What You will be watching Friday nights this winter.

ABC This is a promo picture from Shark Tank, I swear. It is also too funny to not post. He has a pie! For a head! HILARITY.

Hold up. Friday is not a night where we should have to make decisions about what to watch. Fridays are the nights where you lie on your couch and furiously flip through the channels looking for something, ANYTHING, that isn't one of those true crime shows on NBC, because come on, everyone knows the husband did it. But suddenly we have The Ricky Gervais Show and Shark Tank and the sexiness that will be Spartacus and my Friday night favorite, The Soup? Alright. So maybe they don't exactly air against each other, but who cares? That's still like 3 times as many shows worth watching on a Friday night than ever before, you know?

And you? What will you watch on Fridays? Or will you be out enjoying actual human companionship on Friday nights?

FRIDAY

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

(Caution: This is a seriously PG-13 preview above. Lots of gore, and lots of suggested sexiness.) Three parts Gladiator + one part 300 + a dash of Rome = this glossy, gory gladiator series which Starz has already renewed for a second season. It appears to have the potential to be great fun, if you don't mind some of the plot apparently being ripped whole cloth from the Russell Crowe epic (he was torn from his wife and taken into slavery? HMM. NOPE. NOT WRINGING ANY BELLS.), while shedding any resemblance to the Kirk Douglas film. Spartacus appears to have also shaken off a lot the heft that made up the wonderful HBO series Rome whilst keeping all the sex and violence -- the best parts, some might argue. Long story short, this will be added to Tubular's DVR.

The Ricky Gervais Show

Ricky Gervais can do no wrong.* The Office, as has been well-established, is one of the best television comedies of all time; Extras was a woefully unappreciated but delightful series; and his appearance on the Emmys is one of the highlights of that awards ceremony -- ever. So I have no reason to believe that The Ricky Gervais Show, an animated series based on his widely downloaded podcasts with Stephen Merchant and the very strange Karl.

*Except in movies. He doesn't make many good decisions about movies, I'm afraid.

The Life and Times of Tim

This is a quirky little animated series that I liked when it first debuted last year, and then promptly forgot. Maybe it'll make an apt pairing with The Ricky Gervais Show. And, anyway, what else do you have to watch on Fridays?

Other notable shows on Fridays this fall:
• I Shouldn't Be Alive [18]: 8 p.m., Animal Planet (Jan. 15)
• The Haunted [19]: 9 p.m., Animal Planet (Jan. 15)
• The Singing Bee [20]: 8 p.m., CMT (Jan. 15)
• CMT Cribs [21]: 9 p.m., CMT (Jan. 22)
• American Loggers [22]: 9 p.m., Discovery (Jan. 15)
• America's Small Town Secrets [23]: 8 p.m., ID (Feb. 5)
• Living With the Dead [24]: 9 p.m., ID (Feb. 5)
• Operation Wild [25]: 9 p.m., Planet Green (Jan. 8)
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand* [26]: 9 p.m., Starz (Jan. 22)
• Shameless [27]: 9 p.m., Sundance (Jan. 1)
• Caprica [28]: 8 p.m., Syfy (Jan. 22)
• Stargate Universe [29]: 8 p.m., Syfy (Apr. 2)
• What Not to Wear [30]: 8 p.m., TLC (Jan. 8)
• Manhattan Marriage Project [31]: 9 p.m., TLC (Jan. 8)

Will you be watching anything, or will you give your DVR the night off?