Ellen Gray: 'Elementary,' 'Resort' will surely draw you in

* LAST RESORT. 8 p.m. Thursday, 6 ABC.

* ELEMENTARY. 10 p.m. Thursday, CBS 3.

SOMEONE'S OUT to get the USS Colorado.

Placed in the most precarious of positions in the Thursday premiere of ABC's "Last Resort," the submariners aboard don't have much going for them, beyond nuclear missiles and a captain, Marcus Chaplin (Andre Braugher), who knows how to use them.

If he's smart, he'll keep a couple trained on those head-of-the-class clowns on CBS' "The Big Bang Theory," and maybe reserve another for Fox's "The X Factor." Because they probably pose the biggest threats to one of the fall's most intriguing new shows, which launches in the time slot where "Missing" vanished without a trace last season.

Created by Shawn Ryan ("The Shield") and Karl Gajdusek, "Last Resort" is about a U.S. submarine that gets orders, through a suspect channel, to fire on Pakistan. When its captain and his second-in-command (Scott Speedman) ask D.C. to confirm the orders, they become targets, too. At which point the captain decides to play the cards he's holding.

There are also Navy SEALs, an ambitious admiral's daughter (Daisy Betts), an even more ambitious lobbyist (Autumn Reeser) - who strips down to bra and panties while reeling off tech specs - and plenty of other characters worth getting to know in a show whose pilot holds up under repeat viewing and whose second episode doesn't disappoint.

Also not disappointing Thursday: CBS' "Elementary," about a modern-day Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller, "Eli Stone") and his "sober companion" Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) from the network that owes a lot to the Arthur Conan Doyle character, who already lives on in characters like "The Mentalist."

Miller's approach may be different from Benedict Cumberbatch's in "Sherlock," but he's as riveting a screen presence. Even if you don't care about the weekly whodunit - and mostly, I don't - "Elementary" could be fun.