I confess, I was often confused by the term ’Black Irish’. I knew there were no natives of Ireland with skin anywhere close to being as dark as mine, so I had guessed that the term either referred to hair color or perhaps their mood. After all, the Irish were suppose to be a quick-tempered lot; why not moody as well?

I was confused, but not enough to look the term up until I saw the movie ’Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle’ in which Bernie Mac claimed to be a ’Black Irish’ dock worker. The scene was silly, but I felt sillier for not fully understanding the joke.

It turns out I was on the right track: the black in ’Black Irish’ refers to Irish folk with dark hair, as oppose to the stereotypical red headed Irishman. (For the record, I was also confused over the term ’towheaded’, but I looked that one up because it bothered me more for some reason. Probably because it was used to describe the young blond hero in the book I was reading at the time, Ray Bradbury’s ’Something Wicked This Way Come’.)

I mention all of this because The Black Donnellys premiered this week on NBC, and I wondered if anyone would watch the show thinking it was a comedy starring African-Americans.

The pilot episode, which is a free download on The iTunes Store, is a lot of fun once you can get pass the Mies (JimMie, TomMie, Lou..., well, you get the idea). The series is about four Irish-American brothers as told by Joey (!) Ice Cream, a close friend who is trying to keep from becoming some inmate’s love interest and/or dead.

The narrative is interesting all on its own; Joey Ice Cream weaves a tale that is well seasoned with B.S., but you listen anyway because he tells it so well. I’m curious to see if the show will keep this format or change up every so often, which would probably be a good thing.

The Donnellys get in and out of trouble about as often as most people get in and out of bed. Each is a unique person bound to each other through a fierce sense of family loyalty. If the pilot is any indication, NBC has a definite hit on their hands.

While NBC seems to have found a hit show, ABC seems to have lost one, if ratings can be believed. The one time hit series, Lost, can’t seem to find its way back to the top of the ratings charts.

Exactly what is Lost? The show is hard to define, even the producers have a hard time describing it. I never watched Lost -- note that our own Matt Springer reviews the show -- but after watching the Lost Survivor Guide, a free 43 minute iTunes Store download that gives a synopsis of what has happened so far in the first two seasons, the show reminds me of the movie, Cube, in which a bunch of strangers find themselves in a weird environment and must work together to solve the mystery of their prison and to survive.

Increase the number of strangers and the size of the ’cube’ and you have Lost, which is not a bad thing. Cube was strange, but very interesting, and so, it seems, is Lost. The island the strangers find themselves on holds many secrets, some so weird that the show might even be consider science fiction. On the other hand, the secrets that each of the strangers hold and how these people interact with each other should be enough to keep any soap opera fan gleefully happy .

So, the ABC execs must be losing a lot of sleep over trying to answer why Lost lost its way. There’s no way to tell from the Survivor Guide, so if any fans or ex-fans of Lost want to chime in and explain what happened to the show please enlighten the rest of us.

In the meantime, the Lost Survivor Guide is an enjoyable way to find out what you’ve missed.

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.