[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. CBS has given second season renewals to freshman dramas The Good Wife and NCIS: Los Angeles . "Two great new series, fronted by talented stars on one big night of television," said Nina Tassler, President, CBS Entertainment in a statement. "We're proud of these shows and what they've accomplished on Tuesday night." The renewal news comes on the heels of pickups for fellow froshers Glee at FOX and Modern Family, The Middle , and Cougar Town at ABC. (via press release) While still in the pilot stage, buzz continues to build for HBO's fantasy project Game of Thrones , based on George R.R. Martin's series of novels. HBO programming czar Michael Lombardo indicated at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour yesterday that Game looks very likely to get a pickup and that the dailies look "fantastic." "I would be surprised if it doesn't (get a green light)," Lombardo

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Battlestar Galactica star (and Maxim cover girl) Tricia Helfer will guest star in an upcoming episode of CBS comedy Two and a Half Men , where she will play a friend of Charlie's fiancee. "Natch, when Chelsea hears her bosomy buddy is recovering from a breakup," writes Ausiello, "she insists that she do so at Casa Harper." Helfer's episode is slated to air November 16th. [Editor: while I love that Helfer is working steadily, can we please land her a series regular gig ASAP?] ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) SPOILER ALERT! TVGuide.com's Natelie Abrams talks to True Blood executive producer Alan Ball about what's coming on Season Three of the HBO vampire drama, set to air next summer. "It's a crazy season," Ball told Abrams. "It picks up right where we left off and things get weird really fast." [Ed

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. CBS has given full season orders to freshman dramas NCIS: Los Angeles and The Good Wife , which are respectively the first and second best-rated new series of the season and have assisted in CBS winning the last three Tuesday ratings matches. (via press release) Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, and Sean Tillmann will write and executive produce a single-camera comedy pilot script entitled Stitch N' Bitch for HBO. The project will follow "two painfully cool hipster girls as they relocate from Brooklyn's Williamsburge neighborhood to Los Angeles' Silver Lake enclave in hopes of become artists -- of any kind," according to Hollywood Reporter 's Nellie Andreeva and Matthew Belloni. The trio might also star in the project if it's picked up to pilot but any decision of that kind will be made at a later date. ( Hollywood Reporter ) SPOILER! E! Online's Jennifer Godwin has details about Hayden Panettiere's

Were you just as surprised as I was by how much you enjoyed CBS' new legal drama The Good Wife ? I'll admit that I didn't have the highest of expectations for The Good Wife , which stars Julianna Margulies, Christine Baranski, Josh Charles, Matt Czuchry, Chris Noth, and Archie Panjabi. Despite its high wattage cast, it's not the type of series that I would ordinarily tune in to. But I have to say: I was sucked in pretty quickly to the action. Part of the series' appeal has got to be Margulies, who plays wounded politician's wife Alicia Florrick, whose husband (Chris Noth) is imprisoned after a sex scandal raises questions about his abuses of power in office. Alicia has got to be the best role that Margulies has played in years as well as the most charismatic. (It almost erases the bitter sting of short-lived FOX legal drama Canterbury's Law .) But now that the pilot episode has aired, I'm curious to know what you thought of the first installment of The G