[Televisionary]

"Sometimes in life, you can't help which way you fall." There was a moment in the third season premiere of BBC One's trippy genre-busting drama series Ashes to Ashes that had me jump for joy: the gorgeous shot of a sheet being sucked backwards off of Gene Hunt's cherry red Audi Quattro before he and Alex took off into the streets of London to the tune of Eurythmics' 1983 hit "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)." It was a period-appropriate sequence that gleefully summed up everything I love best about this winning and mind-bending series, now entering its final season in the UK. In the hands of co-creator Matthew Graham, we're given a season opener to Ashes to Ashes that is at once dazzlingly operatic and provocatively bleak as the final endgame to a mystery that began all the way back in the first episode of Life on Mars finally comes to a head this season. That mystery, of course, being: Who is Gene Hunt? It's a tantalizing one that's a

Who is Gene Hunt? It's been a question that fans of Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah's Life on Mars and its sequel series, Ashes to Ashes --which stars Keely Hawes and Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt himself--have been asking themselves for years now. The answer to that and many more of Ashes to Ashes ' mind-bendng mysteries will be revealed when the trippy 1980s-set drama wraps up its run later this spring in the United Kingdom, with the third and final series set to launch on Friday evening on BBC One. I had the opportunity to interview co-creator Matthew Graham about the upcoming third season in a one-on-one interview in which we discussed the strange journey from Life on Mars to Ashes to Ashes , the identity of Gene Hunt, where and when we find ourselves when Series Three gets underway, the new character joining the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Force, what viewers should expect from the final series of Ashes , and much more. Televisionary : Series 3 marks the end o

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Elisha Cuthbert ( 24 ) has been cast as the female lead in ABC comedy pilot Happy Endings , where she will play Alex, a woman whose relationship ends at the alter and she and her would-have-been husband have to figure out how they and their friends can keep their relationship intact. Project, from writer David Caspe, directors Anthony and Joe Russo, and Sony Pictures Television, also stars Adam Pally, Casey Wilson, Eliza Coupe, and Damon Wayans, Jr. ( Hollywood Reporter ) Facebook has spoken and Lorne Michaels has listened: 88-year-old Betty White ( The Proposal ) will be hosting NBC's Saturday Night Live on May 8th. "It took on a groundswell," Michaels told USA Today 's Gary Levin. "It isn't something we would have said no to, [but the campaign] validated that... It was the outpouring of affection from fans, and we feel the same way." White's episode will also feature former SNL -ers Tina Fey, A

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. ABC has confirmed that it has now altered its launch plan for sci-fi drama series V , which is set to premiere November 3rd. The network has decided to air just the first four installments of the Warner Bros. Television-produced series and then place V on hiatus until after the Winter Olympics. The news comes as a surprise as the series, which is written and executive produced by The 4400 's Scott Peters, has enjoyed extremely positive buzz from critics and from Comic-Con audiences who screened the pilot episode earlier this summer. However, both Warner Bros. Television and ABC were quick to point out that the episodic order for V hadn't been shortened; series is still set to air 13 installments. ( Los Angeles Times /Show Tracker ) The first official cancellation of the fall season is here: The Beautiful Life , we hardly knew ye. The CW has confirmed that it has axed The Beautiful Life after just two episodes, which plunge

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Former Dirty Sexy Money star Natalie Zea, who most recently recurred on HBO's Hung , has signed on a series regular on FX's drama Lawman , starring Timothy Olyphant. Zea, who appeared in Lawman 's pilot, will reprise her role as the ex-wife of Olyphant's US Marshall Givens in the series. Project hails from Sony Pictures Television and FX Productions. ( Hollywood Reporter ) Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Emmy winner Armand Assante has been cast as a guest star on NBC's Chuck , where he will play "a Castro-esque dictator who Casey has unsuccessfully tried to assassinate multiple times." ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) The CW has given a full season order to veteran drama series One Tree Hill , which is currently in its seventh season. Initially, the netlet had only ordered 13 installments for this season but the order bumps the episode total to a full 22. El

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Ashes to Ashes has been recommissioned for a third and final series by BBC One. Series, which airs in the US on BBC America, will return next year with its final season, which will offer "intriguing twists and turns to keep viewers guessing about the final outcome," said co-creator/writer Ashley Pharoah, and will complete the journey of Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) as well as reveal just who Gene Hunt (Phillip Glenister) really is. ( BBC News ) Catch this interview with Glenister speaking to BBC Breakfast this morning about the third and final season of Ashes to Ashes : Dancing with the Stars ' Gilles Marini will be sticking around on ABC. The Dancing runner-up has signed on to a multiple-episode story arc on Brothers and Sisters , where he will play a potential love interest for Rachel Griffith's Sarah Walker. ( Variety ) Kathy Bates ( The Day the Earth Stood Still ) will co-star in Sci Fi's upcoming mini-series

Those of you hooked on Life on Mars sequel series Ashes to Ashes (well, those of us in the States, anyway) are going to have to wait a little while longer to check in with DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes). BBC America was meant to launch the second season of the Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah-created series this past weekend but opted to push the start of Season Two of Ashes to Ashes until later this year . Which left many of the series' US-based fans in the lurch. Rather like Alex Drake herself. Luckily for me, I have friends in the UK with access to BBC One, so this weekend I sat down with feverish anticipation to watch the first two episodes of Ashes to Ashes ' darkly seductive second season. So what are the fictional constructs up to this time around? Let's discuss. (Beware: there are spoilers below for the first two episodes.) Set six months after the events of Ashes to Ashes ' freshman season, Season Two finds Alex Drake adapting to life in her new reality. It&#

I'm hoping many of you tuned in to the phenomenal and shocking season finale ("Alex's Big Day") of Life on Mars sequel series Ashes to Ashes this weekend. I saw the entire first season last fall (the spoils of a trip last year to London, where the first season was released a while back on DVD). I discussed the questions raised by this season finale last October in a post about Ashes ' first season finale , but rather than just direct you to that post itself, I thought I'd make things easier and reproduce some of my thoughts here for the sake of convenience. So crank up some David Bowie and Roxy Music on your iPod as we dive into some burning questions left over from Ashes to Ashes ' brilliant first season. ( WARNING : there are major spoilers for the end of Season One after the jump.) My very first question, after watching the full first season of Ashes to Ashes , naturally concerns the first season's ending... in which we learn that Young Alex had m

Those of you anxious to see Season Two of the Life on Mars sequel series Ashes to Ashes had better hold on to your hats... and sit tight. BBC America, which was slated to launch Season Two of Ashes to Ashes on Saturday, May 2nd, has indicated that it will be delaying the launch date for the second season, instead opting to launch Season Three of sci-fi series Primeval in the Saturdays at 9 pm timeslot. The news comes as a bit of a surprise and was discovered only when BBC America sent out a press release for the launch of Primeval announcing that the series, which stars Douglas Henshall, Jason Flemyng, Lucy Brown, Hannah Spearritt, Andrew Lee Potts, Ben Miller, Laila Rouass, Juliet Aubrey, and Ben Mansfield, would be launching on Saturday, May 16th at 9 pm ET/PT. What it failed to share was that Primeval would be taking over Ashes to Ashes ' current timeslot. Listings services, including TiVo's on-screen guide, Yahoo! TV, and Zap2it, had Ashes to Ashes ' sophomore sea

Last week, I told fans (via Twitter ) of both Life on Mars and the series' sequel Ashes to Ashes to be sure to tune in to Saturday's installment of Ashes to Ashes on BBC America . The most recent episode ("Charity Begins at Home") offered several intriguing twists in the ongoing story of DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), a forensic profiler from 2008 who was propelled backwards to the year 1981 after being shot at point blank range. As Alex tries to figure out how to get home, she's increasingly faced with the prospect that she might be seconds away from dying in the present day and that her entire life in 1981 might be a series of puzzles that her psyche, at its shuts down, is presenting to her. This week's episode of Ashes to Ashes featured the gang at Fenchurch East Police Station attempting to solve a robbery involving prominent fundraiser Gil Hollis (Matthew Macfadyen of Spooks , who is also Hawes' real-life husband), a mustachioed OCD sufferer who s

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. TNT has officially canceled freshman drama Trust Me , starring Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh. The Warner Horizon-produced series, which launched with 3.4 million viewers and quickly lost much of that viewership, will not be returning for a second season. McCormack himself has already signed on to another project, ABC's untitled Tad Quill comedy pilot. The cabler, meanwhile, has three new series in the works: Ray Romano dramedy Men of a Certain Age , medical drama Hawthorne (formerly known as Time Heals ), and Deep Blue (formerly known as The Line ). ( Hollywood Reporter ) Showtime is now zero for four. The pay cabler has now opted not to order any of its four pilots to series in the last month, deciding over the weekend not to hand out a series order to Tim Robbins-created drama Possible Side Effects , staring Josh Lucas as a pharmaceuticals family scion. Previously, the network had shelved pilots Ronna and Beverly , The L Wo

"The shrieking of nothing is killing..." By now, you've read my original review for Ashes to Ashes , written in February 2008 when the series first launched in the UK, and my recent second take on the darkly seductive series , after watching the whole first season. But, now that Ashes to Ashes has aired Stateside, I am curious to know what you thought of the first episode of the sequel to Life on Mars . Are you head over heels in love with Keeley Hawes' steely-nerved Alex Drake? Are you alternately terrified and intrigued by the Pierrot clown? How awesome is Gene Hunt in the 1980s? And what's your theory on what's happened to Alex... and how does it connect to the fate of poor Sam Tyler? (And before you ask: the song playing at the very end of the episode? It's Roxy Music's " Same Old Scene .") Talk back here. Next week on Ashes to Ashes , Gene Hunt is determined to keep a protest about the Docklands redevelopment under control as the royal

Longtime readers of this site know of both my love for the original UK series Life on Mars and its sensational sequel, Ashes to Ashes , which aired its first season last year in the UK. My original review for Ashes to Ashes , which launches Stateside this weekend on BBC America, can be found here . I wrote the review back in February 2008, when the series first launched and I've fallen under its spell ever since. (There's also my very spoiler-laden review of the first season finale here.) While Life on Mars followed Detective Sam Tyler (John Simm) seemingly back in time to 1973 after a car accident, Ashes to Ashes focuses on a female profiler named Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) who is shot at point blank range and finds herself propelled backwards in time to 1981. Cue the New Romantics soundtrack, Thatcher-era power suits, a terrifying Pierrot clown (courtesy of David Bowie's music video for "Ashes to Ashes") and a blood red Audi Quatro... driven by none other tha