<table> </table> Not unlike our weather, television&#8217;s springtime of new programs has been a little herky-jerky this year.</p><p>Because of the DTV transition, everything got pushed back a month.</p><p>But now spring has sprung, with a crop of hybridized annuals &#8212; two from NBC and one from CBS &#8212; in full nocturnal bloom tonight, coming after ABC&#8217;s Wednesday debut of &#8220;The Unusuals.&#8221;</p><p>These shows have been highly engineered, not so much for beauty or flavor than simply for longevity. And you don&#8217;t need a master reviewer to tell you that a show designed not to fail rarely succeeds. I mean, best-case scenario, &#8220;Private Practice&#8221; is a &#8220;hit,&#8221; but who cares?</p><p>Likewise, saying that <strong>&#8220;Southland&#8221; (9 p.m., KSHB-41)</strong>, NBC&#8217;s replacement for &#8220;ER,&#8221; is the best of these new shows is like saying the Minnesota Twins could dominate their divisional rivals this year. It&#8217;s not a bold claim.</p><p>And yet I can&#8217;t imagine this crisply made new police drama, set in Los Angeles, not making it to NBC&#8217;s schedule this fall. (It will be at a different time, since Jay Leno will be taking over the 9 p.m. time slot weeknights.)</p><p>The sad fact is that NBC needs &#8220;Southland&#8221; to work because its schedule is already heavy with niche dramas, highly acclaimed but poorly watched &#8212; &#8220;Chuck,&#8221; &#8220;Life,&#8221; &#8220;Friday Night Lights&#8221; (which just got renewed for two final seasons) and the new Sunday night clunker, &#8220;Kings.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Southland&#8221; is built to be bigger, and in that sense it succeeds immediately, thanks to excellent casting (especially Michael Cudlitz and Regina King as a cop and a detective), gritty location shooting around L.A. and storytelling that doesn&#8217;t hold the viewer&#8217;s hand.</p><p>These are tales of heinous and small crimes, of both creeping and swift justice, of cops with personalities but not much in the way of lives, of a rookie who must be initiated (Ben McKenzie, former &#8220;O.C.&#8221; hunk) &#8230; and in all these respects &#8220;Southland&#8221; reminds me an awful lot of &#8220;Third Watch,&#8221; which the executive producer of &#8220;Southland,&#8221; John Wells, also put on the air for NBC.</p><p>Is this a solid entry for NBC? Compared with &#8220;Kings,&#8221; no question. But is this a bold new moment in television drama? Compared to &#8220;Rescue Me,&#8221; which returned for its fifth season on FX this week &#8212; no contest.</p><p>Well, you say, that&#8217;s because I know and love &#8220;Rescue Me.&#8221; Guilty as charged. But isn&#8217;t familiarity the currency NBC is using to sell us on Amy Poehler&#8217;s new comedy, <strong>&#8220;Parks and Recreation,&#8221; premiering at 7:30 tonight on KSHB-41</strong><strong>?</strong></p><p>Isn&#8217;t the network drumming into our heads the fact that it&#8217;s from &#8220;the producers of &#8216;The Office&#8217;&#8194;&#8221; &#8212; two episodes of which sandwich &#8220;Parks and Rec&#8221; tonight &#8212; and is another workplace comedy in an unlikely setting (local government in small-town Indiana)? And features the familiar mug of Poehler, the &#8220;SNL&#8221; alumna who has been a fixture of TV comedy dating back to the &#8220;Upright Citizens Brigade&#8221; show on cable?</p><p>Yep. And here&#8217;s another way &#8220;Parks &amp; Rec&#8221; will remind you of &#8220;The Office&#8221;: It&#8217;s off to a less-than-TiVo-worthy start.</p><p>Poehler plays Leslie Knope, a plucky if unstellar civil servant who is determined to make a difference in her world, by howdy. In tonight&#8217;s premiere she takes one small step for mankind &#8230; right into a garbage-laden pit in the middle of fictional Pawnee, Ind., whose citizens have entrusted her to be deputy director of parks and rec.