The Week in Gay TV: Back to the "Southland", a New "Greek" Chapter and Goodbye to "Caprica"

Welcome to a new edition of The Week in Gay TV, your guide to the shows that will be battling for DVR space in the week ahead. After a break for the winter holidays, the schedule is picking up again starting with a new season of Southland and Greek while plenty of favorites are returning with new episodes.

Friday is one of the bigger occasions for friends and family to get together as it's New Year's Eve and there's plenty of special programming to celebrate switching from that 2010 Gilles Marini calendar to a 2011 Rodiney Santiago calendar (or whatever you put on your wall).

Considering how they're on the one New Year's show that has gay blogs all atwitter on New Year's Day, I have a feeling most gay viewers are making plans to watch Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper on CNN's New Year's Eve Live! While part of the fun is waiting for that moment where Griffin is more... unfiltered than CNN execs would like, Cooper and Griffin are so much fun to watch together it works even without those candid moments.

Griffin isn't the only outspoken ginger to watch on this New Year's Eve. Bette Midler takes her now-closed Caesar's Palace show, The Showgirl Must Go On, from stage to the small screen of HBO.

Meanwhile, Bravo VP Andy Cohen's talk show  Watch What Happens Live expands to a holiday edition with Andy's New Year's Party. The guest list includes Megan McCain, Sandra Bernhard as well as Bravoleberties like Jeff Lewis, Kim Zolciak and Lisa Vanderpump. With a guest list like that I imagine plenty of the discussion will focus on Real Housewives feuds, missing pea puree and embarrassing unaired footage from Bravo reality shows.

That's not all the New Year's Eve programming. ABC will have Jennifer Hudson, Mike Posner and Natasha Bedingfield performing on this year's Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest. Meanwhile, Nicki Minaj and My Chemical Romance are among the performers expected to appear on NBC's New Year's Eve with Carson Daly, where Bono and The Edge will also discuss the Broadway show Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Finally, Fox's New Year's Eve Live promises David Archuleta and The Plain White T's.

Oh, and MTV has that thing where they'll be putting Snooki in a giant hamster ball and lowering her onto the Jersey Shore to celebrate the New Year. Honestly, I'm having a hard time imagining it but since it's Jersey Shore related, I feel reassured that the idea doesn't make much sense to me.

New Year's Day is quiet for TV (I guess there are Bowl games on other channels) but Teen Nick is kicking off the new year with a six-weekend Degrassi marathon including every episode of the ridiculously addictive Canadian teen soap. This weekend, Teen Nick will be airing the first two seasons, with gay teen Marco making his first appearance early in Season Two.

Meanwhile, the Oprah Winfrey Network makes its debut on New Year's Day with a look at the new cable channel's programming. Next week we'll be watching Ryan O'Connor as he competes on Your OWN Show: Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star, but hopefully the preview will include a peek at Ryan and his competitors.

Meanwhile, BBC America has a special New Year's edition of The Graham Norton Show with Kick-Ass' Elizabeth McGovern, comedian Alan Davies (you might recognize him from when he played gay in Bob & Rose or as the permanent panelist on QI) and musical guest Eliza Doolittle.