[Televisionary]

The bad news is that David Tennant is still leaving Doctor Who in a few months' time. The good news for American viewers, however, is that digital cabler BBC America will be airing Tennant's final three Doctor Who specials--beginning with this autumn's Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars --as "quickly behind" the UK airdates as possible... and said that they will be airing the full, uncut UK episodes, even if they spill over into the next timeslot, at least in their premiere outings. The statements were made by BBC America's Garth Ancier at last week's Television Critics Association session for BBC America in Pasadena; Ancier also told reporters that the channel would have aired Torchwood: Children of Earth day and date with BBC One but there were scheduling issues with BBC One. Ancier moderated a packed session that included Doctor Who star David Tennant, head writer/executive producer Russell T. Davies, executive producer Julie Gardner, and director Euros

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Following an announcement that actress Maura Tierney would require an eight-week medical evaluation for an undisclosed condition, NBC has pushed the start of its drama Parenthood , which was slated to debut on September 23rd, to midseason. The Peacock will instead push up the launch of its midseason medical drama Mercy to the fall, although it is still unclear whether Mercy will inherit Parenthood 's Wednesdays at 8 pm timeslot. The production shutdown on Parenthood , meanwhile, will give writers additional time to complete scripts. ( Hollywood Reporter ) UPDATE : "In an effort to guard my privacy, it seems that the wording of NBC's press release has unfortunately caused some confusion and undue alarm about my health," said Maura Tierney in an official statement. "I have discovered a tumor in my breast which requires surgery. I will not know either my exact diagnosis or course of treatment until that surgery i

The sunshine might be more intense than ever this summer, but it's also the perfect time to curl up with a good mystery, or four in this case. This weekend, PBS' Masterpiece Mystery launches the first of four fantastic new Miss Marple feature-length mysteries, based on the spinster detective character created by Agatha Christie. Stepping into the role for the first time is the superlative Julia McKenzie ( Cranford ), who replaces Geraldine McEwan as the titular sleuth following McEwan's retirement after the third season of Marple , which airs in the UK on ITV. McKenzie is pitch perfect as the perspicacious Jane Marple; she might look like an elderly spinster but her tweed suits and constant knitting belie the keen mind of a true detective in every sense of the word. The four installments presented here--"A Pocket Full of Rye," "Murder is Easy," "They Do It With Mirrors," and "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?"--might seem like tea cozy

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. The Chicago Tribune 's Maureen Ryan has an absolutely fantastic interview with Doctor Who star David Tennant on the eve of BBC America's airing of last Christmas' Doctor Who special "The Next Doctor." Among the topics of discussion: the end of his run on the legendary British sci-fi series, the truth behind the all-Doctors reunion rumors (false, says Tennant), and what's next for the actor (Poliakoff's Glorious 39 ), among other things. "I'm all finished," said Tenannt of his run on Doctor Who . "Three or four weeks ago, I filmed my last scene. So it's over. Still a long time to go before they're all broadcast, though, so I'm still clinging on for a bit. But yeah, it's done. It was very emotional, very exciting. We managed to go out with some of the best scripts I had in four years. So it was a real treat." ( Chicago Tribune 's The Watcher ) Jeri Ryan ( Shark

Fans of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, the funny little Belgian detective famed as much for his fastidiousness as the fact that he's the self-proclaimed most famous detective in the world, have long waited for actor David Suchet to slip back into the role. That wait is over as PBS' Masterpiece Mystery will this month offer the US premiere of two new Poirot mysteries starring Suchet as part of its "Six by Agatha" season, which features not only two feature-length Poirot mysteries but also four Miss Marple whodunits, starring Julia McKenzie ( Cranford ) as Miss Marple herself. The two mysteries, entitled "Cat Among the Pigeons" and "Mrs. McGinty's Dead," will seriously put Hercule Poirot's famed "little grey cells" to the test as he must contend with two very different murder scenarios. In the first, "Cat Among the Pigeons," the Belgian detective goes undercover at the Meadowbank School for Girls, where he encoun

In a stroke of inspired casting, PBS has unveiled Doctor Who 's David Tennant as the new host of Masterpiece Contemporary , which returns to PBS in October. Tennant, who is currently finishing up his tenure as The Doctor on the BBC series, is no stranger to PBS, having appeared in both Casanova and He Knew He Was Right , which appeared on the channel. He joins fellow Masterpiece hosts Laura Linney and Alan Cumming, who host Masterpiece Classic and Masterpiece Mystery respectively. Tennant will kick off Masterpiece Contemporary's 2009 season with Endgame , starring William Hurt ( Damages ), Chiwetel Ejiofer ( Serenity ), and Jonny Lee Miller ( Eli Stone ). The full press release from PBS can be found below. David Tennant to Host Masterpiece Contemporary 2009 on PBS — Star of Doctor Who and Casanova Makes his Debut in October One of Britain's most popular actors has been named the new host of Masterpiece Contemporary . David Tennant, well known to fans of British telev

"A really good detective never gets married." - Raymond Chandler Many detectives would take Chandler's edict to heart, given just how married they are to their jobs, and the bookshelves are lined with detective novels about grim gumshoes who forsake their own personal lives in pursuit of catching killers. After all, detectives are prone to seeing the worst of humanity on a daily basis, of seeing the skull beneath the skin, companions as they are of death and murder. Enter Kurt Wallander (Kenneth Branagh), a detective in the seaside town of Ystad, Sweden who--like many others of his ilk--has his own horrific demons to battle even as he throws himself into chasing criminals with intense abandon. And while we've all seen stories of flawed detectives a zillion times, PBS' Wallander , a co-production between WGBH and BBC which kicks off on Sunday night as part of Masterpiece Mystery , offers a tautly gripping and suspenseful roller coaster ride through the dark heartla

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. The Office co-star/writer Mindy Kaling has signed an overall deal with NBC and Universal Media Studios under which she will continue to write for and star in The Office as well as develop a new comedy project which will be a vehicle for the actress. "This is my first step in a Transformers-style way to take over the whole world," joked Kaling. "I've only ever worked for NBC, and I've felt an enormous amount of support from the executives there." Kaling says she is drawn to workplace comedies as well as buddy series such as HBO's Flight of the Conchords or projects focusing on women. ( Variety ) There's still no news on the fate of NBC's Chuck , despite a massive fan-based initiative to create buzz for a third season of the action-comedy. The Hollywood Reporter 's Matthew Belloni talks to Chuck co-creator/executive producer Josh Schwartz about the series' rabid fan base, Lily , the

“Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.” - Alfred Montapert In this case, it's not just our own choices that we need fear the consequences from but those of others as well. In Masterpiece Classic 's The Old Curiosity Shop , an adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel that aired in the UK on ITV in 2007, a young girl and her gambling addict grandfather must flee from the titular shop after they are ruined from his debts and are relentlessly pursued by one of Dickens' most loathsome and terrifying villains, the evil and sadistic (not to mention grotesque) Daniel Quilp. The girl in question is The Old Curiosity Shop 's eternally patient and tragic Little Nell ( Becoming Jane 's Sophie Vavasseur), a candidate for sainthood if there ever was one who bears the indignities of her situation with an almost ethereal distance from the grubbiness of the situation at hand. Certainly not helping matters is her self-serving grandfather ( Diamonds &#

"I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence." - Charles Dickens, "Little Dorrit" Charles Dickens often wrote about money and his novels gave equal weight to the lives of the poor and downtrodden as they did the idle rich. But none of his novels pushed financial matters to the fore as much as his 1857 novel "Little Dorrit" did. Ostensibly the story of the debt-ridden Dorrit family, the plot centers on young Amy Dorrit, a young woman born in the Marshallsea Prison to a father who has fallen on hard times and spent more than twenty years in the debtor's prison that serves as Little Dorrit's home. "Little Dorrit" is a story of greed, betrayal, and malice... that resonates all the more today, given our current economic crisis. Hell, there's even a fantastically prescient parallel to our own time period's Bernie Madoff in Mr. Mer

I think that, were he alive today, Charles Dickens would have approved of Masterpiece Classic 's new adaptation of Oliver Twist (which aired in the UK in 2007 as five half-hour installments), which launches this Sunday on PBS. Unlike previous adaptations which have remained firmly rooted in the novel's Victorian roots, this Oliver Twist , written by Sarah Phelps ( EastEnders ) and directed by Coky Giedroyc ( Blackpool ) with visual flair, grafts a very modern sensibility onto the typically Dickensian story of the workhouse orphan forced to fend for himself in a London populated by grifters, murderers, and child thieves. It's no surprise that Phelps, who adapted Dickens' novel, has written more than 90 episodes of downtrodden British soap EastEnders ; here she imbues the story with the heightened sense of reality typically found in soaps, boldly structuring the condensed plot into slickly provocative bursts of drama, making it virtually impossible not to get sucked into

Timothy Spall is known for many things: his roles in many of Mike Leigh's films, his turn as Peter Pettigrew in several of the Harry Potter film adaptations, and as a consummate lover of Dickens. Spall had the chance to portray the iconic character of Fagin in the latest adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist , which aired in 2007 as five half-hour installments on BBC and which is set to launch this Sunday as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classics ' Dickens season. Speaking at last month's Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, Spall had quite a lot to say about playing Fagin, why the novels of Dickens have endured more than 150 years later, and, yes, about those Harry Potter films. Spall's portrayal of Oliver Twist 's Fagin, the ringleader of a band of children thieves, is particularly creepy and vastly different than how previous actors performed the role. "I was going for glamour," joked Spall. "He is a creep, he is

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. The Los Angeles Times has an interesting and revealing Q&A with Dollhouse 's Fran Kranz, who plays techie Topher on the FOX drama, which launches next Friday. Kranz reveals, "There is a place in the Dollhouse called the Attic that stores failed Dolls and personalities. There’s like a whole warehouse where actual bodies are kept." As for the, uh, unconvention post-order redevelopment surrounding Dollhouse , Kranz is forthcoming. "I’ve read things where Joss has said that... Fox wanted to cut to the chase," he said. "They thought there was too much on the characters within the Dollhouse and the conflict and mythology of the Dollhouse, as opposed to seeing what the Dollhouse does on a day-to-day basis. In one sense, I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s important for the audience to define the Dollhouse before they’re introduced to the rest of the conflicts and stories." ( Los Angeles Times ) S

Last year, PBS and station WGBH--which produces such fine series as Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! --had an idea: they would combine the two series and then split the new series, simply called Masterpiece , into three sections: Classic, Contemporary, and Mystery. These new sub-series would better showcase the individual ideas contained therein and remain branded both individually and under the Masterpiece umbrella. This Sunday, PBS stations will debut the 2009 season of Masterpiece Classic , which includes adaptations of works by Charles Dickens, including the eagerly awaited Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield , Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights , and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles , which kicks off the season on January 4th. Adapted by David Nicholls ( Starter for Ten ), Tess of the d'Urbervilles , written by Thomas Hardy in 1891, tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield ( Quantum of Solace 's Gemma Arterton), a girl from a shiftless rural