In England, the requirements are much less stringent. Patricia Routledge's Hetty Wainthropp is a sixtysomething matron with a Margaret Thatcher hair helmet and a body that's not as lithe as it used to be, but creaking bones don't slow her down in the ratiocination department. The world is a dark and stormy place in UPN's two new dramas.
Strange beings stalk the earth, baring their fangs and ripping each other's flesh.
No, it's not the presidential election, but Halloween week on TV, the only time of the year when an evening's worth of rotting corpses constitutes the height of good taste. And sure enough, he doesn't bring the boy back on schedule, sending mom into a panic. She can't help but lose the occasional battle, as when asked to quiveringly lay a Christmas present on the missing boy's bed. James Buchanan Eads doesn't have the name recognition of Leonardo DaVinci or Thomas Edison, but as an engineer he was in their class. He built the United States' first ironclad ships and a miraculous steel bridge over the Mississippi River, placing his faith in the principles of science even when skeptics placed no faith whatsoever in him.