HBO

Seriously weird. But by the end of next week's second episode, John From Cincinnati is weirdly serious, too. HBO's new contemporary beach saga from Deadwood auteur David Milch is no longer just supernaturally strange, excessively foul-mouthed, often abrasive and continually vexing. It isn't even merely sun-and-surf pretty. It's emotionally involving, too. Maybe even cosmic. JOHN FROM CINCINNATI / / Makes its premiere about 10 tonight on HBO

The AMC cable drama Mad Men ends its first season tonight as one of the most dramatically dazzling debuts since the freshman year of HBO's The Sopranos in 1999. Talk about worthy successors arriving right on time: This period piece about life in a Madison Avenue advertising agency circa 1960 premiered in July just weeks after HBO's mob drama left the airwaves for good. The similarity in richness, texture and even themes is no accident -- the series is created and written by Emmy winner Matthew Weiner, a writer and producer for The Sopranos.

Excitement filled the air at the Columbia soundstage where much of HBO's The Wire is filmed. Here fans had a chance to meet and mingle with the actors and crew of the Baltimore-based HBO series and take a tour of its sets. But, at this "A Night at The Wire" fundraiser for the Ella Thompson Fund, there was also a tinge of heartache. "I heard several [actors] comment about how sorry they are the show is going off the air. Not as sorry as we are," said Todd McCombs, the Rand Corp. IT manager, as he and wife Jennifer commiserated about their favorite show coming to an end. One actor took a more philosophical approach.

HOT ON THE HEELS OF A SUM-mer that saw audience levels sink to an all-time low, the broadcast networks could be in for more pain yet tonight at the 59th annual Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. The Emmy telecast is designed to promote the start of the new fall season on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CW. But tonight's program on Fox could wind up celebrating the cable industry instead -- all those regulation-free channels that have been thrashing the networks in the ratings in recent months.

The Heritage Shadows of the Silver Screen Museum and Cinema is launching a national campaign to select the 50 greatest African-American movies and actors of the 20th century. Heritage founder Michael Johnson announced the campaign Wednesday at a luncheon at City Hall, where Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, City Council representatives Sheila Dixon, Helen Holton and Rochelle "Ricki" Spector and other dignitaries saw clips from the pending HBO movie "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge."A theatrical screening of the film next week at the Senator Theatre will officially kick off the campaign, Johnson said.

NBC received the most Emmy nominations yesterday with 82, but the big story was the continuing climb of cable channel HBO, which finished second with 74.HBO has dominated movies and mini-series for several years, but yesterday one of its dramas, "The Sopranos," a critically acclaimed look at Mafia life in New Jersey, topped all shows with 16 nominations and joined the ranks of NBC's "ER" and "Law & Order" and ABC's "NYPD Blue" and "The Practice" as nominee...

NEW YORK -- Film study is, of course, second nature to most quarterbacks, so Johnny Unitas has gotten used to seeing his exploits on a big screen over the past 40 years.But when the lavish documentary of his life and exploits ended in a screening room at the HBO building here Monday, Unitas looked a little sheepish standing at a podium, as if the achievements he had just seen belonged to someone else."It's kind of funny to watch yourself like that," said Unitas, flanked by two of his sons.

After a month of bloated, gaseous, hideously expensive and silly network films like "Cleopatra" and "Atomic Train," it is almost a shock to come upon a production as focused, challenging, moving and fine as HBO's "A Lesson Before Dying."The film has it all. There is wisdom on such big themes as manhood, education, dignity, courage, community, capital punishment and race. There is great acting. Don Cheadle, whose show-stopping performance in HBO's recent "Rat Pack" almost turned that film into "The Sammy Davis Story," takes you so far inside his character you forget there's a screen separating his world from yours.

LOS ANGELES -- It was a Saturday in Cleveland, and Halle Berry tuned in the local UHF channel for the afternoon movie.The black-and-white screen sparkled with Dorothy Dandridge singing and dancing in the 1954 film "Carmen Jones," featuring an all-black cast. Berry, then 18 and living in an all-white suburb, was transfixed."Wow, everybody else in this movie is black, too, and they're talented and beautiful," she recalls thinking at the time. "This seems like a happy place. I want to go wherever they are."

The witness protection program sounds like a simple thing: Get some mob operative to spill his guts and help put his former compatriots in jail, and in return, whisk him away to some faraway place under an assumed identity so he can start a whole new life.Of course, it's not so simple -- especially for the guy being whisked away. How would you, and most likely your family, like having your entire past erased? How would you like living with the knowledge that one slip, one time calling yourself by your old name, could kill you?

In an interview this week, Larry David, creator of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," answered a question from me about matters of taste by saying, "And the more people I can offend, the better." If that is the standard, then Sunday's premiere of the seventh season of this HBO comedy is the best. Right out of the box, David is absolutely pushing the limits of TV comedy on issues of race, gender, coarse language, mental illness and physical disease. You don't realize how incredibly edgy David's work on HBO is until you try to write about it in a family newspaper and suddenly discover that you can barely start to describe situations and setups, let alone dialogue and punch lines.

Actor Robert Lee Hardy has every single attribute needed to succeed as an actor: talent; training; dark, muscular good looks and a determination so strong it practically shorts out the stage lights. If his big break has so far remained mysteriously and inexplicably out of reach, Hardy isn't letting that stop him. "The days are long gone when stars were discovered walking down the street," says the 28-year-old lifelong Baltimorean. "You have to create your own opportunities." And that's just what he's doing in his current, mostly one-actor show, The Best of Robert Lee Hardy, running this weekend at Baltimore Theatre Project.

Tina Fey's acclaimed NBC sitcom 30 Rock led all shows and made history with a record 22 nominations. But outside of that network triumph, cable TV once again dominated the prime-time Emmy award nominations in most major categories. Premium cable channel HBO led the field with a total of 99 nominations, while NBC finished a distant second with 67. HBO ran away from the pack with its superiority in movies and miniseries. Grey Gardens, a film starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange as two eccentric relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, earned 17 nominations alone.

FILM Public Enemies: Johnny Depp plays lovable knaves like no one else, so it's no surprise that he feels right at home behind the tommy gun as 1930s gangster John Dillinger. And what's a bad boy without a gal at his side and a G-man on his tail? A-listers Marion Cotillard and Christian Bale round out director Michael Mann's all-star cast. In theaters Wednesday. CONCERT Guggenheim Grotto : This up-and-coming Irish folk-pop band finally gets the First Thursday concert series up and running this week.

Sutherland accused in New York scuffle New York City police were investigating claims Wednesday by a fashion designer who says actor Kiefer Sutherland head-butted him at a SoHo nightclub. Jack McCollough, of the Proenza Schouler fashion house, reported the incident happened around 2 a.m. Tuesday and says he was cut on his face. McCollough claimed Sutherland, star of Fox television's 24, attacked him after an argument at the club, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

FILM 'Star Trek' : Lost creator J.J. Abrams takes the classic series back to square one, and the results are kind of cosmic. It's an adrenaline rush of action and adventure with just enough nostalgia. Finally relieved of the original cast, it boldly goes where no Trek has gone before. In theaters Friday. POP MUSIC 'White Lies for Dark Times': : by Ben Harper ... : The folk rocker switches up his sound and his backup band. With White Lies, we get a harder, louder edge and the Relentless 7 in lieu of the Innocent Criminals.

Aaron Grady Shaw has been living two lives the last four months. In one, he's just a 12-year-old kid trying to navigate his way through seventh grade at Perry Hall Middle School while dreaming of a big year as a third baseman in a county boys' baseball league this summer. In his other life, though, he has already advanced far beyond the level of wishing and hoping. At 4 feet 11 inches, he has stood shoulder to shoulder on New York City sound stages with Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning veteran actors while speaking the words of Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award writers - a featured performer in a prime-time series on HBO, television's most prestigious channel.

TV 'Coming Home: ...' : Just because Sesame Street is a kids' show doesn't mean it can't tackle tough issues. Queen Latifah hosts this smart and sensitive documentary about families dealing with the physical and mental scars of war. It's accessible for kids, but it's also compelling for adults. Airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday on MPT-Channel 22. DVD 'Marley and Me': Owen Wilson stars as a newspaper reporter who gets more than he bargained for when he adopts a rambunctious lab. When it hit theaters over Christmas, this doggy drama was capable of reducing even the most cynical moviegoers to tears.

And you thought it was expensive watching The Wire on Comcast. Try tuning in via $42,000 a year at Middlebury College, which began offering a course on the late, great HBO series this semester. The Middlebury price includes a whole year's education at the esteemed Vermont college but, alas, no access to the Food Network. A better bargain can be had at UC Berkeley, which charges $7,000 (in state) and just launched a Wire course of its own. "As far as I know, [Berkeley's Linda Williams]

I Love You, Man is a funny film about discomfort that would be funnier if it dared to knock the audience out of its comfort zone. It's ostensibly about the differences between close male friends and tribal buddies as well as the gap between men and their wives and lovers. But it's mostly about the canny confectionary skills that go into making a smash sitcomlike farce. It's like a Judd Apatow comedy given the unyielding pace and invariably neat wrap-up of a '90s hit like Friends. At one point, the script riffs on the HBO ad line, "It's not TV, it's HBO."