'Night Court' and 'That '90s Show' welcome back the age of pre-prestige TV

It's impossible to generalize about television except to say that there's too much of it, but here and there, in a small way, we seem to be experiencing something of a neoclassical phase. Reheating old series and seasoning them to modern tastes — often to make them darker, more psychologically acute or self-satirical — has been common practice for a while. But there is also a move to mimic and honor the forms and ambitions of pre-prestige television, made less to impress or elevate than to entertain. A show like the recent CBS series "So Help Me Todd," with Marcia Gay Harden as an attorney and Skylar Astin as her investigator son, could easily have been been mounted in the 1960s or '70s; the upcoming "Poker Face," with Natasha Lyonne, though identifiably of its time, takes structural cues from "Columbo" and "The Fugitive."

This week sees the revival of two popular comedies born in late 20th-century broadcast television. "Night Court," which ran from 1984