Abc Family

Lots of new TV, local shows for the first week of 2012. MOVIES OPENING (Friday; subject to change) The Devil Inside Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy NOTABLE TV MONDAY The Bachelor (season premiere; 8 p.m.; ABC) Pretty Little Liars (returns from hiatus; 8 p.m.; ABC Family) Antiques Roadshow (season premiere; 8 p.m.; PBS) The Lying Game (returns from hiatus; 9 p.m.; ABC Family) Hoarders (season premiere; 9 p.m.; A&E) Intervention (season premiere; 10 p.m.; A&E)

Christmas is a time for television; it's television that tells us it's Christmas. It's the electric hearth that unites the family and comforts the lonely. It fills the house with pictures of snow and skaters and charming re-created scenes from Victorian or New England life. There are two Christmases - the one with Jesus in it, and the one run by Santa Claus. And though they intersect, they also go their own way - Santa being a secular, adaptable brand available for product endorsements and personal appearances.

The networks have yet to even finish introducing all their fall programs, and already the first new series in a wave of counterprogramming arrives tonight on NBC in the form of 1 vs 100, another win-$1-million game show. The genre has been good to the network with Deal or No Deal, the series that gives away briefcases full of money, emerging as a surprise hit in the spring - drawing as many as 18 million viewers a night. Hosted by Howie Mandel and airing twice a week, Deal has continued its winning ways this fall.

Series Friday Night Lights: : Jason (Scott Porter) follows a job opportunity to New York and Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) goes along for the ride. (9 p.m., WBAL-Channel 11) Bill Moyers Journal: : John Lithgow; Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. (9 p.m., WETA-Channel 26) NUMB3RS:: The team investigates the death of an innovative scientist. (10 p.m., WJZ-Channel 13) Movies Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: : A young wizard in training (Daniel Radcliffe) becomes the target of an unknown enemy while being schooled in the use of magic, in director Chris Columbus' 2001 big- screen version of the J.K. Rowling fantasy.

On tonight's House, the cranky doctor finally gets a patient he can relate to. In this new episode, House (Hugh Laurie) and his team try to figure out what's wrong with a man suffering from chronic pain - something House has lived with for years. No word on whether the patient is also an insufferable jerk. Meanwhile, Foreman and Thirteen (Omar Epps and Olivia Wilde) deal with their budding relationship, and Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) gets a lesson in juggling work and parenthood. The medical mystery show now in its fifth season celebrates its 100 episode next month.

LOS ANGELES - Strictly in terms of dollars and cents, the deal announced yesterday for the Walt Disney Co. to buy Fox Family Worldwide for about $3.2 billion is not in a league with a transaction like that of AOL-Time Warner or even Viacom-CBS. But it is, nevertheless, a noteworthy moment in the relentless push toward media consolidation, with important programming implications for television networks like Disney-owned ABC, and an even larger cultural significance in terms of who will become the principal teller of children's stories worldwide.

Slide on that jumpsuit and lace up those blue suede shoes. Tonight's the night of the big pay-per-view Elvis tribute.* "Summertime Switch" (8-10 p.m., Channel 13) -- Jason Weaver and Rider Strong star as kids with similar names who mistakenly get sent to the wrong summer camps: one posh, the other brutal. In this original ABC family telemovie, friends are made, lessons learned, and viewers in search of intelligent family TV are advised to switch rather than "Switch." ABC.* "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" (8-9 p.m., Channel 11)

Primetime Thursday reports on the real story behind America's most famous haunted house, immortalized in the classic scary movie The Amityville Horror. The house's former owner - who bought it after an entire family was murdered there - chronicles the bizarre occurrences he claims his family witnessed, including accounts of apparitions, levitations and mysterious life forces. While his spooky story sold millions of books and movie tickets, the debunkers say it's all a big hoax. Primetime tries to separate the bizarre facts from the pure fiction.

Brave New Girl is either payback or an investment. There's no way any self-respecting network, even one as low in the pecking order as ABC Family Channel, would commission such a trite film without ulterior motives. Brave New Girl merited special treatment because it is based on a book supposedly written by Britney Spears and her mother, Lynne. Other candidates for the Nobel in literature can rest easy. But Britney, a published author? The mind reels. Little Golden Books have more complex plots than Brave New Girl (tonight at 8 and 10 on the Family Channel)

Wish you were celebrating the Fourth of July on the high seas? Well, here's the next best thing a 10-hour "The Great Ships" marathon (10 a.m.-8 p.m., History) that provides interesting observations about an array of seaworthy vessels -- from clippers and destroyers to aircraft carriers and ocean liners.At a glance"Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" (8 p.m.-8: 30 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Our favorite sorceress gears up for frustration after buying a talking car from the other realm. Repeat. ABC."