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So long, 'CSI,' hello 'Quantico,' 'Indian Summers'

Long-running CBS hit wraps up as stars William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger return for two-hour finale, while ABC, PBS unveil new shows.

Grissom's back , and so is Catherine - William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger, respectively (with Jorja Fox, right) - to put the forensic icing on the "CSI" cake as it heads to the morgue after 15 years.
Grissom's back , and so is Catherine - William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger, respectively (with Jorja Fox, right) - to put the forensic icing on the "CSI" cake as it heads to the morgue after 15 years.Read more

* CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION. 9 p.m. Sunday, CBS3.

* MASTERPIECE: INDIAN SUMMERS. 9 p.m. Sunday, WHYY12.

* BLOOD & OIL. 9 p.m. Sunday, 6ABC.

* QUANTICO. 10 p.m. Sunday, 6ABC.

FIRE UP the DVR: Sunday brings CBS' send-off to the show that helped change the face of its schedule over the past 15 years, two new series from ABC and a new, India-set period drama from PBS' "Masterpiece" that could be the newest jewel in the network's crown.

If you haven't watched "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" since Gil Grissom (William Petersen) left, the good news is that he'll be back in the two-hour finale, along with Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) in an episode written by series creator Anthony Zuiker.

Dominatrix Lady Heather (Melinda Clarke) is also supposed to return, according to CBS, to "create controversy one last time between Grissom and Jorja Fox's Sara Sidle."

ABC's 'Blood & Oil'

After a young couple (Chace Crawford and Rebecca Rittenhouse) see their dream of opening three laundromats in the boomtowns of oil-rich North Dakota hit the spin cycle, a daring Plan B draws them into the orbit of oil tycoon Hap Briggs (Don Johnson) in ABC's appropriately sudsy "Blood & Oil."

Amber Valletta plays Briggs' wife and business adviser, Carla, and Scott Michael Foster ("Chasing Life") his good-for-nothing son, Wick.

This new "Dallas" could be coming a bit late, as declining oil prices threaten to turn the Bakken boom into a bust, but the story's timeless enough, if maybe a little tired.

ABC's 'Quantico'

Everything I know I learned from TV, including this: When a woman has sex with a handsome stranger the day before beginning a new job, that stranger will be one of the first people she meets on the job.

But after ABC's "Quantico" goes where "Grey's Anatomy" has gone before, things actually get interesting.

Priyanka Chopra, a former Miss World already famous as an actress in her native India, stars as Alex Parrish, an FBI recruit who, like most of her remarkably diverse (and apparently devious) class of fellow trainees, has her secrets.

But does that make her a terrorist?

Alex's training is seen in flashbacks from a bombing at Manhattan's Grand Central Station that's supposed to be the largest such attack since Sept. 11. The FBI's convinced that one member of her class is responsible.

Heightened reality, I suspect, doesn't begin to describe the show's approach to FBI training (or, for that matter, recruitment). But after its unpromising beginning, the pilot has nary a dull moment, and Chopra alone would be reason enough to watch.

PBS' 'Indian Summers'

"Is 'Indian Summers' the new 'Downton Abbey?' " asked the British press when the series about life among the English ruling class in 1932 India premiered in the U.K. last winter.

PBS, which launches the nine-episode series Sunday on "Masterpiece," can only hope so.

"Downton," which begins its final season Jan. 3, drew viewers to "Masterpiece" who may not have watched PBS regularly since "Sesame Street," and helped bring in enough support to fund 21 more hours of programming for 2015.

I wouldn't count on "Indian Summers" to supplant "Downton Abbey" in anyone's affections, but, after a slowish start, it's proving addictive.

Julie Walters ("Educating Rita") stars as Cynthia Coffin, who runs a British club at the center of social life in Simla (now known as Shimla), the northern retreat where the viceroy and those who helped him rule India during the days of the empire would go to beat the heat.

Much of the action, though, swirls around the viceroy's private secretary, Ralph Whelan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), and his sister, Alice (Jemima West), who's recently returned to her childhood home after many years in England.

Both have secrets that could destroy them in the gossipy, unforgiving society, as does just about everyone in "Indian Summers."

Indian civil servant Aafrin Dalal (Nikesh Patel) also has a sister, Sooni (Aysha Kala), whose revolutionary fervor is one of several threats to his ambitions.

Change is coming that will affect all of them - Time magazine had named Mahatma Gandhi "man of the year" in 1930, after all - and "Indian Summers" doesn't ignore it. It is, if anything, more incisive about class, both among the British and the Indians, than "Downton," while providing all the romance and intrigue anyone could wish for.

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