[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Looks like Ashes to Ashes isn't the only series heading back to the 1980s (well, except for Mitch Hurwitz's Lost in the '80s , that is): Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage have announced that the untitled spinoff of CW's Gossip Girl will focus on a teenage Lily Rhodes van der Woodsen Bass (played in the original by Kelly Rutherford) as a wild child in 1980s Los Angeles who moves in with her sister in San Fernando Valley after a falling out with her parents and must adjust to life at a Valley public school and a nightlife on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Spinoff will be produced as a backdoor pilot that will air May 11th as part of Gossip Girl 's current season. ( Variety ) Chevy Chase has been cast in a three-episode story arc on NBC's Chuck , where he will play Ted Roark, the billionaire technology mogul and owner of Roark Instruments, a company that Chuck Bartowski has always dreamed of working for. But

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Mark Cherry announced that he would like to continue ABC's Desperate Housewives through 2013. While Cherry is signed on to executive produce the ABC drama through its seventh season and ABC has only committed so far to the current fifth season, there is currently no deal in place for any additional seasons beyond that. Cherry announced his intentions to keep Desperate Housewives on the air for nine seasons (rather than the seven he previously discussed) during a cast and crew celebration yesterday. "We've been talking with the studio and the network about the conceptual possibilities of additional seasons," said a source close to the situation, "but it's still dependent on a lot of things like cast willingness, ratings, etc... It sure seems like it could happen!" Yes, but four more seasons? ( E! Online ) "I think the goal for everybody is to put a face back on the drama. " Pushing Daisies

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. While not totally TV-related, you can see a sneak peek of the cover of the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly (which hits newsstands tomorrow) to the right, depicting Heroes ' Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine as Spock and Kirk in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek . The issue also features an in-depth interview with Abrams, in which he talks about Star Trek , his YouTube-fueled feud with William Shatner, and also features quotes from Leonard Nimoy and Quinto about the new film. Are you GOB Bluth? FOX is said to be in final negotiations for a talent/development deal with Will Arnett ( Arrested Development ); under the deal, FOX would develop a comedy vehicle for Arnett or cast him in a pre-existing project at the network. Arnett, who is currently recurring as Devon Banks on NBC's 30 Rock , also stars (or his voice does, anyway) in FOX's upcoming animated comedy series Sit Down, Shut Up . ( TV Week ) Not such good news, however, f

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I will admit that I felt the loss not having a new installment of The Office to watch last night and I still have Episodes Two and Three (next week's episode) to watch of Ugly Betty , but I did laugh my butt off watching the one-hour It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia last night, which not only gave us Mac and Charlie faking their own deaths but the very odd sight of Mac in a pawn shop wedding dress. (Congrats, BTW, to Rob McElhenny, who wed his Sunny co-star Kaitlin Olson this week.) While the ratings for the launch of Pushing Daisies , were not exactly as sweet as honey for ABC, fans of the brilliant series can look forward to, among other things, a cross-over with Bryan Fuller's tragically-missed Wonderfalls in the eighth episode of the current season, according to Fuller in an interview. Just what this means and which Wonderfalls characters have been cast (an interesting dilemma as Lee Pace starred on that series a

Good morning and welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I cannot believe that this week was in any way truncated as it felt so damn long. (Am I alone in thinking that?) I spent last night watching the pilot for Rob Thomas' new version of Cupid and caught up on some backlog on my TiVo and cannot wait for this weekend. (The wife and I are planning a movie marathon tomorrow night. On deck: Son of Rambow, Hamlet 2, Redbelt , and Amateur. ) ROTFLMAO! Gossip Girl 's Blake Lively and Leighton Meester have signed on to guest star in a November episode of NBC's 30 Rock , where they'll play high school classmates of Liz Lemon in a flashback sequence that reveals that Liz (Tina Fey) was a mean girl (how this squares with her D&D-playing days remains to be seen); the episode revolves around Liz's twenty-year high school reunion, so look for producers to cast adult versions of Lively and Meester's teen characters. Up for the part: Robyn Lively ( Savannah ),

Good morning and welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I can't believe the weekend is nearly within reach, though yesterday's heat here in LA is still making me woozy. Matthew Fox has successfully negotiated a raise for his role on ABC's hit drama Lost , replacing his $150,000 per episode price tag with a new pay check of about $225,000/episode, a raise that puts him on equal footing with the stars of the Alphabet's Desperate Housewives . Look for the other cast members on Lost --which starts production on Season Five on Monday--to receive boosts as well. ( Hollywood Reporter ) Katie Holmes has some company. Sigourney Weaver will be the latest A-list star to sign on for a guest appearance on next season's Eli Stone , following the ABC series' coup in signing Holmes for an upcoming episode. Weaver will play a therapist to whom Eli (Jonny Lee Miller) turns to for help. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Hollywood Insider ) Alan Taylor ( Mad Men ) will dir

Wisteria Lane is about to get a lot more crowded. Dana Delany ( Kidnapped ), Nathan Fillion ( Drive ), and Lyndsy Fonseca ( Heroes ) will join the cast of Desperate Housewives for the series' fourth season. Delany and Fillion will play a woman and her significantly younger husband who move to Wisteria Lane with the woman's daughter (Fonseca). The move is an interesting one, not just for the casting of Fillion (who might make me reconsider giving up this once-great series... for a second), but for that of Delany. Delany was originally the forerunner for the role of Bree (Marcia Cross) but turned down the pilot instead. Series creator Marc Cherry is said to be the one who courted Delany in the first place and is behind the drive to get her to finally sign on to Desperate Housewives . If Delany brings some of the vicious energy of her role in Pasadena to the table, the ladies of Wisteria Lane won't know what hit them. * * * In other casting news

"Battlestar Galactica" Sets Course for October Launch of Season Three Sci-Fi has announced a premiere date for the third season of its hit drama, Battlestar Galactica , according to a report filed by The Futon Critic . The third season premiere is set for Friday, October 6th at 10 pm ET/PT. Like its second season BSG 's third season will be broken into two sections, with Season 3.0 airing ten episodes through December 8th; Season 3.5 will air sometime in 2007 with an additional 10 installments. I don't know about you, but BSG has become appointment television for me. If you weren't lucky enough to snag an Emmy screener set containing all of Season 2.0 and 2.5, fret not. Battlestar Galactica Season 2.5 is set to be released on DVD on September 19th, leaving you plenty of time to catch up on the drama and wacky antics of Apollo, Starbuck, Roslin, Adama, and that duplicitous weasel Gaius Baltar. And after that cliffhanger ending, I'm on pins and needles to to s

It's moments like these when you just have to gloat and say things like, You read it here first at Televisionary ! (No, I mustn't gloat, it's not attractive.) I had reported several weeks ago about Desperate Housewives showrunner Tom Spezialy walking off the set of the ABC drama and the rumors coming to me about nearly all of the show's writing staff receiving their walking papers. I had also reported on a rumored replacement for Spezialy: former Out of Practice and Frasier producer Bob Daily . In a rather juicy turn (fitting given the soapy series in question), I can now say that the above rumors have been confirmed as fact. Variety is today reporting that Daily has signed a deal to join Desperate Housewives full-time as a co-executive producer, replacing Spezialy. Additionally, Joe Keenan, Daily's colleague on Out of Practice (he was the co-creator of the now-cancelled sitcom), and former Will & Grace showrunner Jeff Greenstein are in discussions to jo

Scandal erupted on the set of Desperate Housewives on Friday when the show's executive producer and showrunner Tom Spezialy walked off the set. According to the Hollywood Reporter, sources indicated that a replacement might be found for Spezialy next season. The cause of the walkoff was undisclosed, but The Hollywood Reporter described it as "an unspecified falling out." However, behind-the-scenes movements over the weekend must have calmed down Spezialy, as he is expected to return to work today in order to wrap production this week on the dramedy's season finale. UPDATE: I pulled out my nifty Hollywood rolodex again (well, opened my contacts in Outlook anyway) and came across some rather juicy gossip emanating from the set of Desperate Housewives . According to my well-placed agency sources, there's been much in-fighting among the DH writing staff for quite a while now and that Spezialy's departure may be the first of many from Wisteria Lane. One rumor ha

Every now and then I find myself wondering why I continue to watch a particular show, given the lack of satisfaction I get from watching it. Think of it as: When Good Shows Go Bad. For a number of reasons, I find my willing suspension of disbelief nearly impossible and I begin to take fault with tinny dialogue or the believability of characters' actions, and entire storylines begin to become incomprehensible to me. Such is the case with Desperate Housewives , a show I once tuned in to watch with relish every Sunday evening. Picture it: Autumn 2004, a time filled with the promise of new and exciting shows like Lost , Veronica Mars , and Desperate Housewives , two of which had energized the stagnant ABC and got people talking around watercoolers or coffee pots or wherever people gather nowadays in offices. At first, Desperate Housewives was a delicious hodgepotch of elements: soapy female-driven domestic drama on one hand, but also a given to pratfalls, arson, same-sex shenanigans,