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THE NEW SEASON . . . SORT...

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THE NEW SEASON . . . SORT OF--All right, get technical.

It’s true that ABC, CBS and NBC don’t officially open their fall TV seasons until Sept. 22, the day after this year’s prime-time Emmy telecast. Nevertheless, a week that introduces three network prime-time and five off-network series, while tossing in a new cable docudrama and a returning network blockbuster, sounds like a new season to me.

The first network newcomer is “The Wizard” at 8 p.m. Tuesday on CBS (Channels 2 and 8), a promising hour adventure series starring dwarf David Rappaport as a toy maker with special powers. Doug Barr co-stars.

NBC is using this week to give an early boost to its new Sunday series. So . . .

--”Our House” is being showcased at 8:30 p.m. Thursday (Channels 4, 36, 39), after “The Cosby Show,” before moving to its regular time slot at 7 p.m. Sundays. “Our House” is an hour drama starring Wilford Brimley as a grandfather whose life is dramatically changed when his widowed daughter-in-law and three grandchildren move in with him.

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--”Easy Street” is a sitcom with Loni Anderson as a former Las Vegas showgirl whose life also changes when she inherits wealth and a mansion and invites her scruffy uncle (Jack Elam) and his friend (Lee Weaver) to move in with her. It “previews” at 9:30 p.m. Saturday after “The Golden Girls.” Its regular time slot, though, is 8 p.m. Sundays following “Our House.”

Monday, meanwhile, brings a spate of new off-network series, beginning with “True Confessions,” half-hour dramatizations “from the pages of True Confessions magazine,” at 11:30 a.m. weekdays on KCOP (Channel 13).

Next comes “Oprah Winfrey,” the hot Chicago talk show replacing “Tom Snyder” at 3 p.m. weekdays on KABC-TV (Channel 7). That’s also the Monday time slot for “The New Leave It to Beaver” on WTBS cable, a first-run weekly series moving over from the Disney Channel and starring nearly all of the original Cleaver gang.

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Also arriving is “Nightlife With David Brenner,” an 11 p.m. weeknight series on KCOP that joins the ever swelling late-night talk-show crowd, soon also to include Joan Rivers, Dick Cavett and Jimmy Breslin.

And on cable’s Showtime network, comic Garry Shandling stars in the premiere of a six-part comedy series Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.

The returning blockbuster is “Winds of War” at 8 p.m. Sunday, a repeat of ABC’s enormously popular 18-hour miniseries version of Herman Wouk’s novel of the same name. Subsequent three-hour episodes air at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and next Sunday.

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The docudrama is “Yuri Nosenko, KGB,” a suspenseful and appealingly staged production airing at 10 p.m. Sunday on HBO. Tommy Lee Jones stars as a CIA agent in a complex story about an apparent Soviet defector. It may well be the best that this week’s “mini” new season has to offer.

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