If it’s Tuesday during the half of the season when American Idol isn’t a factor, the night must belong to CBS. That’s not likely to change this fall, with NCIS roaring into a seventh season with so much impressive ratings momentum that this JAG spin-off has finally spun off its own spawn: NCIS: Los Angeles, an efficient if predictable procedural that arrives on the scene after last spring’s two-part “backdoor pilot” with plenty of fistfights and gunfights and the sort of jovial camaraderie that endears classic NCIS to its millions of fans.

NCIS: LA initially feels less like an NCIS-style star-driven ensemble (Mark Harmon and his minions) than a buddy adventure built around the bantering partnership of Chris O'Donnell (the broody undercover guy with a murky past) and LL Cool J (ex-SEAL, more grounded, less angsty). In tonight’s first episode (9/8c), the rest of the agreeable cast mostly stands around, often in the new hacienda-style headquarters’ high-tech mission-control center. (Love those touch screens.) Making the biggest impression, ironically, is the smallest of them all: diminutive Oscar winner Linda Hunt as Hetty Lange, the fussy new boss who nags and mothers them all, especially the wounded puppy Callen (O’Donnell). Hunt’s eccentric, enjoyable presence ensures this isn’t purely a cookie-cutter clone. Not that anyone would probably mind. The most unusual thing about NCIS: LA isn’t that it exists, but that CBS isn’t using it already to prop up another night of the week. Give it time. For now, it’s doing its job. Keeping Tuesdays in CBS’s corner.

CBS has had much more trouble in recent years sustaining a hit in Tuesday’s 10/9c hour. NBC has made that job easier by relocating Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to Wednesdays, having been displaced by the ubiquitous The Jay Leno Show. (That’s still on?) Even without lesser competition, CBS would have had a real contender in The Good Wife, a smartly conceived and well executed legal drama with a strong star (Julianna Margulies) at its core and, even better, a terrifically timely hook.

Margulies plays Alicia Florrick, the latest in a long line of chagrined spouses forced to stand by the side a disgraced public figure—in this case, Chris Noth (Mr. Big!) as a smarmy Chicago politician caught with his pants down and his hand in the till. No surprise in the set-up, until she hauls off and whacks him once the TV cameras as turned off. While Mr. Jerk rots in jail, Alicia picks up her life and career after a baker’s-dozen years out of the workforce and joins a tony law firm as a junior associate, having to prove herself on the job amid a cloud of scandal and skepticism.

It’s a glossy underdog story that, if the pilot episode is any indication, will often find Alicia fighting for the underdog. Lots of rooting interest to go around here, and Margulies, who’s quite good here, is given fine support by Josh Charles (her most supportive co-worker), Matt Czuchry (her smug young competitor) and the always-welcome Christine Baranski (her flinty boss, who both sympathizes with and deplores Alicia’s situation, extending an olive branch with thorns attached).

I’m thinking The Good Wife has a chance of racking up a Judging Amy-size run in this time period. This one I might actually be compelled to watch.

So what else is happening on Tuesdays? It helps if you like reality TV. (Or CW’s soapy retreads, of which Melrose Place is the most cheesily promising, especially now that Heather Locklear has decided to do the Amanda comeback thing.)

ABC is going full bore with another two-hour edition of Dancing With the Stars (and let’s hope the women bring a little more excitement than the men did Monday night). On weeks when there’s only a one-hour results show, the 8/7c hour will be filled with summer holdover Shark Tank. Fox is still playing out the current season of Hell's Kitchen, eventually to be spelled by two-hour So You Think You Can Dance performance shows. And NBC continues to weigh in with The Biggest Loser.

Until ABC premieres V in November—and that deluxe pilot is worth the wait—ABC’s only new dramatic offering is The Forgotten (10/9c), which is what The Lovely Bones would look like as a Jerry Bruckheimer procedural. This grim, underpowered whodunit, narrated from beyond the mortal coil by the unidentified victim-of-the-week, is also something of a “who-is-it,” as a volunteer team of amateur sleuths picks up the trail of John Doe/Jane Doe cases after the police give up. First they have to figure out who the unclaimed victim is, then (less credibly) they go about trying to get justice. This Midwest branch of “the Forgotten Network” is led by doleful ex-cop Christian Slater, who naturally has a personal motivation for spearheading this group. (The most memorable character so far is Bob Stephenson's overeager telephone lineman-by-day Walter, who fancies himself the next Sipowicz, toting a Dennis Franz photo in his car as he tracks and sometimes confronts suspects.)

The Forgotten is awfully and sometimes painfully earnest, especially whenever the victim is given voice, and as many critics are likely to note, it may be all too easy to forget in the current glut of TV crime fiction. You never want to underestimate the Bruckheimer factory, but at first look, this one feels as DOA as its weekly subject matter. Still, having that powerful Dancing lead-in can’t hurt.

One last Tuesday recommendation, but only for the most adventurous of souls. If your taste for psychological crime thrillers runs toward the truly dark (think Val McDermid’s Wire in the Blood novels, and subsequent British TV series), think about tiptoeing into the twisted world of Epitafios, a truly terrifying and gut-wrenching Spanish-language import from Argentina that begins its second season tonight (11/10c) on HBO2. (Episodes also air Fridays on HBO Latino without English subtitles; the subtitled version will also be available On Demand.)

More than three years has passed since the original Epitafios (Spanish for "epitaph") aired, but little has charged for the haunted heroes: hot-blooded detective Renzo Marquez and his self-destructive partner Marina Segal, who still enjoys a hair-raising round of Russian Roulette when off duty. Once again, they’re put on the trail of a particularly deranged killer, who’s arranging his crime scenes and proudly photographing them as if they’re grisly art masterpieces, homages to past crimes. What does all of this have to do with a disheveled madman who appears to have been buried alive, and who has unusual foresight about where and who the killer will strike next?

I’ve only had time to watch tonight’s first unbearably intense episode, and am chomping at the bit to see more, though also fearful of what’s coming next. If it’s anything like the first series (which is available on DVD), the shocks have only just begun.