There are only a few days left until the start of the May “sweeps” season, so it’s time to buckle down and do some serious thinking about how you plan on wasting your time for the next four weeks or so. With the post-writer’s strike return of solid comedies, like “30 Rock,” and quality dramas, like “Lost,” no television aficionado should have any trouble finding a funny, exciting or engrossing way to spend a quiet evening at home. Here’s a look at a few of the best shows on television right now.

Battlestar Galactica

Hailed by Time Magazine as “the best show on television,” this sci-fi adventure series is about much more than just lasers and robots. Sure, on the surface, “Galactica” is about a convoy of human refugees fleeing a race of android pursuers, but more importantly, it does what all good science fiction is supposed to do: allow us to explore a concept stripped of our prejudices by presenting it an entirely foreign context. A sober, mature allegory of post-9/11 geopolitics, “Galactica” examines the consequences of ordinary people having to make black and white decisions in a very gray world.

Fridays at 10 p.m. on Sci Fi.

Mad Men

Beatnik: “How do you sleep at night?” New York Ad Man: “On a bed full of money.” OK, so this one’s not coming back until June, but it has to be talked about, because if there’s such a thing on television as “cool” anymore, you’ll find it on “Mad Men.” Take a trip down memory lane with this Golden Globe-winner back to a time when everyone smoked constantly, chauvinism was office policy and Nixon was expected to trample Kennedy on the road to the White House. “Mad Men” captures a portrait of that split-second in American history when the cultural scales began tipping from the starched and pressed world of the 1950s to the volatile and exhilarating one of the 1960s.

TBA on AMC.

South Park

What’s amazing about “South Park” isn’t how good it is, it’s that it keeps getting better. Never has there been, in any form of media, a more astute and loving critique of modern Americana than the last few seasons of this show, which has spoofed everything from “smug” environmentalists to Guitar Hero-addicted tweens to striking TV writers. Its finest episode, by far, was a hilarious send-up of the “World of Warcraft” phenomenon, but “South Park” reserves its most biting humor for the absurdities of organized religion, parodying the soul-commercialization of Christian rock, Muslim violence over cartoons of Mohammed, Jewish paranoia, Scientological zaniness and even atheistic arrogance. Tune in, but only if you’re willing to laugh honestly at your own flaws.

Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central.

Hell’s Kitchen

If you absolutely must watch reality TV – and we know there are more than just a few of you out there – at least watch a show following the exploits of jerks, not morons. And there’s probably no bigger jerk on television, and perhaps the whole world, than Gordon Ramsey. One of the most accomplished chefs and restaurateurs of his generation, Ramsey has been described by food critic A.A. Gill as “a wonderful chef, just a really second-rate human being.” In this show, 15 wannabes compete for the title of executive chef at Ramsey’s restaurant The London in Los Angeles. With Ramsey’s reputation of cursing at old ladies, throwing tantrums and kicking people out of his restaurant, you just know this is gonna be good.

Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox.