American beauties

Will you be lost when Lost ends tonight? Missing The Sopranos already? Don't worry - our love affair with TV drama from the States is set to continue in the coming weeks as the next generation of smart, slick shows arrives in Britain. Expect blood, sweat and tears and a few familiar faces

It seems impossible to imagine life without a new series of The Sopranos to set our diaries to, but the last ever episode will be screened in America in two weeks and we only have a handful left to see here - coming soon, as they say, to E4. The third season of Lost ends with a double episode tonight and Jack Bauer's latest hard day at the office in 24 is almost up for another year.

It's not too long ago that we were talking about comedies when we spoke about great American TV, but the wave of powerful dramas in recent years from the US has made us forget our love affair with Cheers, Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld. The Sopranos kicked down the door of what a TV serial was supposed to look and feel like, paving the way for other innovative dramas like Six Feet Under and The West Wing. With these already gone, it seems like the end of something special.

But I remember feeling that when the groundbreaking Hill Street Blues finished in the Eighties, and again when NYPD Blue abruptly disappeared from the schedules. Maybe we always feel like that. The odd thing, looking at the new generation of dramas launched last year and starting in the UK in the coming months, is the number of old faces resurfacing - Calista Flockhart from Ally McBeal, Chandler and Monica from Friends, Brenda and David from Six Feet Under, Josh from The West Wing ...

But are they any good? The show that has made the most noise in the past year is Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Aaron Sorkin's follow-up to The West Wing. It was a good sort of noise to start with - the shrill clamour of expectation, the first whoops of praise - but then came the rumbling of doubt, the crash of ratings, the screams of fleeing advertisers. No one now is talking about a second season. But why the flop? Admittedly the programme - a snappy drama set behind the scenes of a live, late-night TV sketch show - can be a bit 'insidery', though no more so than the The West Wing, whose high-speed wonkmanship was hardly a respecter of wandering attentions. In any case, the flood of shows about showbiz in recent years (Larry Sanders, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage) has made experts of us all in the ritual dance of suits and talent, agents and press handlers.

Will Studio 60 find a less ungrateful audience with More4? I hope so. After three episodes I would have stayed up for the other 15. Matthew Perry is note-perfect as writer Matt Albie, hired with producer sidekick Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford who played Josh in The West Wing) to rescue the ailing NBS network, from which the pair had been ousted in disgrace four years earlier. Perry has abandoned the Friends grin and confines the old habit of acting with his hands in his pockets to the rare moments he's not using them to tear his hair out. It's cut-throat funny for something that's not, strictly speaking, a comedy. And just about everything works: the terrible warren of cluttered offices, the super-ramped pressure (to his dismay Matt has inherited a giant wall clock that counts the week down in seconds), the abrasive buddy thing, the romantic tension thing (Matt has an old flame in the team), the liberal thing - Sorkin's familiar struggle against the forces of unenlightenment here brought into play by Christian viewers who don't like jokes about creationism and studio bosses who don't like sponsors being frightened away.

So what's not to love? At one point Matt wonders whether what they're doing is just 'too smart'. And maybe that's a hazard with shows even this good.

Family drama Brothers & Sisters, which sees the return of Calista Flockhart to TV, is also rather impressive, and unusual in not having any obvious gimmick. What it does have, though, are some effortlessly naturalistic performances from the likes of Rachel Griffiths (the wonderful Brenda in Six Feet Under) as Sarah, and Sally Field as her mother, and a pleasingly intriguing plot turning on shenanigans with the unglamorous family business (fruit). But, like Studio 60, the show takes as its emotional centre the theme of homecoming - the idea of fortune tossing you the ticket to go back and smooth out history and be loved more for the effort. Kitty (Flockhart) is the homecomer, a conservative talk-show host who has returned to Los Angeles on business after two years' absence. The trip coincides with Kitty's 38th birthday and there's a family reunion. What could possibly go right?

There are a lot of siblings to get into your head. There's nice brainy Sarah, the corporate hotshot-turned-working mom whose unsatisfactory work-life balance (she and her husband Joe are in counselling) made her leave the rat race and join Dad and Uncle Saul in fruit, thus pissing off brother Tommy, who has been with the firm from school. Then there's layabout black sheep Justin, who went off to fight in Afghanistan and now can't stop spliffing up and drinking and sleeping with unsuitable girls, which is Kitty's fault, Mom believes, for filling the poor boy's head with 'patriotic' neocon ideas - which explains (though this takes a while) why she and Kitty aren't on hugging terms. How could Kitty turn out to be a woman who takes Reagan and Nancy biogs to bed? The Walkers are good liberals - or at least good enough to be badgering their lawyer son Kevin (sparkling wit, clean shoes and therefore gay) as to why he never brings any nice boys back for dinner. The Walkers' own blessed union is solid as Dad's jaw, but hang on - isn't that him on the phone telling some woman not to call him at home? To give anything else away would be irresponsible, though it's probably safe to say there are no helicopter crashes.

Though domestic in scale, there's a grand manner to this drama more redolent of The West Wing than the superficially similar milieu of Six Feet Under. Philharmonic strings soar. The script is honed. There are no fat people. No one uses the 'c' word. By all accounts, the early days of this show were a pig's ear of rewrites, firing and rehiring, but you wouldn't know it. Even the children can act.

Dexter, hero of Dexter, is great fun. Well, great fun for someone who saws people's heads off while they're still alive. But he only goes after paedophiles and drunken drivers and other people who deserve it. Likeable Michael C Hall (best remembered as the gay undertaker in Six Feet Under) is inspired casting as the cheeky assassin who also has a proper job working for the Miami police as a forensics genius specialising in blood spatter analysis.

Dexter, his flashbacks tell us, exhibited homicidal tendencies as a child ('Who killed the puppy, Dexter?'), but thanks to an understanding foster father he learnt to channel them, thus protecting society from guys almost as weird as himself. 'People fake a lot of human interactions but I feel like I fake them all,' he says in a cheery, camp voiceover designed to be endearing even when bagging up body parts. 'And I fake them very well.'

He sure does. He has a nice girlfriend and a feisty foster sister (a cop) who love him to bits. And he has a great life in the Florida sunshine, chilling out on his boat (the 'Slice of Life', ho-ho) or playing with his eyelid removal kit in the shadows of his cool apartment and pronouncing on blood spatter issues. It's one pleasure after another. It's not till a real serial killer starts leaving mutilated Barbie dolls in his fridge that the real game begins. Dexter - snapped up in the sales by the tiny digital channel FX - may be lightweight, but it's knowing and classy with some great opening credits featuring colourful close-ups of runny eggs, sharp knives and spurts of orange juice. Oh, and ketchup of course.

There's more from America's sunny outdoors in Hidden Palms, which has the picket fences and country clubs of Desperate Housewives but bears the mark too of those quirky indie movies (Garden State, Rushmore) about damaged teens and their dysfunctional parents who are only interested in suntans and golf and cheekbones and shoes.

Sixteen-year-old Johnny (Taylor Handley from The OC) moves to Palm Springs with his mum and new stepfather after his real father blows his brains out. Understandably, Johnny is a bit morose (they're from Seattle) and takes a while to adjust, mooching around with his camera (you can tick off American Beauty here). But he soon gets to know the locals - there's Cliff next door, an overfriendly practical joker who secretly kicks dogs, while Greta is beautiful and unfeasibly enigmatic. Liza across the street has no fashionable clothes, can't afford to go to the ball and enjoys chemistry (so who'd give her a chance with the new boy, right?). There's a lot of nicely written banter and swimming-pool action and a soundtrack that parents will want turned down please, but, come on, where are all the zombies? OK, Cliff drops the bombshell that Greta's old boyfriend Eddie killed himself in the room Johnny now sleeps in. (Estate agents don't tell you anything ...) But Johnny blames this extra layer of angst on his mother, whose fooling around with other men pushed Dad to the brink. But what pushed Eddie to the brink? Glances are exchanged between Cliff and Greta. You get the feeling that something mean has been going on. Hidden Palms (terrible title) is very watchable, possibly even by grown-ups.

That goes for Heroes too (coming soon to BBC2), a blockbusting series about a group of ordinary people - well, ordinary-ish - who are surprised to discover that they seem to be developing mysterious, superhuman powers. Webcam stripper Niki is just about to be beaten up by her psychotic loan shark when she luckily finds the strength to tear him in half. And how about mild-mannered male nurse Peter, who can fly. Meanwhile, teenage schoolgirl Claire saves people from burning buildings, while New York artist and heroin addict Isaac discovers that he can paint the future. But can they save the world? The show was the only big 'breakout' hit in the States in 2006, with audiences of 14 million, and has been running on the digital Sci Fi channel here since February. Already those viewer 'theories' about the show have invaded the blogosphere: that at times of global crisis 'special' kinds of people evolve to sort things out; that the whole adventure is in the head of Niki's intellectually advanced nine-year-old son. Heroes creator Tim Kring has said he was going for a nerd vibe that would appeal to everyone - though unlike Lost and Desperate Housewives the show wouldn't be holding on to its secrets too long. 'We sort of made a pact internally that we weren't going to be a show that made you wait for stuff.' Watch out for geeky Tokyo office clerk Hiro Nakamura, who can make time stand still by tightening his features in the attitude of someone expelling a large turd. Now there's a marketable skill.

Those pining for 24 might take a look at Vanished, a machine-tooled thriller that centres on beautiful Sara Collins, a senator's wife who gets called away to the phone at a charity function and doesn't come back, not even for pudding. Enter FBI special agent Graham Kelton. Graham has a steely enough look (for someone called Graham) and the sort of personal tortured history - a young boy blown up by kidnappers on his last job - that makes him extra-determined not to take any nonsense from the senator's goons about what sort of questions he will or won't answer with regard to his wife's sexual history.

Graham is soon issuing instructions at the speed of light and getting fingerprints off a chair using glue (a little-known household tip). And do we have any pleasing digital widgetry operated by unblinking technicians who tell us what's on their minds before we can think to ask? Indeed, yes, and as a result the abductor is found dead after 20 minutes in the boot of his own stolen car with a freshly inked tattoo on his hand. But where's the woman? Don't know. All sorts of hares are running now - the senator's ex-spouse, who was in the hotel when Sara disappeared; the senator's daughter Marcy, whose boyfriend has a bag of money in his washing machine. And what's this - a frozen body containing a clue symbolically linked to everything that has happened so far that we thought was merely incidental? You have to pay attention. Like 24, it takes itself very seriously. Even the line 'facial hair is against hotel policy, sir' is delivered with a straight face.

Somehow I managed not to mention the hard-nosed, unscrupulous reporter snooping around in Vanished, though on a bad night she could have stepped out of Dirt, the new Courteney Cox drama, set on a Hollywood celebrity sleaze mag called Drrt.

You might wonder why they didn't call the show Drrt, but that would be to assume it could be improved. Cox, who plays fearsome editor Lucy Spiller, says things like: 'I don't care if you're on your deathbed, your mother's on fire, we're at the brink of a nuclear war, I want those photos on my desk tonight!' Oh dear. Amid the blizzard of tabloid cliche (setting up sports stars with hookers, 'discussions' of feature spreads on fat-arsed celebs), there's a Faustian fable about selling your soul for media exposure and a paparazzo with a sick cat and a trilby who 'sees' words coming out of his own mouth and drops of blood falling from the sky. Has he wandered in from an experimental student film?

It's shockingly lame, though almost worth watching for an excruciatingly ill-judged scene in which Lucy displays her knowledge of Proust (yes, the madeleines!) to a man who happens to be reading it in the street. Look away now.

Five must have watched this with a bag over its head in the hope that millions of Friends fans would channel-migrate in search of Monica. My advice is, stay with Chandler. He's doing pretty great.

To stay in for: what's on when

Vanished Senator's wife goes missing, heroics ensue. With Rebecca Gayheart as a hard-nosed hack. Five, from 3 June

Brothers & Sisters Engaging family drama starring Calista Flockhart. C4, from mid-June

Dexter Forensics expert Michael C Hall moonlights as a serial killer. FX, from 8 July

Dirt Courteney Cox is ruthless editor of a gossip mag. Five US, from 9 July

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip West Wing creator delves into the world of American late-night TV. More4, from late July

Heroes A huge hit in the US - regular people develop superhuman powers. BBC2, from 1 August

Hidden Palms Teen angst and dark mysteries assail sunny Palm Springs. Sky One, from September