MONDAY

For the last six weeks, NBC has lorded over Monday nights with the consistent popularity of game show Deal or No Deal [8 p.m.]. (Last Monday’s episode was its most-viewed in over a year with 16.8 million people tuning in.) The streak will likely end tonight, when ABC airs the made-for-television adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun [8 p.m.] starring Sean Combs, Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald and the rest of the cast from the 2004 revival. Dennis Harvey, in the blue-collar prose typical to Variety, calls it a “sturdy translation.” Talk about faint praise!

Meanwhile, if Raisin fails to play the part of streak-killer, the March 17 return of How I Met Your Mother [CBS, 8 p.m.] and The Big Bang Theory (the two will be switching time slots) and Two and Half Men [CBS, 9 p.m.], each with nine new episodes, should. Three weeks have never felt so long.  read more »