Skip to main content

Channel Surfing: Showtime Passes on "L Word" Spin-off, Peter Gallagher to Raise Eyebrows on "Californication," Anna Torv Talks "Fringe," and More

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing.

Showtime has apparently passed on The L Word spin-off entitled The Farm, starring Leisha Hailey, and the Matthew Perry-led comedy The End of Steve. Neither pilot will be picked up to series, though the pay cabler has indicated that it is currently weighing fellow pilots Possible Side Effects, about a family-run pharmaceutical company from writer/executive producer Tim Robbins, and comedy Ronna and Beverly, from Jessica Chaffin, Jamie Denbo, and Jenji Kohan (Weeds). It's worth noting that Showtime has a whole slew of returning series including Californication, Dexter, The Tudors, Tracey Ullman's State of the Union, United States of Tara, Weeds, and Secret Diary of a Call, the latter two of which have already been renewed for two additional seasons, and is about to launch Edie Falco comedy Nurse Jackie. (Hollywood Reporter)

Peter Gallagher (The O.C.) has been cast in a multiple-episode story arc in Season Three of Showtime's Californication, where he will play a university dean who fights with David Duchovny's Hank. He joins the previously announced Kathleen Turner and Diane Farr. (Variety)

SCI FI Wire talks to Fringe's Anna Torv about the FOX series, slated to return with new episodes beginning next week. "We discover some things that happened to her when she was really little that she doesn't really remember," said Torv about the upcoming installments. "You start to see the stories, or the lives of Peter and Walter [John Noble] and Olivia kind of begin to interlace a little bit. And you sort of see how their paths have crossed before." (SCI FI Wire)

Kevin Rankin (Friday Night Lights) has been cast as one of the leads in NBC medical drama pilot Trauma, where he will play a paramedic. (Variety)

Gale Harold will return to ABC's Desperate Housewives on May 3rd, six months after being badly injured in a motorcycle accident. Executive producer Marc Cherry hasn't yet indicated whether Harold will return for Desperate Housewives' sixth season this fall but said that Harold's Jackson will turn up in May with a "very important question for Susan -- one that she's kind of stunned by." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Richard Dean Anderson (Stargate SG-1) will reprise his role as Jack O'Neil on Sci Fi's upcoming Stargate franchise spin-off series Stargate Universe. "Rick is doing episodes of Universe," said series co-creator Brad Wright. "He was just here yesterday shooting an episode of Universe with us. So that relationship is always on-going, and it’s good to have him back." (Gateworld)

Sony Pictures Television has extended an overall deal with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, under which he will remain on board AMC's Breaking Bad, which was recently renewed for a third season, as showrunner/executive producer while also developing new series projects for the studio. (Variety)

Also at the studio, ER executive producer/showrunner David Zabel has signed a two-script deal with Sony Pictures Television, under which Zabel will write two pilot scripts for the studio whose concepts are as yet undetermined. (Hollywood Reporter)

Oxygen has renewed reality series Bad Girls Club for a fourth season. (Variety)

Food Network has ordered six additional episodes of Daisy Martinez's Latin culinary series Viva Daisy! The episodes, produced by Watch Entertainment, will launch in July. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Comments

nuri said…
was really looking forward to the l word spinoff. oh well.
Maggie said…
Given how poorly L Word ended, I'm kinda glad that they won't be ordering the spinoff. Meh.

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