TWO new shows airing tonight couldn't be more different.

The better one, NBC's "Revolution," creates an interestingly new "old world" where everything electrical or mechanical has shut down.

The other, Fox's "Mob Doctor," tries but struggles to connect a young woman's worlds. She's a brilliant surgeon but also does medical mop-up for the mob.

"Revolution" is the one that has all the big names and TV reputations going for it, and it showed in last week's pilot episode.

With J.J. Abrams and Eric Kripke ("Supernatural") behind the scenes and "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau behind the camera, the first episode moved swiftly and surely.

It started with a big city family, the Mathesons, witnessing an event that shuts down power and anything motorized worldwide.

Flash forward a dozen or so years and they are living in suburban housing augmented with gardens and animal pens. Because the government has fallen and a tribal society has sprung up, folks carry crossbows and swords to deal with troublemakers in this Colonial sort of lifestyle.

The stakes are raised when the father, Ben, is mortally wounded in a struggle with militia members sent to capture him.

In the same fight, son Danny is kidnapped, and daughter Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) is tasked by the dying father to find her Uncle Miles (Billy Burke) to rescue Danny.

It's no coincidence that this all starts to look and feel a lot like "The Hunger Games" without the games.

The violence that's such an integral part of "The Hunger Games" is present here, with bodies falling like flies from swords and arrows in a scene at Uncle Miles' bar. Turns out he's some sort of military-trained killing machine. When he's not swinging his sword, Burke makes him an interesting character.

The show works on two levels. It will be action-filled--albeit violent--as the family struggles to make its way in this world where the old ways are new again. It will also be a vehicle to examine how people react when all their modern technology and gadgets are stripped away, requiring them to get by on personal strength and substance.