[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Break out the carrot and raisin salad (and mix up some fry sauce)! HBO has renewed drama series Big Love for a fifth season, with ten episodes set to air next winter. The long-running drama series has been on a roll of late, with ratings up 13 percent among viewers this season and some well-earned awards recognition, with Chloe Sevigny walking away with a Golden Globe for her performance as Nicki. "We've taken the show deeper and darker over the last couple of seasons," said executive producer Mark V. Olsen, "and we're overjoyed that HBO has come along with us." Production is expected to begin on Season Five in June or July. ( Variety ) E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos and Jennifer Godwin have an interview with V and Lost star Elizabeth Mitchell. "I feel really bad for Juliet all the time," Mitchell told E! "I feel like, you know, karmically, maybe she's due, because when she was a...

"Sorry you had to see me that way." And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you reveal the solution to a mystery six seasons in the making. Lost has been criticized in the past by some (not me, fortunately) for stringing viewers along with a series of new mysteries while never quite offering answers to the story threads already long dangling. But this is, after all, the final season of Lost and showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse wisely decided to take an approach of beginning to answer questions right from the start this season. Last night's two-hour sixth season premiere of Lost ("LA X"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Jack Bender, was a phenomenal start to the season, offering yet another narrative device employed by the duo and pushing the story along while also offering some more of the series' now trademarked serpentine mysteries. So what did I think of the episode and the latest plot twists being thrown at the aud...

It's sad to say that I'm now completely fed up with and frustrated by BBC America's Last Restaurant Standing (which airs in the UK under the title The Restaurant ), with which I had been previously obsessed. After two fantastic seasons of culinary competition, the series has completely gone off the rails this season, bringing in unqualified contestants (some of whom don't even bother to cook) and throwing all sense of production values or carefully coordinated challenges right out the window, along with the series' once winning format. Last night's episode of Last Restaurant Standing ("The Cake") was shockingly awful. Besides for the fact that I found it inconceivable that this group of shoddy wannabe restaurateurs had made it this far in the competition (we're nearly at the end!), I felt like the series was even further undermined by the producers themselves, who created an illogical challenge for the teams--cater a tea dance in under five hours...

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse appeared on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live last night and announced that the series will wrap its run on Sunday, May 23rd. "The reason I think that anybody even cares about Lost is that we announced an end date three years ago," said Cuse. "We are eternally grateful to [Steve McPherson] to end the show on our own terms and I think that made all the difference in terms of Lost being the show that it still is." ( Hulu ) Entertainment Weekly 's Jeff Jensen has an interview with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about some of the more specific plot points from last night's season premiere of Lost . As it's not yet aired everywhere yet (UK gets it on Friday), I won't quote anything from the piece but urge you instead to check it out. ( Entertainment Weekly 's PopWatch ) FOX's Rupert Murdoch has acknowledged that it has had "conversations...

It's here: the sixth and final season of Lost begins tonight! But before we set off to the island for the last time, get prepared for tonight's season premiere of Lost ("LA X") with the second part of my interview with Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse over at The Daily Beast, entitled " Lost , For the Last Time." In Part One of my interview , Lindelof and Cuse discussed Season Six of Lost , the series' influence on television programming, its legacy, and why viewers shouldn't expect to see every mystery get answered this season. In the newly released second half of my Daily Beast interview with Cuse and Lindelof , the duo talk specifically about the sixth and final season of Lost : the fates of Henry Ian Cusick's Desmond Hume and Sonya Walger's Penelope Widmore; the return of such long-dead characters as Michael (Harold Perrineau) and Libby (Cynthia Watros) to the series; the show's final image; the future of the Lost ...

"Girls have secrets; men have honor." - Barry "You are only as happy as your saddest child." - Ibrahim "When I look at you, all I see is guilt." - Patty This week's taut and engaging episode of Damages ("The Dog is Happier Without Her"), written by Aaron Zelman and directed by Matthew Penn, advanced the parallel plots in the present day and the six months in the future timeframe, offering a number of intriguing twists even as the plot continued to uncoil itself. But while the episode's focus was piecing together the various mysteries that confront both the Tobin family, the district attorney's office, and the lawyers at the newly minted Hewes Shayes & Associates, the specter of the past had a way of showing up in the form of Patty's ex-husband Phil Grey (Michael Nouri). With only the utterance of two words ("Ray Fiske"), Phil has a way of ripping through Patty's armor in a way no one else can. Could it be that s...

As much as I love Chuck (and am obsessed with this current season), I have to say that last night's episode wasn't my favorite. Last night's installment of Chuck ("Chuck Versus the Nacho Sampler), written by Matt Miller and Scott Rosenbaum, was oddly inert after the strength of the last few episodes. I'm not entirely sure why, really, considering that Miller and Rosenbaum are two of the strongest scribes on the writing team but the episode felt like it was barely held together with all of the increasingly large plot holes. While I was glad to see Hannah (Kristin Kreuk) attempting to fit in at the Buy More and Morgan and Ellie finally growing increasingly suspicious of Chuck's behavior as well as Chuck reevaluate his role in the spy world, the episode's strength lay more in its themes than its execution this time around. It's been demonstrated throughout Chuck 's run so far that Chuck is a fish out of water when it comes to the espionage world. He...

Prepare to say goodbye all over again. I've only finally just gotten used to the idea that there won't be any more Doctor Who episodes starring David Tennant. Tennant departed the British sci-fi series after a handful of seasonal specials between December 2008 and January 2010 that depicted the Tenth Doctor locked in his final battle. A battle that resulted in the death of the Tenth Doctor and his regeneration. Doctor Who has always been a series that not only endures after the departure of its lead actor but seems to revel in the new possibilities that an incoming actor can bring to the role of the Time Lord. Still, Tennant has carved out a sizable place in the ongoing mythos of Doctor Who for his portrayal of the lonely traveler and he'll be much missed. BBC Video today releases Doctor Who: The Complete Specials , featuring David Tennant's final episodes as the Tenth Doctor. This five-disc set features all five of Tennant's Doctor Who specials, as well as a ho...

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos is reporting that Lost co-stars Evangeline Lilly and Matthew Fox plan to quit television after the end of the ABC drama series and that Lilly wants to leave acting behind altogether. "I think this will be the last time you see me on TV," Fox told Dos Santos. "I'm either going to do the kind of things I want to do in the film world, or maybe I'll just do something else entirely... I've done almost 300 hours of [TV]. It's been two really great experiences between Party of Five and Lost . I'm ready to take it to the next step and see what I can do in that [film] world." As for Lilly, she is looking to continue in the film world in a capacity other than being in front of the camera and focus on philanthropic work in Rwanda. "I just haven't found where that is yet. I don't know if anything has gelled yet. I don't know if it fits," she told D...

"There's no law against crazy." - Bill Do we become our parents in the end? Regardless of the rights and wrongs of our forebears' actions, are our fates sealed from the moment we're born? Are we forced not to follow our own paths, but rather to fall into old patterns determined by those who have come before us? These are questions brilliantly unearthed and examined in the latest episode of HBO's Big Love ("The Mighty and Strong"), written by Melanie Marnich and directed by Dan Attias. Throughout its four seasons so far, the drama series--created by Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer--has done an incredible job at painting the struggles between multiple generations of believers, setting in motion an exploration of family destiny and a personal journey. Last night's episode brought these conflicts to the fore, exploring the relationship between fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and offering a shocking reveal at the episode's end that mig...

The musings of ambitious call girl Belle de Jour (Billie Piper) have made for some tongue-in-cheek and witty narration but the third season of Showtime's British series Secret Diary of a Call Girl finds art imitating life as Belle--or Hannah as she's known outside of the bedroom--authors a tell-all book about her life as one of London's most sought-after, er, companions. Season Three of Secret Diary of a Call Girl , which begins tonight on Showtime, finds Hannah grappling with her newfound notoriety while also attempting to remain anonymous. It's a conundrum tantalizingly set up in the season's opening episode, in which she goes undercover at her own book launch party, only discover that her publisher Duncan (James D'Arcy) has hired a staggeringly stupid blonde bimbo to pose as "Belle de Jour" and read an excerpt from her book. It's a nice moment that challenges both Hannah and our own preconceptions about who prostitutes are and who they should ...

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Great news for fans of NBC's killer comedy Parks and Recreation : the Peacock has renewed the series for a third season, set to launch this fall. News of the renewal was broken by The Wrap's Josef Adalian, who reported that due to "certain production timing issues," an early renewal was required on the Universal Media Studios-produced comedy, which is executive produced by Greg Daniels and Mike Schur. ( The Wrap ) Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Torchwood 's John Barrowman is joining the cast of ABC's Desperate Housewives for at least five episodes this season. Barrowman, who is slated to appear beginning in April, will play "the Big Bad at the center of the Angie (Drea de Matteo) mystery," writes Ausiello. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) BBC Three has commissioned a third season of supernatural drama Being Human and announced that all three of the ser...