Skip to main content

Channel Surfing: Monaghan Gets "Lost" for Three Episodes, Joey Lauren Adams Falls for "Tara," "Ugly" Betty's New Look Focus-Grouped, and More

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing.

E! Online's Watch with Kristin is reporting that Dominic Monaghan will reprise his role as rocker Charlie Pace on ABC's Lost next season for three episodes. "Sources tell us exclusively that, yes, Dom's deal to reappear on Lost is done and that the original castmember is set to appear in three episodes in Season Six," writes Jennifer Godwin. "No word yet on the answer to the big question: Is Charlie alive? We'll have to wait until Lost returns to ABC in January 2010 to find out." (E! Online's Watch with Kristin)

Joey Lauren Adams (Party Down) has joined the cast of Showtime's United States of Tara for the series' second season. Adams will play Pammy, a barmaid who "has a history of picking the wrong guys," writes Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello. "Her luck changes the day she meets 'Buck' and falls head over heels in love." She'll appear in at least three episodes next season. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that ABC executives are testing scenes of Ugly Betty featuring America Ferrara's Betty rocking her new glam makeover. "Based on ABC’s questions to the panel, the suits appear most concerned about whether fans of the show will deem Betty’s transformation appropriate, given her four-year journey from flunky to editor, or whether the changes are too drastic and compromise the essence of the Everygal," writes Ausiello. "They’re also asking for opinions about Betty’s new hair, styled eyebrows, and makeup." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

TLC still has thirty episodes remaining on its deal for unscripted family series Jon and Kate Plus 8 and said that the family--whose behind-the-scenes drama has become headline news--isn't hesitating about continuing on. "It's the family's decision to be involved in the show," said TLC president Eileen O'Neill said. "We want to stay with them as long as they want to stay with us." The series, however, will change, with the emphasis placed more squarely on the children that their parents' dating lives. (Variety)

Amy Poehler is set to return to her Weekend Update anchor roots during September, when she will rejoin Seth Meyers on the Weekend Update desk for Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday on September 17th and September 24th. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Shingle Ish Entertainment has several projects in development, including Bayside Boys, from writer/director/star Ed Burns, about a group of twenty-something male friends from Bayside, Queens. Project is being shopped to cable nets. Elsewhere, the company has Comedy Central male comedy Gnarly, about two thirty-somethings who travel back in time to their high-school selves to determine what made them so unattractive to the opposite sex. Other projects include MTV pilot Bridge and Tunnel, about students on Staten Island; dramedy One if by Land from Hitch writer Kevin Bisch, about a cafe in New York where couples get married, which has been bought as a script at CBS; and a slew of others. (Hollywood Reporter)

BBC One Daytime has commissioned a second season of drama Moving On, ordering ten stand-alone episodes that will be filmed on location in and nearby Liverpool. Series, from a group of writers who were mentored by Jimmy McGovern, is a loose narrative about people each coming to grips with how best to move on in life. The original season featured such actors as Shelia Hancock, Richard Armitage, Lesley Sharp, Mark Womack, Dervla Kerwin, and Ian Hart. (BBC)

FOX has added two encore airings of its new unscripted dating series More to Love, with repeats slated to air tonight at 8 pm ET/PT and Monday, August 3rd at 9 pm. (Futon Critic)

Stay tuned.

Comments

wildhoney said…
I'm so happy that Charlie will be back on Lost! I don't think he's still alive but I think the final season will include many "ghosts" from the past and I'm looking forward to seeing some old, familiar faces.
susie que said…
Should Betty be ugly or pretty? More importantly, does anyone even care?

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