[Televisionary]

As it's nearly the end of the calendar year (only a few more days to go, in fact), I figured now was as good a time as any to look back at some of the shows that that have entertained and inspired me over the past year. It's been a crazy year, between the WGA strike affecting everything from truncated freshman seasons for Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money , and Chuck , delayed seasons for FX's Damages and HBO's Big Love (and a host of others), and a generally frantic development season that only saw two relative hits emerge this fall. So, what were the favorite series in the Televisionary household? Which left me wanting more... and which ones made me eager to change the channel? Find out after the jump. Best Reality Series: Top Chef The Amazing Race Flipping Out Top Chef remains my number one reality obsession. Bravo and Magical Elves have done themselves proud with this sleek, slick production that makes the art of cooking into a nail-biting competition in which eg

Christmas has once again come early. Fans of British import drama Life on Mars can look forward to the launch of its sequel Ashes to Ashes on BBC America in the new year. The digital cabler announced today that it had acquired sixteen episodes of Ashes to Ashes , starring Keeley Hawes, Philip Glenister, Dean Andrews, Marshall Lancaster, and Montserrat Lombard, and plans to launch the series in March 2009. Ashes to Ashes , from creators Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah, is set after the events of Life on Mars . The series follows Detective Inspector Alex Drake (Hawes), a London police profiler who finds herself seemingly sent back in time to 1981 after she's shot in the head. In 1981, she comes face to face with none other than Gene Hunt (Glenister), whom Alex recognizes from Sam Tyler's descriptions after his "return" to the present day, and becomes enmeshed in solving the mystery of who murdered her parents, even as she attempts to return home to her young daughte

What with ABC's adaptation of Life on Mars entering its fourth week ( though, as I said earlier, the ratings are not good for the imported format ), I thought it was time once again to tackle my thoughts about BBC One's spin-off of Life on Mars , entitled Ashes to Ashes , which began production on its second season earlier this month. I had reviewed the premiere episode of Ashes to Ashes when it first aired on BBC One in February , but since then I've had the opportunity to watch all eight episodes of Ashes ' first season and fall under its 1980's New Romantics-influenced spell. What is Ashes to Ashes about? Like its parent series, Ashes to Ashes follows a modern-day detective seemingly sent back in time after experiencing a life-threatening trauma. In this case, the detective is DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), a forensic psychologist who interviewed Sam Tyler before his suicide. When Alex is shot in the head by a stringy-haired perp singing David Bowie's &quo

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. While everyone is buzzing about last night's presidential debate, there are more than a few television-related news tidbits to discuss as well. Following several months of discussions, FX has confirmed that it will not be renewing drama series The Riches for a third season, due to falling ratings for the drama. In its second season, which was shortened to seven episodes due to the writers strike, viewers dropped 44 percent in the key 18-49 demo. The move is hardly a surprise: showrunner Dmitry Lipkin is currently working on his HBO pilot project Hung and I had assumed for a while now that The Riches would sadly not be returning to the cabler. ( Variety ) TV Guide talks to Pushing Daisies star Lee Pace about what to expect for Season Two, a certain game of "slap jack" between Ned and Chuck that never made it to the screen, and the Pie Maker's family. ( TV Guide ) Sadly, there might not have been a new episode

If there's been one series that I've been dying to see since I first heard about it, it would be the BBC's Ashes to Ashes , a spin-off from its groundbreaking drama Life on Mars , which launched last week to about 7 million viewers in the UK. Sadly, it's going to be a long time until US audiences can catch the further story of DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), here partnered with tough 21st century profiler Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), as BBC America, home to Life on Mars in the States, has yet to acquire Ashes to Ashes and has no air date for it. But television waits for no man and, fortunately for this TV devotee, I was able to get my hands on the superlative premiere episode of Ashes to Ashes just days after its UK premiere. So was the wait worth it to find out just what happened to Life on Mars' Sam Tyler (John Simm)? And just what is this series about? Let's discuss. Ashes to Ashes not only lives up to its pre-launch hype and the promise of Life on Mars

Oh. My. God. I don't even know where to begin after watching last night's final installment of Brit import Life on Mars , one of the most gripping, thrilling, and jaw-dropping series finales (or series, full stop) around. While I knew that the writers--Matthew Graham, along with Tony Jordan and Ashley Pharoah--wanted to tie things up in the strange, strange life of Detective Inspector Sam Tyler, I had no idea the lengths Sam would go to in order to return to 2006, who he would betray, and what mechanism by which he'd catapult himself out of his future coma-state. If the above sentence made any sense to you, you're obviously a Life on Mars fan. If not, you've missed out on a series, which over the course of sixteen episodes, redefined genre television, blending science fiction, cop drama, romance, metaphysical drama into one groovy package and populating it with a cast of characters that proved themselves misogynistic, racist, pigheaded... and yet having a sort of p