As massive as the ratings were for CBS’ Whitney Houston tribute-filled Grammycast Sunday -- watched by an average 39.9 million viewers --  the annual awards show didn’t stop the zombies.

AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” returning from its long Season 2 holiday break, drew a record 8.1 million viewers at 9 p.m. and with its 11 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. encores, totaled 10.1 million for the night.

Some 5.4 million of those 9 p.m. viewers were the 18- to 49-year-olds advertisers target.

That’s more in both cases than last fall’s season premiere, which had already set basic-cable records for a drama.

The premiere of Kevin Smith’s “reality” show, “Comic Book Men,” meanwhile, averaged 2 million viewers at 10 p.m.

A Grammy Awards show fueled by tributes to Whitney Houston drew monster ratings Sunday night, with CBS, citing preliminary Nielsens reporting the largest audience for the show since 1984 and the second-highest viewership for the show ever. (According to Entertainment Weekly, that's a 44 percent increase from last year.)

The network said that preliminary reports indicated that the show drew more than 39 million viewers between 8 and 11 p.m.

Could Roseanne Barr and John Goodman strike gold twice?

Deadline.com is reporting that Goodman's in "final negotiations" to join his former "Roseanne" co-star's new pilot, "Downwardly Mobile," in which Roseanne would run a mobile home park and Goodman would play someone who works there and has "a buddy relationship" with her.

The show's said to be the creation of its star, her boyfriend John Argent and former "Roseanne" exec producer Eric Gilliland. Given that Argent's IMDB.com listing seems to consist of credits involving his playing himself or otherwise working on shows with Roseanne, this sounds like a potential nightmare behind the scenes.

But it would be good to see Roseanne back onscreen with the one guy whose marriage to her -- however fictional -- actually seemed to work.

HBO's "Game of Thrones" won't return until April 1, but the network yesterday released these images from Season 2, including some of characters from the George R.R. Martin saga that we haven't yet seen on film.

What do you think?

It's official: The doctor is out.

Fox's "House," starring Hugh Laurie as the acerbic, pain-ridden diagnostician Dr. Gregory House, will wrap up its practice this spring after eight seasons of strange and not-so-wonderful mysteries and maladies.

"The decision to end the show now, or ever, is a painful one, as it risks putting asunder hundreds of close friendships that have developed over the last eight years -- but also because the show itself has been a source of great pride to everyone involved," said a statement released by Fox Wednesday evening that was credited to Laurie as well as to his fellow executive producers, David Shore and Katie Jacobs.

"Since it began, 'House' has aspired to offer a coherent and satisfying world in which everlasting human questions of ethics and emotion, logic and truth, could be examined, played out, and occasionally answered. This sounds like fancy talk, but it really isn't. 'House' has, in its time, intrigued audiences around the world in vast numbers, and has shown that there is a strong appetite for television drama that relies on more than prettiness and gun play."

To that, I'd only add (for now) that in a medium too preoccupied by "Jersey Shore" and "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," "House," which was set at a fictional hospital in the Garden State, at least gave the impression that not everyone in New Jersey is a complete idiot.

NBC finally has a smash hit on its hands.

And it’s called “The Voice.”

Oh, “Smash,” the making-of-a-Broadway-musical show that many critics (including this one) loved and that NBC made the focus of a saturation ad campaign, did better than most things on the network, with some 11.5 million viewers in the preliminary Nielsens.
It easily won the 10 p.m. hour Monday in total viewers and among the 18- to 49-year-olds advertisers target.

But “The Voice,” coming off a post-Super Bowl showcase, managed to hold on to an average audience of nearly 17.7 million viewers, peaking in its second hour at 19.3 million.

Those are “American Idol” numbers, people. Or at least they used to be.

“Smash,” by contrast, did well, especially in a season where breaking 10 million viewers has become something of a feat, but it not only dropped considerably from its “Voice” lead-in, it continued to drop in the second half-hour, which is why I'm a little worried, even amid reports that this is the third-highest-rated premiere for the season.

Could all that singing be putting people to sleep?

Norway’s probably the last place you might expect to find Steve Van Zandt, much less Steve Van Zandt playing a mobster.

But that’s just where the E Street Band member (and former “Sopranos” co-star) turns up in “Lilyhammer,” his new fish-out-of-water dramedy series, which made its debut today on Netflix.

U.S. viewers may feel a bit out of water, too, at first, the Norwegian-made show having helpfully included English subtitles for even the dialogue that’s in English as well as the profanities in Norwegian we might otherwise have failed to notice. (In fact, the descriptive captioning appears to be the type used by the hearing-impaired.)

Van Zandt’s character is in witness protection — in Lillehammer, Norway — under the unlikely name Giovanni (“Call Me Johnny”) Henriksen. The name wasn’t his choice, but the venue was, the town having caught his eye during the 1994 Winter Olympics.
His plan is to open a sports bar, but he quickly encounters the kind of Scandinavian bureaucracy that seems to be the show’s real target.

Johnny’s mobster rules are the very antithesis of a highly regulated state with a strong safety net but seemingly even stronger restraints on free thinkers.

Or so “Lilyhammer” suggests, depicting the culturally insensitive mobster as just the kind of man of action his new community seems to need, more like Clint Eastwood in snowshoes than Silvio Dante.

I have to wonder what the Norwegians thought about all this.

The entire eight-episode season  -- each runs about 47 minutes --  is currently available for instant streaming on Netflix, which is trying every thing it can think of to convince subscribers to stay put (next week, Hulu adds an original political comedy, ‘Battleground,” to its lineup).

From what I’ve seen so far,  I wouldn’t say “Lilyhammer” is worth signing up for Netflix  to see, but if you’re already paying for it and you like Van Zandt — and Norwegian knits —  it’s certainly worth a look.

I tend to blow hot and cold on the subject weight-loss TV — hate NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” but will admit to having  wept through more than one episode of the Style Network’s “Too Fat for 15” — mostly because I know just how unentertaining healthy weight loss can be.

I get it: No one’s ever going to launch a prime-time hit with a picture of someone eating smaller portions and exercising in moderation. And you’re never going to hear one of those screaming trainers admit that throwing up on the treadmill isn’t a strategy for long-term success.

TV wants dramatic stories, and TLC has one, as tonight at 9 it launches a four-part series, “My 600-lb Life,” with Melissa, a Texas woman who weighed more than 600 pounds before undergoing gastric-bypass surgery more than seven years ago.

Unflinching in its honesty — even the not-so-squeamish will want to heed those onscreen warnings about the surgery shots, and there are multiple surgeries involved — the episode follows its remarkable subject for not seven weeks, or even seven months, but for seven years.

In seven years, you can tell a story that’s much more than a big reveal, and this one, which shows a marriage undergoing changes every bit as drastic as the changes in Melissa’s body, is probably must viewing for anyone who thinks a gastric bypass is the easy way out for the overweight.

Or, for that matter, for anyone who thinks all of life’s problems can be solved by the right diet.

HBO has renewed "Luck," its newest drama from "Deadwood" creator David Milch, for a second, 10-episode season.

The renewal of the racetrack drama, whose stars include Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, comes just two days after its official Sunday debut and follows a pattern HBO's established with other recent dramas -- renewal as promotional tool.

In other words, we told you lots and lots about "Luck" last week, and now we're reminding you that it's on next week, too -- and that the network's backing this horse to make it to the finish line.