I watched the first eight or so eps of Sanctuary. It has a lot of potential and the cast is doing their damnedest with what they've been given, but the writing in the early scripts is truly dreadful. And they're working very hard to appeal to that treasured teenage boy demographic, so there's a lot of adolescent humor and the double entendres fly thick and fast. For instance, an entire ep playing off "nubbins" because 12-year-old boys (whatever their actual chronological ages) can never get enough breast/nipple humor. Ever.

But I do like the cast and a number of the characters. Christopher Heyerdahl rocks his recurring role -- he's awesome -- and it's nice to see Amanda Tapping and Kavan Smith et al. And as someone mentioned above, the show is a guaranteed win at Canadian Actor Bingo, every single episode.

The good news is that the second season may well be a lot better than the first, at least if you believe Damian Kindler's explanation about the sucky S1 scripts... basically that he had something like two weeks (a ridiculously short time, anyway) after the show was greenlighted to deliver and start shooting the first episode, and thus they were scrambling just to keep up for pretty much the whole first season. He promises improved scripts in S2, given the months of lead time for storyline and script development before they start filming again. We shall see.

The only other one on your list that I can comment on is Lie to Me. agentotter just pimped me into it and I've seen two eps, I think. I like it. The premise is cool -- the behavior-based science of lie (and truth) detection applied to a wide variety of people and scenarios. Fun to watch, reasonably intelligent writing, solid acting, and interesting characters. I'm not jumping up and down pimping it to everyone I know, but yeah, I'd rec it.