[Televisionary]

You know you have a fantastic reality series on your hands when even an episode with a foregone conclusion still makes the action absolutely riveting. Last night's episode of Top Chef ("Restaurant Wars") was no exception to the above. Given that it was painfully bloody obvious from the start which team would end up praised by the judges (including incomparable guest head judge Anthony Bourdain), I wondered if I'd find myself slightly deflated watching the gang over at Mi Buddha struggle their way through service, burdened with a series of foolhardy culinary choices and botched execution. Ouch. Antonia won this week's Quickfire Challenge, which had the cheftestants working the egg station at a popular Chicago breakfast haunt. Antonia kept her cool and, above all, kept calm the entire time, turning out a series of dishes quickly and efficiently. While immunity is no longer on the table, as it were, A. does win a very valuable advantage going into the Elimination Cha

It's funny how your expectations can completely derail your perceptions of a series' strengths or weaknesses. As longtime readers of this site know, I have been beyond excited to watch the pilot for HBO's upcoming series True Blood since I first read the pilot script during the winter/spring of 2007. (Yes, it's really been that long since I first started blathering on about it.) So imagine my shock and chagrin when I sat down to watch the pilot for True Blood --written and directed by Alan Ball ( Six Feet Under ) and based on the novel series by Charlaine Harris --last week and was royally disappointed. Consider me a vampire faced with the prospect of feasting on an anorexic: all of the pieces were there but it was just flat, empty, and remarkably tasteless. Sure, Anna Paquin ( X-Men ) is absolutely cute as a button as telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse; she's a blonde, perky barmaid at Merlotte's, a backwoods bar in post-Katrina Louisiana, and a social pari

I woke up this morning to learn that Russell T. Davies would be leaving Doctor Who , the brilliant and imaginative series that he relaunched and watched over for the past four seasons. Davies will stick around to oversee the four feature-length specials slated to air on the BBC next year but will then depart prior to the start of Season Five. I'm really sad to be losing Davies as the man with his hand on the Who tiller. He's done a remarkable job at keeping things running smoothly, through not one but two major cast changes (as the incomparable David Tennant replaced original star Christopher Eccleston and Freema Agyeman replaced Billie Piper... and then was recently replaced herself with Catherine Tate). But I am pleased as punch that it will be Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat (who also created comedy Coupling and BBC limited series Jekyll ) who will be taking over as the lead writer and executive producer on Doctor Who . If anyone should be the one to take over as Keeper of

Holy Judy Greer, Batman! The former Miss/Guided star has been cast in HBO's comedy pilot Suburban Shootout , the US adaptation of the darkly comic UK series about warring gangs of, um, homicidal suburban housewives in a seemingly idyllic and picturesque town. In a fantastic twist of fate, Greer has been cast as the lead in Suburban Shootout , where she will play the wife of a police chief who moves from urban sprawl for quieter pastures, only to learn that the 'burbs are just as every bit dangerous as the city. The script, from writer Michelle Ashford and executive producer/director Barry Sonnenfeld, was absolutely fantastic and pitch perfect (they did have amazing underlying material to work with, after all) and I am glad that rather than cast some faceless ingenue for the lead, they went with the quirky and adorable Greer, who will bring a distinct edge to the role. Casting on the pilot for Suburban Shootout has become a hotbed for solid female actors, with Kelly Preston, K

Every once in a while a pilot comes along that is so perfect, such a shining indication of what the final series will be, so perfectly cast and directed, that it's impossible to look away. That pilot, ladies and gentlemen, is definitely FOX's phenomenal science-tinged drama Fringe . In a nutshell, Fringe is The X-Files for the new millennium: eerie, gripping, and still haunting even after the final credits have rolled, albeit containing an overt (rather than subtle) humor that never existed in that series. In this case, the aliens aren't from outer space: they're the mega-corporations that dot the American landscape, pushing science and technology past their limits and exploiting that for their own gain. It poses several ethical questions: when does the pursuit of scientific discovery go too far? Who is monitoring the rapid advances in technology in today's day and age? And what happens when a scientist--or a group of scientists--decides that the world is their la

ABC had very little to announce for next season at this year's upfronts ; most of its pilots have yet to have been shot and won't film a single frame until later this summer. And the few things that ABC did end up ordering were either picked up from another network ( Scrubs ) or had been shot last year ( Life on Mars ). What's my point? I finally sat down last night to watch the pilot for Life on Mars with bated breath. After all, longtime readers know how bloody much I love the UK original series of Life on Mars --starring John Simm, Liz White, and Philip Glenister--and I had pretty low expectations for this David E. Kelley-created US remake, which keeps the basic plot intact (detective Sam Tyler gets hit by a car whilst investigating a serial killer and wakes up in 1972... or does he?), along with much of the dialogue, shot compositions, and graphics. (Kelley, for his part, won't be involved with the series; ABC has hired Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenbe

Lots of casting news today, on the first Monday after the network upfront presentations. First up, Sci Fi managed to close the deal on Polly Walker for their two-hour backdoor pilot Caprica , a prequel to their own series Battlestar Galactica . Astute readers of this site will know that I first reported that an offer was out to Walker ( Rome ) a few weeks ago . Walker will play Sister Clarice Willow, the secretive high priestess/headmistress of the exclusive Athena Academy, a private polytheistic school that Zoe Greystone (Alessandra Toreson) and her friends attend. I think the casting of Walker is absolutely brilliant for this role and she'll definitely bring something unexpected to the table. Plus, I'm happy she's sticking around in the States after the cancelation of Cane . Walker joins Eric Stolz , Esai Morales , and Paula Malcomson in this spellbinding two-hour backdoor pilot project from executive producers Ronald D. Moore, David Eick, and Remi Aubuchon and director