Skip to main content

Channel Surfing: "Pushing Daisies" Gets Dopplegangers, "90210," AMC Looks West, Denman in "Office," and More

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Hopefully all of you managed to catch a superlative season opener to NBC's Chuck and a slightly-less-than-stellar episode of CW's Gossip Girl.

Orlando Jones (Drumline), Michael Weaver (Notes from the Underbelly), and Ivana Milicevic (Casino Royale) have been cast in guest roles for a November episodes of ABC's Pushing Daisies entitled "The Norwegians," where they will play Norwegian detectives resembling our favorite troika of gumshoes Emerson, Ned, and Chuck, who leave Scandinavia in search of bigger and better mysteries to solve. Let's just hope these dopplegangers don't try to solve the mystery of how Emerson and Ned, er, solve their mysteries. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Don't hold your breath waiting for an Arrested Development feature film, fans of the Bluth clan. Michael Cera says that he's heard nothing about plans for a feature film based on the short-lived FOX comedy series. “I don't think I would want to see a movie of the series if I was a fan, anyway," said Cera, “and I don't really see a need for it if you can get the three seasons on DVD.” Ouch. I'm going to curl up with my Arrested DVDs and pretend I didn't hear that. (CinemaBlend)

David Denman's Roy is expected to return this season to NBC's The Office, where he could put a damper on the road to the altar for lovebirds Pam and Jim. According to Kristin dos Santos, Roy will appear in an episode coming up very soon in which Jim and Darryl meet up with the former Dunder Mifflin employee at a bar, where Roy reveals something that has Jim worried about Pam being away at art school... (E! Online)

Spike has announced that it has ordered a pilot for its single-camera US adaptation of British comedy series Peep Show (one of my favorities); the announcement comes on the heels of the completion of shooting on said pilot in Chicago. Peep Show follows the misadventures of two mismatched roommates, Jeremy (Rob Chester Smith) and Mark (Brad Morris). David Richardson serves as showrunner/executive producer on the project, which was directed by Dylan Kidd (Roger Dodger) from a script by the British series' creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. Fingers crossed that this turns out better than, say, Spaced or Coupling. (Hollywood Reporter)

FOX has ordered a pilot presentation for animated comedy Good Vibes from writer/executive producer David Gordon Green (director of Pineapple Express) about two high school surfers who live near the beach in California. Move once again marks a different director for Green, who was once best known for his arthouse pics like Snow Angels and All the Real Girls. (Variety)

AMC is developing an untitled period western drama with Robert Duvall (Broken Trail), about the Pony Express, the pioneer mail-delivery service that lasted from 1860 to 1861. Erik Jendresen (Band of Brothers) will write the script, which will be produced by Fox Television Studios, and Richard Donner is expected to direct the pilot. (Variety)

Ellen Burstyn (Big Love) has signed on to star in Showtime drama pilot Possible Side Effects, from writer/executive producer/director Tim Robbins, about a powerful family that runs a successful pharmaceutical company. Already cast: Josh Lucas and Tim Blake Nelson. Burstyn will play the family's matriarch. (Variety)

TV Guide talks to 90210's Ryan Eggold, who plays mysteriously scruffy and yet perpetually upbeat teacher Ryan Matthews. Look for Adrianna to put the moves on his character sometime soon. (TV Guide)

Christina Moore (90210) and David Julian Hirsch (Naked Josh) will star opposite Jada Pinkett Smith in TNT drama pilot Time Heals, about a single mother who is the director of nursing at a North Carolina hospital. (Hollywood Reporter)

Tandem Communications has come aboard TNT's drama series Night and Day--starring William Fichtner, Sherry Stringfeld, and Conor O'Farrell--as international distributors and producers, along with Muse Entertainment. (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

Comments

I love Pushing Daisies bizarro storylines and the Norwegian dopplegangers sounds hilarious!
Jace Lacob said…
Sean, just wait until you see the first three episodes! Absolutely brilliant, wacky, touching, and hysterical. Pushing Daisies fans will be very pleased!
Anonymous said…
I'm happy to hear that David Denman will be back on The Office, even if it's just for one episode. Roy may have been a big oaf but I miss him!

Popular posts from this blog

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

Pilot Inspektor: CBS' "Smith"

I may just have to change my original "What I'll Be Watching This Fall" post, as I sat down and finally watched CBS' new crime drama Smith this weekend. (What? It's taken me a long time to make my way through the stack of pilot DVDs.) While it's on following Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars on Tuesday nights (10 pm ET/PT, to be exact), I'm going to be sure to leave enough room on my TiVo to make sure that I catch this compelling, amoral drama. While one can't help but be impressed by what might just be the most marquee-friendly cast in primetime--Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Jonny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, Simon Baker, and Franky G all star and Shohreh Aghdashloo has a recurring role--the pilot's premise alone earned major points in my book: it's a crime drama from the point of view of the criminals, who engage in high-stakes heists. But don't be alarmed; it's nothing like NBC's short-lived Heist . Instead, think of it as The Italian

The Daily Beast: "How The Killing Went Wrong"

While the uproar over the U.S. version of The Killing has quieted, the show is still a pale imitation of the Danish series on which it is based. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "How The Killing Went Wrong," in which I look at how The Killing has handled itself during its second season, and compare it to the stunning and electrifying original Danish series, Forbrydelsen , on which it is based. (I recently watched all 20 episodes of Forbrydelsen over a few evenings.) The original is a mind-blowing and gut-wrenching work of genius. It’s not necessary to rehash the anger that followed in the wake of the conclusion last June of the first season of AMC’s mystery drama The Killing, based on Søren Sveistrup’s landmark Danish show Forbrydelsen, which follows the murder of a schoolgirl and its impact on the people whose lives the investigation touches upon. What followed were irate reviews, burnished with the “burning intensity of 10,000 white-hot suns