Networks prove they can create quality comfort TV

It’s taken the better part of a decade, but the networks finally have figured out something they can do better than cable and streaming services, besides cranking out lame sitcoms and cookie-cutter crime procedurals: comfort TV.

People have been treating each other so poorly in everyday life, some nights it’s just hard to be in the mood for yet another antihero on yet another coal-dark drama. Some nights you just want to feel good.

Thankfully, this fall has produced three vastly different dramas — NBC’s “This Is Us,” Fox’s “Pitch” and, to a lesser extent, Fox’s “Lethal Weapon” — that offer a break from the awfulness.

“This Is Us” (9 p.m. Tuesdays), the breakout hit of the fall season and the top-rated newcomer in the 18-to-49 demographic (aka the only one advertisers really care about), is essentially “Parenthood” meets “Modern Family,” with a twist.

Jack and Rebecca Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore) and their three children, Kate (Chrissy Metz), Kevin (Justin Hartley) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown), are followed over the course of 30 years, with each episode pingponging back and forth in time.

Kevin, who recently quit his starring role in the hit sitcom “The Man-ny,” which for some reason always required him to be shirtless while caring for a baby, summed up the series in a recent invitation for his Broadway co-star to join his family for Thanksgiving: “Check this out. My mother is married to my dead dad’s best friend. I have a twin sister who is seriously overweight. And I have an adopted black brother who just recently reconnected with his biological father, who is dying. Now, don’t you wanna see that up close?”

Millions of Americans do and have.

“This Is Us” tackles race, obesity, addiction, adoption, celebrity, sibling rivalry and what it means to be a family. And it does so, always, with heart and humor.

Every character knows exactly what to say and when to say it. And it’s almost always eloquent, including — and especially — William (Ron Cephas Jones), the recovering junkie and former jazz musician who abandoned an infant Randall at a fire station.

Kate’s battle with her weight has been heartbreaking. Kevin’s mostly there for comic relief. But “This Is Us” is anchored by a terrific performance by newly minted Emmy winner Brown (“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story’s” Christopher Darden). With Susan Kelechi Watson as his wife, Beth, they’re flirty, sassy and currently the best married couple on TV.

“Pitch” (9 p.m. Thursdays, Fox) hasn’t been doing nearly as well in the ratings, despite sharing a co-creator with “This Is Us” in Dan Fogelman (“Crazy, Stupid, Love”).

The drama follows Ginny Baker (Kylie Bunbury), the first female player in major league baseball, as she adjusts to life in the glare of the spotlight. Think Mo’ne Davis, times infinity.

Produced in cooperation with MLB, the series films in and around San Diego’s Petco Park and other big league stadiums, using actual team names and uniforms, because nothing takes a viewer out of a series or movie faster than when, say, the L.A. Express are taking on the San Diego Surfers.

If anything, “Pitch” is a bit of a fairy tale. Despite initial resistance from her teammates, Ginny won over even her harshest critics in the locker room within a few episodes. And when risque photos of her hit the internet after an ex-boyfriend’s phone was hacked, her fellow Padres, led by grizzled catcher Mike Lawson (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, better than he’s been in years), showed up in solidarity to deflect attention by posing for a nude photo shoot for ESPN the Magazine’s Body Issue. Not only is the whole incident quickly forgiven and forgotten, various Fox sportscasters — although, noticeably, not Erin Andrews — publicly shame the hacker.

It’s such a feel-good show, The Parents Television Council, which generally only weighs in on TV in the form of boycotts, urged its members to watch “Pitch” and asked Fox to move the drama to a less-competitive time slot to ensure its survival.

Then there’s “Lethal Weapon” (8 p.m. Wednesdays, Fox), which is just big, dumb fun.

Starring Damon Wayans as Roger Murtaugh and Clayne Crawford (“Rectify”) as Martin Riggs, the remake, stocked with hot cars and even hotter women, is a glossy, mindless trip through candy-colored L.A.

There’s no conspiracy, no mythology, no ongoing mystery to solve. It’s the crime procedural for people who hate crime procedurals.

Enough changes have been made that it’s best to not think of the characters as Riggs and Murtaugh at all. Unlike Mel Gibson’s take on the character, this Riggs never acts insane. He’s just severely depressed over the deaths of his wife and unborn son. Heck, it took until the seventh episode to finally get around to Riggs’ penchant for being tortured. And while Murtaugh recently suffered a heart attack, you never get the feeling that he’s “getting too old for this (excrement).”

This “Lethal Weapon” is just a buddy cop show where characters walk away from explosions in slow motion and jump through the window of a high-rise penthouse, shoot a bomb vest out of the sky so it blows up away from civilians, then harmlessly plummet hundreds of feet into a swimming pool.

Is “Lethal Weapon” unnecessary? Absolutely.

But it’s a blast. Several of them, actually.

And it’s as comfortable as an old sweater from the late 1980s.