• Sci Fi launches a spinoff from its long-running Stargate SG-1 series tonight, Stargate Atlantis (Friday, 9 ET/PT). The two-hour premiere stars Torri Higginson and Joe Flanigan as the leaders of a team of Stargate explorers who discover the famous lost city.

• You would think a show called The Days (ABC, Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT) would evidence a better concept of time, as in how many events you can crowd into one hour, or how many cuts you can shove into one scene. Instead, the producers have packed the premiere with so many crises, camera tricks and quirks that it collapses under the excess. It’s a show for people who find commercials strain their attention span.

David Newsom, Marguerite MacIntyre, Laura Ramsey, Zachary Maurer and Evan Peters make up the Day family, whose lives will be chronicled for us in six 24-hour periods. The actors are all fine, but each has been given at least one scene that is simply impossible to play without having the audience shrug in annoyed disbelief. As the teenage son, Cooper, poor Peters gets the worst of it: His character is so annoying, you would think the show is lobbying for a return of corporal punishment in schools. Days like this, there’s no need to repeat.