What's On: Welcome to Miami Medical

If you have seen the excellent documentary Cocaine Cowboys or just wandered around Miami for 10 minutes, you know how real it can get in the 305. As if CSI: Miami did not exploit the (faked) golden rays of South Florida sunshine enough, Miami Medical bases its episodes around the idea of "golden hour," the 60 minutes after a traumatic injury when doctors have the best chance of saving a patient's life. As boring as that sentence was to read, it was even more boring to write, but at least this show is not about edgy nurses.

Miami Medical [10 PM, CBS]

Word on the street is that CBS's latest medical drama is not that much better than the Tiffany network's Three Rivers, a series born into critical condition last fall. Tonight's premiere opens with a freak ice cream parlor accident that critically injures the episode's patients and necessitates a string of quick surgeries. Mike Vogel and Lana Parrilla star as rival surgeons and Jeremy Northam is cast as a mysterious man who walks into the hospital with battlefield experience.

Wife Swap [8 PM, ABC]

If you can identify the difference between episodes of Wife Swap, then you will appreciate that tonight's episode is the show's sixth season premiere. The credit tonight goes out to the producers who found a New Jersey woman named Ro Drago who pays more attention to her prized doll collection (she calls them her "babies") than her own three children. Ro will switch places with Teresa, a hard-working woman in Alabama who juggles child-rearing with running her own coffee shop.

Merlin [10 PM, Syfy]

Back in 2008, NBC acquired the rights to this British drama, but the network's audience didn't quite take to it. Tonight, Merlin hopes to find a more accepting home on Syfy. In the first episode of the second season, the servant Cedric (Mackenzie Crook) tries to turn the Prince (Bradley James) against the title character (Colin Morgan). Meanwhile, Merlin learns some unsettling information about the newcomer, who has his eye on a jewel found beneath Camelot.

Gidget [9:45 PM, TCM]

This 1959 classic features Sandra Dee as Gidget, the wide-eyed beach bunny who spends a summer falling in love with an innocent surfer/crooner named Moondoggie (James Darren) and ingratiating herself into the local surfer gang. Hey, they don't call this Good Friday for nothing.