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“You could not pay me enough to be 24 again,” a free-clinic gynecologist says with a weary sigh while examining the nether regions of Hannah Horvath, the talkative, deeply neurotic central character of HBO’s startlingly original new series, “Girls.”

The new season of the medieval fantasy “Game of Thrones” serves up plenty of wartime posturing, a seemingly endless number of would-be rulers and the usual sex and violence.

After 18 months of waiting, an average of 3.5 million people tuned in Sunday to watch “Mad Men’s” fifth-season debut. That’s a series best for the show — and about 600,000 more people than watched the fourth-season debut in July 2010. “Mad Men” had been off the air since October 2010, following the fourth-season finale, as the studio, the network and the creator wrangled over this and that — product placement within the show, adding another ad break, creator’s salary, blah, blah, blah.

This post-episode mini-analysis of “Mad Men” could have focused on the already dysfunctional marriage between Don and Megan Draper, a relationship that — as Sunday’s season five premiere, “A Little Kiss,” demonstrated — apparently involves Don’s usual callousness, upward career mobility for Megan and your standard make-up sex prompted by half-naked house cleaning.

HBO has canceled its racetrack drama “Luck” after a third horse died during production of the show. “It is with heartbreak that executive producers David Milch and Michael Mann together with HBO have decided to cease all future production on the series ‘Luck,’ ” the premium cable network said in a statement late Wednesday.

Sarah Palin can still pack them in. Even when someone else is playing her. HBO’s “Game Change,” a chronicle -- from the team behind HBO's "Recount" -- of the former Alaska governor’s candidacy for the vice presidency nearly four years ago, drew 2.1 million viewers in its initial run Saturday, making it the highest-rated HBO original film in nearly eight years.

Have you ever seen a trailer and thought, "I'm going to freakin' die from anticipation?" That's the thought that Game of Thrones fans are going to have when you see this season 2 trailer. HBO's hit show has it all: politics, treachery, dragons, and Tyrion Lannister. If the anticipation doesn't kill me, I'm sure the first moment I lay my eyes on Tyrion on season 2 will.

In “Luck,” starring Dustin Hoffman and directed by Michael Mann, horses, and people, jostle for position.

Jonathan Ames, the creator of the recently canceled HBO series “Bored to Death,” invited local fans to join him at a Boerum Hill bar Wednesday in its memory.

Michael Douglas will take on the role of Liberace for a biopic film on the legendary pianist, HBO confirmed Tuesday. The feature, titled “Behind the Candelabra,” is scheduled to begin production next summer, under the direction of Steven Soderbergh.