Atlanta

Tuesday at 10 p.m., FX

This new series was created by and stars Donald Glover (above), but it’s absolutely nothing like the show Glover is best known for, “Community.’’ “Atlanta’’ behaves like a quiet low-concept indie film broken into half-hour set pieces, as it embraces the ups, downs, and especially the in-betweens of its hero’s journey as a young, poor black man in the South. Glover plays a guy verging on homelessness who wants to manage his rap-artist cousin in the Atlanta music scene. It’s melancholy, amusing, clever, insightful, humane, and, with its beautifully shot Atlanta locations, steeped in local specificity. There are a few moments when the emotional beats are hazy, the ideas vague, the vibe too meditative; but there are many, many more points when the show blows you away with its intelligence, humanity, and unwillingness to rush or telegraph any of its jokes or misfortunes.

The Closer

Wednesday, 8 and 9 p.m., MyNetworkTV

Years ago, I was teased by a colleague for my love of “The Closer.’’ The show, she noted, was perfect for the “Murder She Wrote’’ set. My colleague’s joking was true enough to stick to my brain and haunt me throughout the last years of “The Closer,’’ which ended after seven seasons in 2012. Knowing that repeats air weekly on MyNetworkTV, I decided to revisit the show from the distance of four years. I was fully prepared to sit down and fall into a shame spiral about having supported it so vocally during its run. Yeah, I’m completely unrepentant. “The Closer’’ will never find its way to the top of best-ever lists, and that’s as it should be. But still, it was an intelligent procedural that managed to show how justice and the law can work at cross-purposes. The writing of the weekly crime cases was particularly good, just as it was on “The Good Wife.’’ It’s not easy to write good hour-long thrillers in an era when, thanks to “Law & Order,’’ “NCIS,’’ and “CSI,’’ TV is overcrowded with them. And star Kyra Sedgwick was extraordinary.

Better Things

Thursday at 10 p.m., FX

This new show, co-created by Pamela Adlon and Louis C.K., is excellent. It stars Adlon as a harried single mother of three who works as an actress and voice artist — just like Adlon herself, who starred on “Californication’’ and voiced Bobby Hill on “King of the Hill.’’ Like “Louie,’’ “Better Things’’ represents the tenor of life so accurately you might be tempted to miss the great art and effort behind it all. Adlon’s Sam deals with Hollywood sexism and ageism, faces bullying by her relatively entitled kids, and copes with her odd British mother. Small incidents, such as Sam’s visit to the gynecologist, or her outburst while voicing a cartoon animal, form what is usually considered “plot.’’ But it’s all remarkably winning and insightful. Adlon is a powerhouse lead; she prevails with the passion, cynicism, chaos, anger, profanity, and resilient humor that have become her trademark. She is a happily crazy lady on “Better Things,’’ a lovable, helium-voiced survivor no matter how much her daughters tune her out.

Cigna ad

MDTV fans, this is for you. A new 30-second commercial by health insurance company Cigna brings together five TV doctors to recommend office visits. One by one the actors pop up in hospital garb, to make fun of the fact that they know nothing about actual doctoring, that they only played one on TV. The group: Alan Alda, who was Hawkeye on “M*A*S*H’’; Lisa Edelstein, who was Cuddy on “House’’; Donald Faison, who was Turk on “Scrubs’’; Noah Wyle, who was Carter on “E.R.’’; and Patrick Dempsey, who was McDreamy on “Grey’s Anatomy.’’ It’s amusingly disorienting to see these folks all in one place, traveling through time and space and network boundaries to stand together. The ad opens during surgery, with a nurse handing a scalpel to a masked doctor who turns out to be Alda. “I have no idea what I’m doing,’’ Alda says to us. “I’m just a TV doctor.’’ Dempsey notes, “I never went to college.’’ Faison says, “I don’t do blood.’’ You could spend many hours waiting to see the ad when it airs on TV. My prescription: Just search for it on YouTube.

MATTHEW GILBERT

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.