BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 25

8:00 (10) Friends. The season opener. Monica and Chandler face infertility. Rachel and Joey hook up — or was that another dream? Actually, the entire last season was a dream; Rachel doesn’t really have a baby; Chandler gets a job for Ewing Oil. (Until 8:45 p.m.)

8:45 (10) Will & Grace. The season opener. Will and Jack hook up — or was that another dream? Actually, this entire season is a dream; everything you see isn’t happening. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Mystery: The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: Missing Joseph. Repeated from last week. Lynley and Havers are dispatched to a peaceful village in Lancashire to investigate a suspicious death. To be repeated on Friday at 12:30 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:30 (10) Coupling. The series opener. Students of the original British version of this sex-and-singles sit-com have by now recognized word-for-word borrowed dialogue in the promo spots for this reworked version. Curiosity will have us watching. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (10) E.R. The season opener. Carter returns from Africa with 1) a deadly virus; 2) a new girlfriend; 3) a renewed appreciation for the plight of the downtrodden; 4) any two out of those three. (Until 11 p.m.)

FRIDAY 26

8:00 (6) George Lopez. The season opener. Sorry, he’s just not funny. And tonight’s ABC line-up isn’t really worthy of the nickname " TGIF, " which was designed as a bunch of teen shows (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Boy Meets World) to keep the 9-to-14-year-old set safe at home in front of the tube and away from temptation on date night. (Until 8:30 p.m.)

8:00 (10) Miss Match. The season opener. Clueless Alicia Silverstone stars as a new breed of divorce lawyer — one who also plays matchmaker. But is this service necessary? (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (6) Hope & Faith. Nothing at all like Will & Grace, unless Faith Ford and Kelly Rippa have a secret. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

9:30 (6) Life with Bonnie. Sorry, Bonnie Hunt may be David Letterman’s good pal, but she’s not funny either. (Until 10 p.m.)

12:30 a.m. (2) Mystery: The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: Missing Joseph. Repeated from Thursday at 9 p.m.

SATURDAY 27

Noon (6) Football. Connecticut versus Virginia Tech.

1:00 (64) Baseball. On the next-to-last day of the regular season, a game with playoff implications. Might involve the Sox. Might not.

3:30 (12) Football. Florida versus Kentucky.

3:30 (6) Football. Notre Dame versus Purdue.

8:00 (2) Cantors: A Faith in Song. They resisted the temptation to dub this effort The Three Cantors, but in fact, three cantors appear in concert at the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, backed by a 46-piece orchestra. And yes, they’ll do liturgical pieces mixed with " secular " selections. We’re hoping for " Shortenin’ Bread " or " Danny Boy. " (Until 9:30 p.m.)

8:00 (6) Remember the Titans (movie). Oh, yeah . . . them. The sons of Ouranos, right? Actually, those were the Titanes, and this is a football movie, not a Greek myth. But it’s not about that team in Tennessee. This 2000 movie is about a newly integrated high-school gridiron squad. Denzel Washington plays their inspiring coach. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:30 (2) The Legends of New Orleans Music: Fats Domino. Not much background info provided, but the little fat guy with the raspy voice who gave us " Blueberry Hill " sells himself. (Until 11 p.m.)

Midnight (2) Austin City Limits. Featuring music from Alison Krauss and Union Station and the Flatlanders. (Until 1 a.m.)

Midnight (44) American Masters: Muddy Waters: Can’t Be Satisfied. A performance-rich profile of the blues legend. To be repeated on Wednesday at 8 p.m. on Channel 2. (Until 1 a.m.)

1:00 a.m. (2) Matters of Race: The Divide, Race Is, Race Ain’t, We’re Still Here, and Tomorrow’s America. Repeated from last week. A project from executive producer Orlando Bagwell (who gave us the Africans in America series) focusing on the issues surrounding the changing multi-cultural/multi-racial US demographic. (Until 5 a.m.)

SUNDAY 28

1:00 (12) Football. The Pats versus the Washington Redskins.

1:00 (64) Football. The Philadelphia Eagles versus the Buffalo Bills.

2:00 (44) Zorba the Greek (movie). Our big fat Greek existentialist movie. The 1964 film from Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel about a staid Englishman’s life-changing encounter with a crazy Greek islander. Alan Bates and Anthony Quinn star. Thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting; great music (scored by Mikis Theodorakis); wonderful portrayals (especially by Irene Papas and Lila Kedrova); and memorable scene after memorable scene. (Until 4:30 p.m.)

4:00 (64) Football. The Dallas Cowboys versus the New York Jets.

8:00 (10) American Dreams. With so much potential for embarrassment and inaccuracy, this dramatic saga of a middle-class white family in the 1960 is darn good. Things get touchier this season as JJ missteps his way toward his rendezvous with destiny in Vietnam. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) The Postman Always Rings Twice (movie). The 1946 original tale of love, betrayal, murder, and commemorative stamps starring John Garfield and Lana Turner. (Until 9:55 p.m.)

9:00 and 11:00 (2) The Blues: Feel like Going Home. After an entire summer of hype, Martin Scorsese’s seven-part documentary of the root cause of American music has arrived. And each installment (they’ll air nightly at these times, repeating on Channel 44 at 1 and 3 a.m.) has its own director and point of view. " Home, " in this instance, seems to include Mali, back to which the show traces the blues’ origins. Naturally, the Mississippi Delta plays an even bigger part in the evolution. With performances from Willie King, Corey Ellis, Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’, Othar Turner, Salif Keita, Ali Farka Toure, and Habib Koité. (Ted Drozdowski’s review of the series and its CDs is on page 13.) (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:55 (44) The Paradine Case (movie). This longwinded 1948 courtroom drama from Alfred Hitchcock stars Ann Todd as Maddalena Paradine, who’s accused of having poisoned her blind elderly husband, and Gregory Peck as the married attorney who defends her. (Until midnight.)

10:00 (6) The Practice. The season opener. Ellenor, Eugene, and Jimmy survived the summer. Bobby, Lindsay, and Helen don’t seem to be in the picture. Hmmm. It was the contrived personal plots that hurt this, not the characters shoehorned into them. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (10) The Lyon’s Den. The series opener. A summer of hypes watching some guy with gray hair take an unconvincing suicide leap off a building plus the recent affiliation between star Rob Lowe and the Schwarzenegger campaign means we’re just not watching. (Until 11 p.m.)

Midnight (44) Globe Trekker: Great Festivals. An anthology of treks and trekkers involving spectacular indigenous celebrations. To paraphrase a famous New Yorker cartoon: " Ian Wright or no Ian Wright — we don’t chant until the full moon. " (Until 1 a.m.)

MONDAY 29

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: American Rockies. Ian Wright tours the American West — from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the site of Custer’s Last Stand — in the company of cowboys, Indians, and bikers. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 and 11:00 (2) The Blues: The Soul of a Man. Director Wim Wenders takes the series on a personal turn, covering the lives and the art of his three favorite blues musicians: Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James, and J.B. Lenoir. Tonight’s featured performers include Shemekia Copeland, Chris Thomas King, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, and T-Bone Burnett. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (6) Football. The Green Bay Packers versus the Chicago Bears.

9:00 (10) Las Vegas. Series opener. The concept (casino security) promises little, but James Caan doesn’t do junk, does he? (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Transistorized! The invention and the high impact of the miniaturized electronic valve that replaced those hot and cozy-glowing vacuum tubes. (Until 10 p.m.)

TUESDAY 30

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Judge to Janitor. " Excuse me, could you vacuum behind my bench? " Seriously . . . the story of Colombian judge Luis Vélez, who quit the criminal-justice system and emigrated to the US in 1998. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: Infinite Secrets. Archimedes: smart man. He even wrote things down. Back in the 200s BC, he documented his takes On the Method of Mechanical Theorems, On Floating Bodies, On the Measurement of the Circle, On the Sphere and the Cylinder, On Spiral Lines, and On the Equilibrium of Planes. Heavy. Around 1000 AD, someone in Constantinople copied his scrolls over into a book. Solid. Two hundred years later, a monk in need of office supplies wrote prayers over Archimedes’s text. Dumb. This turns the thing into a " palimpsest " (two things written on the same paper). To make a long story short: the book sold at auction in the late 1990s for $2 million. Cool. And now high-technology is at work bringing the ancient mathematician’s words to the surface. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (64) Baseball. Divisional-playoff-game action. With or without the Sox.

8:00 (44) Austin City Limits. Featuring music from Los Lobos and Ratdog with Bob Weir. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 5 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 and 11:00 (2) The Blues: The Road to Memphis. Memphis would be a musically cool city even without Elvis. Director Richard Pearce covers B.B. King and the Memphis blues tonight. With performances by King, Rosco Gordon, Bobby Rush, and Ike Turner. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:30 (10) Good Morning, Miami. Season opener. Why is this show back? (Until 10 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 1

8:00 (2) American Masters: Muddy Waters: Can’t Be Satisfied. Repeated from Saturday at midnight.

9:00 and 11:00 (2) The Blues: Warming by the Devil’s Fire. Director Charles Burnett explores the traditional rivalry between the blues and gospel in the form of this film about a young Mississippi boy in 1955. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:50 (44) The American Experience: Return with Honor. A frank and believable film about American POWs in Vietnam. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY 2

7:30 (2) Basic Black: A Conversation with Howard Bryant. A chat about the relationship between the Boston Red Sox and the city’s African-American community through history with Bryant, a Boston Herald columnist and the author of Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (64) Baseball. Divisional-playoff-game action.

8:30 (10) Scrubs. The season opener. Glad it’s back; can’t believe anything this peculiar has good ratings. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 and 11:00 (2) The Blues: Godfathers and Sons. A chronicle of the production (by Chess Records’ Marshall Chess and Chuck D) of an album featuring traditional blues people and contemporary hip-hoppers. Directed by Marc Levin and featuring music from Koko Taylor, Magic Slim, Otis Rush, Ike Turner, and Sam Lay. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Mystery: Dead Gorgeous. A dark but entertaining yarn based on the novel On the Edge by Peter Lovesey about two women in post-war England plotting to murder their husbands. Helen McCrory and Fay Ripley star. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 11 p.m.)