Skip to main content

Channel Surfing: "Fringe" Gets Full Season, "Daisies" Fails to Bloom, Showtime Announces "Tara" Launch, "Survivor" Flap at CBS, and More

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing.

But is it The Pattern? The big news is, of course, the full season pick up for FOX's freshman drama Fringe, bringing this season's total to 22 episodes. "We're having a blast working on this show with this great team of producers and amazing cast," said FOX Entertainment president Kevin Reilly. "The series has really taken off creatively, and it's exciting to see that the audience is responding. We believe this is the first full season of many years to come." The pickup for Fringe marks the second full season order so far this year; last month, the CW ordered a full season of 90210. To date, Fringe has ranked as the number one new series among adults 18-49 this season. (Variety)

Pushing Daisies' second season launch plummeted in the ratings, sadly. "Despite strong reviews, the return of Daisies (6.3 million viewers, 2.0/6) had the steepest drop of any show this fall, declining a roller coaster-style 55% to a series-low fourth place at 8 p.m." Ouch. Let's hope that ABC doesn't get trigger-happy and cancel Daisies just as it's returning to the airwaves. Fans looking to send pie to ABC execs better start baking now, well in advance of Daisies' initial 13-episode order conclusion. Sigh. (Hollywood Reporter's Live Feed)

Showtime will launch its newest scripted comedy, The United States of Tara, starring Toni Collete, John Corbett, and Rosemary DeWitt, on January 18th at 10 pm. Series will bow between the final season of The L Word and the second season of Brit import Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Tara follows a woman suffers from multiple personality disorder and looks at how her family deals with her divergent identities. Project comes from writer/executive producer Diablo Cody and executive producer Steven Spielberg, who came up with the series' original premise. (Hollywood Reporter)

Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) and Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) have closed deals to appear in ABC's series adaptation of online series In the Motherhood (which starred Chelsea Handler, Leah Remini, and Jenny McCarthy in its original iteration). Handler may reprise her role in the ABC version but no deal is in place. Net is looking at potential 2009 launch. (TV Guide)

UK fans of Warner Bros. Television's The Mentalist, starring Simon Baker, can rest a little easier: the series will be coming to Blighty in 2009. Five and Five US have acquired rights to the procedural drama, which the nets will launch next year. (Variety)

Rosie O'Donnell will get her very own variety show this Thanksgiving entitled Rosie's Variety Show, which will be presented live on NBC from New York the evening before Thanksgiving. It's believed that the special--which will feature celebrity guests, musical acts, contests, and comedy sketches--could be a sign of a similar O'Donnell-fronted series for 2009. (Variety)

Parents Television Council has filed an indecency complaint with the FCC over CBS' season premiere of Survivor, which featured unintentional full frontal male nudity and was the first installment of the long-running reality franchise to be broadcast in HD. (Washington Post)

Stay tuned.

Comments

The CineManiac said…
Unintentional Full Frontal Male Nudity?!?!? How does that happen? The show is not live so how can that many people miss something like that?
Anonymous said…
Very, very happy about the Fringe pickup but very, very sad about the Pushing Daisies numbers. I know it's not a show for everyone but a 55% drop in the ratings? Ouch. ABC may need a few drops of Chuck's "vanilla extract" to swallow that piece of pie.

Popular posts from this blog

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

Pilot Inspektor: CBS' "Smith"

I may just have to change my original "What I'll Be Watching This Fall" post, as I sat down and finally watched CBS' new crime drama Smith this weekend. (What? It's taken me a long time to make my way through the stack of pilot DVDs.) While it's on following Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars on Tuesday nights (10 pm ET/PT, to be exact), I'm going to be sure to leave enough room on my TiVo to make sure that I catch this compelling, amoral drama. While one can't help but be impressed by what might just be the most marquee-friendly cast in primetime--Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Jonny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, Simon Baker, and Franky G all star and Shohreh Aghdashloo has a recurring role--the pilot's premise alone earned major points in my book: it's a crime drama from the point of view of the criminals, who engage in high-stakes heists. But don't be alarmed; it's nothing like NBC's short-lived Heist . Instead, think of it as The Italian

The Daily Beast: "How The Killing Went Wrong"

While the uproar over the U.S. version of The Killing has quieted, the show is still a pale imitation of the Danish series on which it is based. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "How The Killing Went Wrong," in which I look at how The Killing has handled itself during its second season, and compare it to the stunning and electrifying original Danish series, Forbrydelsen , on which it is based. (I recently watched all 20 episodes of Forbrydelsen over a few evenings.) The original is a mind-blowing and gut-wrenching work of genius. It’s not necessary to rehash the anger that followed in the wake of the conclusion last June of the first season of AMC’s mystery drama The Killing, based on Søren Sveistrup’s landmark Danish show Forbrydelsen, which follows the murder of a schoolgirl and its impact on the people whose lives the investigation touches upon. What followed were irate reviews, burnished with the “burning intensity of 10,000 white-hot suns