[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. With May Upfronts only a few weeks away, there are an awful lot of series that are on the bubble for renewal next season. Chuck , which airs its penultimate episode of the season tonight, is definitely on the bubble, with its return hindered by the lack of real estate now that NBC will use the 10 pm hour next fall for a nightly Jay Leno talk show and by the numbers for midseason replacement Southland . There's a slightly better chance for Medium to return, however. ( Life is expected to be cancelled, as is Kath & Kim .) FOX's Dollhouse is said to have a 50/50 shot at coming back. CBS' Without a Trace and Cold Case are said to have a 50/50 shot at a renewal, things are looking brighter for The Unit after the network asked Shawn Ryan for a fifth season bible, while Eleventh Hour is thought unlikely to return. At ABC, Better Off Ted, Castle , and The Unusuals could get a second go-around as the network is said to be

ABC has had a tough time attempting to find a timeslot companion for its signature series Lost . Over the past few years, it's attempted to to find a series that could either sit beside the Bad Robot-produced series or fill the timeslot during Lost 's hiatus period. Such series as The Nine, Invasion, Daybreak , and others have attempted to do just that with limited success. Until now. ABC's new drama pilot Flash Forward , written by David S. Goyer ( Batman Begins, Blade ) and Brannon Braga ( Enterprise, Threshold ) and loosely based on Robert J. Sawyer's 1999 novel of the same name, might just be the one to do the trick. With Lost set to end in May 2010, the network seems hellbent on finding a suitable replacement for the series and Goyer and Braga's project seems the best suited so far to capture the imaginations of Lost 's devoted band of obsessive followers. It was with much curiosity that I sat down last week to read the pilot script for Flash Forward , en

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Pushing Daisies fans can at least look forward to one thing: closure. The series finale was said to contain a cliffhanger ending for our girl Chuck but no more, according to Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello, who learned that Bryan Fuller and Co. were able to tack on a different opening and ending to the episode in post. "We're doing a lot of work in post to shape it so that it is satisfying for the audience," said Fuller. Ausiello also reports that there are rumors swirling that ABC may burn off the final three episodes in a single night. I don't know about you but I'm already missing Daisies . ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Looks like she's always the constant: Lost 's Sonya Walger has been cast as the female lead in ABC's drama pilot Flash Forward . She'll play Olivia, the wife of newly sober FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), who is troubled by the vision

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. I'm still smarting from the reveal in last night's episode of Gossip Girl just who was involved in that oh-so-predictable accident rather than the, uh, party I'd rather get axed from the series. Sigh. Better news then for fans of Sci-Fi's Battlestar Galactica . The cabler has given a series order to spin-off Caprica , which is set fifty years before the action of BSG . Sci-Fi had earlier this year shot a two-hour backdoor pilot for Caprica , which stars Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Paula Malcomson, and Polly Walker, from director Jeffrey Reiner and plans to launch the series in early 2010. Production on twenty additional episodes is slated to begin in mid-2009 in Vancouver. "We want people to come to this who have never heard of Battlestar Galactica ," said Sci-Fi president Dave Howe. "I think, because [ Galactica 's] backdrop was space and spaceships, there was a barrier to entry for some viewers. Ca