Set in New Orleans two years after the deluge, “K-Ville” (8 p.m., Fox) just may be the first new cop show of the post-“CSI” era. At the least, it wears its anti-“CSI” credentials like a badge of honor.

A city pockmarked by moldy ruins and beset by poverty, violence and corruption is no place to play with the latest forensic gadgets. The cops have to work the old-fashioned way, trusting their instincts, their fists and their trigger fingers – roughly in that order.

Marlin Boulet (Anthony Anderson) is the oversized center of “K-Ville.” A man of passion and appetite, he’s committed to keeping his family in the city’s devastated 9th Ward. His wife is equally committed to getting them out.

Boulet’s partner abandoned him during the chaos of Katrina, and in the strange logic of this pilot, it has taken two years to find a substitute. Enter Trevor Cobb (Cole Hauser), a white man from Cincinnati. Boulet finds it hard to believe that Cobb, or anybody, would join the New Orleans Police Department under current circumstances. Cobb has secrets of his own, and they emerge at the end of the first hour.

From the first two episodes, it’s not clear whether the personalities and performances of the leads are strong enough to win “K-Ville” a wide audience.

Tonight’s highlights

• Charlie Sheen appears on “Inside the Actors Studio” (7 p.m., Bravo).
• It’s back behind bars as “Prison Break” (7 p.m., Fox) enters its third season.
• Can four raw garlic cloves a day keep the Viagra away? Find out on “The Truth About Food” (7 p.m., Discovery Health).
• “Most Honorable Son” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) looks at Japanese-American soldiers during WWII who faced dangers in battle and discrimination at home.
• Can you truly develop individuality when you share a body and part of your brain? “Science of Conjoined Twins” (8 p.m., National Geographic) aims to find out.
• Mary-Kate Olsen joins the cast of “Weeds” (9 p.m., Showtime) for 10 episodes.