama is Three Rivers, which is set in one of America's foremost transplant hospitals.

On the crime and law front, the best of the bunch is likely to be The Good Wife, starring Julianna Margulies (best known as nurse Carol Hathaway on E.R) as defence attorney Alicia Florrick.

The catch to this show is that Florrick is starting back in the workforce as a lawyer following the public humiliation she had to endure because of her husband's corrupt and philandering ways.

Then there's NCIS: Los Angeles, which is simply the NCIS formula of a little action, some intense character analysis, a few laughs, and then justice, only this time in La La Land; The Associates, about a young group of "work hard, party hard" associates at a Los Angeles entertainment law firm starring Billy Zane; and White Collar, a drama about a con man who is recruited by the FBI to catch crims.