Encore

Everyone knows the drill: Band shouts "Good night!" and backpedals offstage. Crowd flicks Bics, applauds and screams for more. Band returns, plays, waves and then exits again -- starting another round of Bic-flicking and applause. A minute or two in the dark, and band is back. And so on, until the lights come up. Once rare and surprising, the rock-concert encore has become common and rote. Once a bonus, it has become an obligation.

David Morrissey, a good-looking big lug of a British leading man with a talent for playing tortured rectitude, is the star and producer of "Thorne," a detective drama airing Tuesday and Wednesday on Encore. The series, to stretch the term - it ran in six parts in the U.K. in 2010, but here takes the form of back-to-back feature films - adapts two novels by Mark Billingham, "Thorne: Sleepyhead" and "Thorne: Scaredy Cat," both of which concern apparent serial murders. Its visual tics seem imported from American procedurals like"CSI,"and if they make "Thorne" seem contemporary and excite its surface, they can also obscure whatever human story they have to tell; you can't see the grit for the gloss.

'The Take' Where: Encore When: 9 p.m. Friday Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)

Question: Why is a tennis score of 40-40 called "deuce"? Answer: Ancient civilizations in Rome, Greece and Egypt have made claim to the sport's origins, but what we recognize today as tennis is widely accepted to have begun in France. Where else but in the land of romance would athletic measure be articulated in the terms "love" and "deuce" (as in, it takes two)?

Put a gold star up on the board next to CBS for televising "Family of Spies." It was excellent. What a welcome relief from some of those idiotic situation comedy shows with canned laughter. "Family of Spies" was deserving of Emmy nominations. Encore! Frederick D. Mullen, Upland

Having read the entire series of "Anne of Green Gables" by L. M. Montgomery, I looked forward to seeing the PBS program's encore on "Wonderworks." After seeing it, all I can say is that it fulfilled every expectation that I had. The acting, scenery and story were beyond perfection. Diane E. Prosin, Westlake Village

The Pillars of the Earth infobox 7/23/10 'The Pillars of the Earth' Where: Starz; Encore When: 10 p.m. Friday Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)