[Televisionary]

Mark your calendars: FOX has announced its fall premiere for new and returning series. Surprisingly, FOX has slated its premieres smack in the middle of September, which means that the network will go head-to-head with its rivals while in previous years FOX has either launched early or late due to baseball pre-emptions. The week of September 16th alone will see the launch of Glee and the return of such drama series as Fringe, Bones , and Joss Whedon's Dollhouse , with a two-hour season opener of House (directed by executive producer Katie Jacobs) airing on September 21st, the first official day of the fall season. Meanwhile, a new edition of Hell's Kitchen sneaks onto the lineup on Tuesday nights this fall, beginning September 29th. All of the premiere dates, as well as the official press release from FOX announcing the scheduling, can be found below. FOX ANNOUNCES FALL PREMIERE DATES FOR THE 2009-2010 SEASON NEW COMEDY “GLEE” DEBUTS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 NEW FAMILY COMEDY...

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Who said dead means dead? Comedy Central has signed a deal with studio 20th Century Fox Television for twenty-six new episodes of long-dead series Futurama , which it will launch in 2010. "When we brought back Family Guy several years ago, everyone said that it was a once in a lifetime thing -- that canceled series stay canceled and cannot be revived," said 20th Century Fox TV Chairmen Gary Newman and Dana Walden in a joint statement. "But Futurama was another series that fans simply demanded we bring back, and we couldn’t have been happier when Matt and David agreed that there were many more stories yet to tell." Series, which features the voices of Billy West, Katey Sagal, and John DiMaggio, ended its run on FOX in 2003 and has since aired repeats on Comedy Central, as well as the DVD-based episodes. "It's sweet, and basically everybody who has worked on the show wants to come back," said co-cr...

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. E! Online's Watch with Kristin caught up with True Blood star Stephen Moyer, who plays vampire Bill Compton on the HBO supernatural drama, to talk about Season Two, which kicks off on June 14th. "There's no getting away from the fact that Bill is a vampire. He can't wish to be anything else, because he's a vampire, but he's a vampire who wants to live a human life," said Moyer about his character. "Actually, in fact, he wishes not for a human life, but for a moral life. It's not that he doesn't want to feed on blood, it's that he doesn't want it to involve killing—but in his first season he kills as many people as the murderer. That was something that was very present in our minds. He has that blood lust, he has that very strong sense of right and wrong. If somebody f--s him off, he's going to take them out. He's torn. He's not going to do it just for the sake of it. B...

FOX has now shifted the world broadcast premiere of the two-hour sci-fi telepic Virtuality , from Battlestar Galactica 's Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor and director Peter Berg, from its July 4th airdate to Friday, June 26th at 8 pm ET/PT. The film, originally meant to be a two-hour backdoor pilot for an ongoing series , stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau ( New Amsterdam ) as Commander Frank Pike, the head of the crew of interstellar vessel Phaeton who find escape from the mundanity of their ten-year journey by venturing into virtual worlds, where--thanks to a glitch in the system--they are seemingly attacked by a malevolent figure. FOX describes Virtuality 's themes with the following: "The two-hour movie raises fascinating questions about the lines (or lack thereof) between reality and virtual reality. What would you do if you were faced with the prospect of going on a 10-year space journey to another planet in order to save an Earth ravaged by global warming, food shortag...

Just a few days after unveiling the world premiere of the new trailer for Torchwood: Children of the Earth , the third season of the Doctor Who spin-off series, the digital cabler has announced an official launch date for the Russell T. Davies-scripted event series. BBC America will premiere Torchwood: Children of Earth on July 20th at 9 pm ET/PT. The third series, comprised of five serialized episodes, will air across five consecutive nights that week. The timing of Torchwood 's return to the schedule is linked to the launch of BBC America HD, a high-definition simulcast of the BBC America channel, which will also bow on July 20th to digital cabler subscribers. "BBC AMERICA is a truly unique channel in the cable landscape," said Garth Ancier, President of BBC Worldwide America in a statement. "We bring viewers some of the best programs on television and now with the option to experience them in HD, they’re going to be even better. The launch of BBC AMERICA HD coup...

Digital cabler BBC America has announced a launch date for supernatural drama series Being Human . The six-episode series, which stars Russell Tovey ( Doctor Who ), Lenora Crichlow ( Sugar Rush ), and Aidan Turner ( The Clinic ), will kick off on Saturday, July 25th at 9 pm ET/PT. BBC America won't be airing the original pilot episode for Being Human , which aired last year on BBC Three and--other than Tovey--featured an entirely different cast including Guy Flanagan, Andrea Riseborough, and Adrian Lester. While the pilot is considered canon, it wasn't included on the recent Region 2 DVD release for Being Human and isn't necessary viewing in order to understand--or enjoy--the series itself. The full press release from BBC America and the original trailer for Being Human from BBC Three can be found below. SOME ROOMATES ARE SCARIER THAN OTHERS –The U.S. premiere of co-production, Being Human– Mixing the mythic with the commonplace, the farcical with the horrific and the dom...

Welcome to Day Four, the last day of the 2009 network upfronts. Up last is netlet the CW, which has now unveiled its primetime schedule for advertisers. As expected, the CW has ordered three new series for fall, with Melrose Place, Vampire Diaries , and The Beautiful Life joining the schedule and drama Parental Discretion Advised (formerly known as Light Years ) getting a midseason berth. Melrose Place gets the post- 90210 spot, echoing the original pairing of the two series when FOX launched Melrose Place way back in 1992. And it was widely believed that the CW would pair new drama The Beautiful Life --about the personal and professional lives of young models--with reality franchise America's Next Top Model on Wednesdays and, sure enough, they did. (No surprises there.) More intriguing, however, is that the CW will break up its combination of Smallville and Supernatural on Thursdays and bump Smallville , returning for its ninth and final season, to Friday nights in order to...

Welcome to Day Three of the 2009 network upfronts. Up next is CBS, which has unveiled its fall schedule to advertisers. Not too many surprises for CBS, which once again sticks with overall stability and picks up a bunch of new drama series (and one lone comedy holdout). Turning around the shortest series cancellation ever, CBS has picked up supernatural drama series Medium for another season. Medium , produced by CBS Television Studio, had been axed yesterday by NBC and will now shift networks and join fellow chiller drama Ghost Whisperer on Friday nights. The network also ordered several new series including comedy Accidentally on Purpose , legal drama The Good Wife, medical dramas Miami Trauma and Three Rivers , NCIS: Los Angeles, and unscripted series Arranged Marriage and Undercover Boss . While not on the schedule, Canadian co-production Flashpoint will return--in Summer 2010--and CBS will launch another CTV co-pro, The Bridge , in midseason. Also scheduled to join the sch...