Sister Meryl is only one of many actresses who have donned the nun’s habit. Others range from the predictable (Deborah Kerr) to the outrageous (Joan Collins). Among them: Susan Sarandon won the 1995 Oscar for playing a modern real-life nun with progressive ideas in Dead Man Walking. She befriends convicted killer Sean Penn and remains at his side even when he walks the proverbial Last Mile. Terrific performance in a terrific film.

Jodie Foster was the fire-breathing nun who made The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) seem dangerous indeed. Despite Foster’s emphatic performance, the film received only a limited release.

Christopher Durang’s play Sister Mary Explains It All wasn’t even considered movie material but was made into a TV movie in 2001 with Diane Keaton as unsympathetic Sister Mary. Ironically, in 1987, Keaton had directed her first film, a documentary named Heaven, which explored various people’s views of the Sweet Hereafter.

What about Mrs. Robinson as a Mother Superior? Anne Bancroft, The Graduate’s suburban sexual aggressor, played a worldly Mother in 1985’s Agnes of God. She confesses that her former husband and their children never forgave her when she decided to enter a convent.

Vanessa Redgrave probably played the most ferocious nun of all in 1971’s The Devils. A hunchback, she had lust in her heart for priest Oliver Reed and engineers his downfall. When he’s (very graphically) burned at the stake, her joy is downright fiendish.

Here’s our list of TV stars known for more than one character. We’re sure we left some out, so please use our Comments area to put in your two cents.

Edward Asner: Lou Grant and…Lou Grant. Bear with us here. Lou’s first incarnation was as part of a comedy ensemble in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The character later got a dramatic turn in the aptly named Lou Grant.

Bill Bixby: A triple threat. Bixby started out in My Favorite Martian, moved on to The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, and later starred in The Incredible Hulk.

Raymond Burr: Sure, he’ll always be Perry Mason, but Burr went on to enjoy an eight-year run as Ironside.

Buddy Ebsen: Best known as Jed Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies, he also lasted 8 1/2 seasons as detective Barnaby Jones.

Sally Field: From surfer girl Gidget, to The Flying Nun, to her current role in the well-regarded drama Brothers & Sisters, for which she won an Emmy in 2007. Field also won an Emmy for the TV movie Sybil and another for a recurring role in ER in 2001.

Thankless as the job might seem, the New York Post decided to name its “35 Best Shows on TV – Ever.”

Why 35? Why these 35?

Why not?

Here’s their Top 10:

  1. The Sopranos

  2. All in the Family

  3. The Oprah Winfrey Show

  4. American Idol

  5. The West Wing

  6. Mary Tyler Moore

  7. Dallas

  8. 24

  9. Twin Peaks

10. Sesame Street

To find out the rationale behind these selections, and to see the rest of the list, visit the New York Post.

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Hope springs eternal each fall. At least in TV land it does.

We’re nearing that time again, with every last new series deemed a must-see mega-hit until Nielsen Media Research’s grim reaper ratings say otherwise.

Shows with big names attached take the hardest falls. So let’s revisit 10 monumental flops whose big buildups and budgets went for naught.

10. South of Sunset (1993) — One and done. CBS thought it could turn Glen Frey of The Eagles into a wisecracking, up-against-it Los Angeles private eye named Cody McMahon. But the opening night ratings were subterranean, prompting the network to let the sun set on Frey’s acting ambitions after just a single episode.

9. Bette (2000) — “The Divine Miss M” starred as a thinly disguised caricature of herself in a lame-o sitcom in which her 12-year-old daughter Rose was played in the first episode only by Lindsay Lohan. Cripes, even then she apparently was difficult. CBS called off all Bettes five months later after audience levels drooped despite big-name guest appearances by the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Tony Danza, Dolly Parton and Danny DeVito.

8. The Michael Richards Show (2000) — First to launch a post-Seinfeld series, Richards bombed as hapless L.A. detective Vic Nardozza in a comedy series that was worked and reworked to no avail before NBC somehow saw fit to air it. Also going down with the ship were co-stars William Devane and Tim Meadows in his first post-Saturday Night Live effort to branch out.

The moniker “cougar” describes the older, wiser feminine half of these relationships. wowOwow defines cougar as “a woman, typically 35 or older, who is in a relationship with a man who is younger than she by eight to ten years or more.” From there, they go into a complicated formula for calculating cougardom (we won’t bore you with those numbers, but you can see it here).

Here’s the list of “Cougars We Love”:

• Cleopatra and her two younger brothers/husbands (both named Ptolemy) in the years before her conquests of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony
• Queen Elizabeth I, 48, and her one-time fiancé, François, Duke of Anjou, 22
• Mrs. Robinson, mid-40s, and Benjamin Braddock, age 21, in the The Graduate
• Joan Collins, ageless (er, 75), and husband Percy Gibson, 32 years her junior
• Mary Tyler Moore, 71, and husband, Dr. Robert Levine, 54 (married since 1983)
• Madonna, 49, and husband Guy Ritchie, 39.
• Kim Cattrall in Sex and the City as uber-cougar Samantha Jones, 50, and Smith Jerrod, 30-something (then we have Kim Cattrall, 51, in life imitating art with her real-life beau, chef Alan Wyse, 28, pictured)
• Demi Moore, 45, and husband Ashton Kutcher, 30
• Susan Sarandon, 62, and Tim Robbins, 50
• Halle Berry, 41, and partner Gabriel Aubry, 31
• Jennifer Aniston, 39, and John Mayer, 30

Here’s a bonus list about the women behind wowOwow : Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Liz Smith, Joni Evans, Mary Wells, Sheila Nevins, Joan Juliet Buck, Whoopi Goldberg, Julia Reed, Joan Ganz Cooney, Judith Martin, Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner and Marlo Thomas. Quite the who’s who, n’est-ce pas?