With the Emmy Awards behind us, the 2008-2009 TV Season is officially in the books, and the new season has already started its engines.

There are a handful of returning shows that I am excited for, and a couple of new ones that I think you might want to check out. I’ll highlight two of each.

The Newcomers

Bored To Death (Sundays, 9:30 PM HBO)

All you have to say is Zach Galifianakis, and I’m in. Add in Jason Schwartzman and a great turn by Ted Danson playing against type, and we may have ourselves a winner. The show follows a writer (Schwartzman), who is feeling some writer’s block and decides to partake into a job he envies so much in novels, a detective.

It premiered last night, and it showed some real promise. It actually feels more like it could have been a movie, but the way it sets up it will be a fun little procedural set in side a world that will remind you of one part Wes Anderson, one part Burn Notice, and one part Galifianakis. I like what that formula could provide.

Community (Thursdays, 9:30 - Til Oct. 8, then 8:00. NBC)

Joel McHale may be the funniest guy on TV that you don’t know about. The host of E!’s The Soup, McHale has been grinding for the past few years doing his show, performing nationally, and taking minor roles in other projects, and now I think we will see his breakout. NBC’s Community feels a lot like its compatriots 30 Rock and The Office, but it isn’t trying to ride their coattails.

It isn’t just McHale starring in this comedy about a lawyer who is suspended when it is found out that he never got a real college degree and is forced to go back, in this case to a community college. There he meets some of the crazy people, young and old, who inhabit such a place. They are highlighted by the return of a comedy great as Chevy Chase gives us a role of Pierce, a man who boasts to being extremely successful and smart, despite where he is. I think this role will do the same for him, what 30 Rock did for Alec Baldwin. What else is interesting is how much McHale will remind you of…Chevy Chase, circa 1980. Not a bad person to be compared to.

The Returning Champs

How I Met Your Mother (Mondays, 8 PM CBS)

I don’t know what else I can say that I haven’t said before, but the new season looks like it might be the best one yet. Last season HIMYM had to deal with not 1, BUT 2 pregnancies to their leading ladies, which forced the show into limited plots and action, but they made it through pretty much unscathed.

This season, we got the beginning of BaRobin, Ted in a new job…and actually happy, and Lilly will be back and not forced behind a basketball or globe or whatever was needed to hide her belly. I can’t wait for tonight.

House (Mondays, 8 PM FOX)

Thank your God for DVR, because less than a decade ago you would have to videotape a show if it was on at the same time as another one you wanted to see. Mondays at 8 are gonna be rough, because starting in January, Chuck will be returning in this time slot too. Yikes.

Anyway, House is coming back for its 6th season, but this one promises to be like no other. Dr. House, after hitting the breaking point with his drug habit and hallucinations, checked himself into an insane asylum/rehab in the season finale. No one knows what this really means for the rest of the characters in the show, and how long this will last, but Hugh Laurie getting to show off even more is enough for me to tune in.