The real effects of last year's writers' strike are coming home to roost only now, in TV's second season. Usually around this time, when new shows replace flops at the end of winter, a great series can emerge—a Wonder Years or a Moonlighting (which, by the way, is finally getting good again). But this year, because of the strike, Hollywood's back bench is wobbly. So we're getting weak TV: a resurrected (and almost ruined) Kate & Allie; a dumb Dolphin Cove; a too-cutesy detective series spun off from a so-so TV movie, Father Dowling Mysteries, and a pathetically prepubescent attempt to bring jiggle back to TV in Nightingales, a show about young nurses in the big city. This week we see two more disappointments: A Fine Romance and Studio 5B. But this week also brings us the first good show of the second season. It's not a new show. It's an 18-year-old hit: Columbo.
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