[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Good news: pay cabler Starz has renewed comedy series Party Down , from creators Rob Thomas, John Enbom, Dan Etheridge, and Paul Rudd, for a second season. The entire cast of Season One of Party Down will return for a sophomore season, though Jane Lynch's commitment to FOX's upcoming series Glee could create complications for her return and the actress is the only cast member who isn't already signed on for a second season. Party Down will return to production this summer for a Season Two launch date sometime in 2010. Also returning: directors Fred Savage and Bryan Gordon, who will direct episodes of the series, along with Ken Marino, who is locked to helm an installment as well. ( E! Online's Watch with Kristin , Variety ) FOX has reportedly ordered pilots Human Target , from Warner Bros Television, and comedy Sons of Tucson , from 20th Century Fox Television, to series. FOX had no comment on the news, which is

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. CBS has announced that it will move struggling freshman drama series Harper's Island to Saturday nights at 9 pm ET/PT, beginning May 2nd. What saved the series from outright cancellation are its strong DVR numbers and the fact that all thirteen episodes of Harper's Island 's limited run were already in the can, making it much easier for the Eye to just burn off the episodes. "This move gives us an opportunity to improve the time period on Thursday while experimenting with more original programming on Saturday," said CBS senior exec VP Kelly Kahl of the network's decision. Harper's Island won't be alone on Saturday nights, which the networks have been increasingly using as a dumping ground for series with small but loyal viewers; Kings, Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone , and Dirty Sexy Money will all air episodes on Saturdays this summer. ( Variety ) J.J. Abrams is confident that freshman drama series Fr

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. FOX inched its way closer to renewing drama Bones yesterday, ordering six scripts for the Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz-led series. While it's not a firm renewal yet for Bones , the script order does point favorably towards FOX picking up the series, which has improved the network's Thursday night timeslot by 43 percent since the series relocated there in January and has bested ABC's Ugly Betty and NBC's My Name is Earl . ( TV Week ) Some bad news for Veronica Mars fans: don't hold your breath waiting for the feature film spin-off of the much missed sleuthing series. Creator Rob Thomas told The New York Post that a greenlight isn't looking likely, though he'll "drop whatever" he's doing in order to make it happen should it materialize. "While the pitch [to producer Joel Silver] went well and I don't think the movie's dead, right now it's looking depressing," s

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Former Smallville star Michael Rosenbaum and Heroes ' Nick D'Agosto will star in NBC's untitled Justin Adler comedy pilot, where they'll play brothers in the Sony Pictures Television and Tantamount project; D'Agosto will play the family's youngest sibling who brings his girlfriend home to meet his family while Rosenbaum will play the middle sibling, a married man freaking out over his adopted baby. Elsewhere, Noah Gray-Cabey ( Heroes ), Oded Fehr ( Sleeper Cell ), Kyle Riabko ( Instant Star ), and Jessy Schram ( Life ) will star in ABC musical drama pilot Limelight , about the teachers and students of a performing arts institute; Sam Neill ( The Tudors ) has joined the cast of ABC drama pilot Happy Town ; and Rochelle Aytes ( Drive ) will star opposite Rupert Penry-Jones ( Spooks ) in ABC's untitled Jerry Bruckheimer drama pilot, about a team of amateur detectives, where she will play a police officer who

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. ABC has ordered a pilot for a modern day remake of seminal 1980s mini-series V , to be written/executive produced by Scott Peters ( The 4400 ). Updated V , from Warner Bros. Television, will focus on a female Homeland Security agent. Elsewhere, NBC has removed the contingency from period comedy pilot Lost in the '80s , from Sony Pictures Television and Tantamount, which will be directed by P.J. Hogan ( Shopaholic ). ( Hollywood Reporter ) Former Doctor Who co-star Freema Agyeman will reportedly reprise her role as Martha Jones in one of the four Doctor Who specials planned for 2009, despite some rumors of bad blood between her and outbound head writer/executive producer Russell T. Davies, said to originate when she accepted a role on ITV's Law & Order: London rather than star in a new season of Torchwood . “Freema’s on board," said an unnamd source. "It’s early days so it’s unclear what exactly Martha will be

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. I'm off in a bit to FOX's panel for the Television Critics Association, but here are a few headlines first. Torchwood 's John Barrowman will collaborate with artist Tommy Lee Edwards on an original comic strip entitled "Captain Jack and the Selkie," which will run in the fourteen issue of the bi-monthly Torchwood magazine. The strip will feature a story in which Jack faces" a deadly threat on a remote Scottish island, where people are disappearing one by one... To his horror, Jack starts to suspect he may know who – or perhaps more specifically what – is responsible." (via press release) Entertainment Weekly 's Doc Jensen offers some clues to understanding Season Five of Lost , which premieres Wednesday, January 21st, and recommends five previous episodes for essential viewing before the season premiere, including "There's No Place Like Home (Parts 2 & 3)," "Flashes Before Y

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Only a few major headlines this morning, though I am still literally shaking after watching the first two episodes of Season Five of Lost yesterday afternoon. (Nearly 24 hours later and I still can't get it out of my head, but that's hardly surprising.) The Walker clan is getting thinned out a little bit. According to Michael Ausiello, Brothers & Sisters ' Balthazar Getty was told last week that his option as a full-time series regular was not being picked up for next season. However, Getty is said to be in talks with producers to remain on the series, perhaps in a recurring role. Decision to reduce Getty's role is due to both budgetary and storyline reasons, though some insiders have pointed to Getty's "difficult" behavior of late. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Bill Lawrence--the creator of Scrubs , which moves from NBC to ABC on January 6th--talks to the New York Times about writ

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Those of us who loathed John Patrick Amedori's Aaron Rose on the CW's Gossip Girl have reason to celebrate today. The CW has confirmed that the December 8th episode that saw Serena heading off to Buenos Aires with Aaron will be the character's last appearance on the series. Whew. So what went wrong? "It was the facial hair," says Show Tracker's Enid Portuguez. I have to agree but I'd also add greasy hair and personality bypass. ( Los Angeles Times ) Tom Cavanagh has confirmed that he will return to ABC's Scrubs this season as Dan, the screw-up brother of J.D. (Zach Braff), in an episode filmed in September that also sees the return of previous guest stars Amy Smart and Nicole Sullivan. Scrubs launches its final season on January 6th on ABC. ( TV Guide ) Matt Lanter ( Heroes ) has been cast in a multiple-episode story arc on the CW's 90210 , where he will play bad boy Liam, a potential love in

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. I'm still behind on telly so I haven't seen the latest episode of Dirty Sexy Money yet... That sound you hear? It would be the final nail in the coffin for Pushing Daisies ... Daisies creator Bryan Fuller has signed a two-year overall deal with Universal Media Studios, under which he will rejoin the staff of NBC's Heroes and develop new series projects for the studio. Fuller, who is completing post-production on WBTV's Daisies , will rejoin Heroes starting with episode 320 though it is unknown what his official position will be, other than that he will be working closely alongside showrunner/executive producer Tim Kring. ( Hollywood Reporter ) In other Pushing Daisies news, Kristin Chenoweth has joined the cast of FOX's animated midseason comedy Sit Down, Shut Up , where she will replace Maria Bamford as Florida high school science teacher Miracle Grohe, opposite Arrested Development 's Jason Bateman,

Poor, poor Scrubs . The struggling NBC sitcom is at the heart of a battle between the Peacock and ABC Television Studios , which produces the series. ABC is said to be in talks to pick up 18 episodes of the comedy for the 2008-09 season. One little problem: NBC isn't letting go. Their relationship over the years involving Scrubs has always been fraught with complication; it didn't help that many believed NBC treated Scrubs like its bastard step-child, shifting the series through no less than 17 timeslot changes over the last seven years. This was widely believed to be Scrubs ' final season. However, following the production shut-down brought on by the WGA strike, the episodic order for Scrubs this season was cut back to 12 episodes (down from 18) and Scrubs still has five episodes in the can. NBC hasn't yet made a decision about whether to order additional as-yet-unproduced episodes and air them, order a final original episode (to serve as the series finale), or sho

It's official: the WGA strike, which began November 5th, has finally come to a close, following a member vote overwhelmingly in favor of ending the strike (92.5% to be precise) and getting back to work during the official ten-day ratification process. You can literally hear the sound of relief echoing through Hollywood today as writers return to their keyboards to try to pound out as many scripts as possible in time to salvage the 2007-08 season. "Our membership has voted, and writers can go back to work," said WGA West President Patric Verrone in a statement. "This was not a strike we wanted, but one we had to conduct in order to win jurisdiction and establish appropriate residuals for writing in new media and on the Internet. Those advances now give us a foothold in the digital age. Rather than being shut out of the future of content creation and delivery, writers will lead the way as TV migrates to the Internet and platforms for new media are developed." So w

It's no secret that medical comedy Scrubs has been, well, lagging a bit in the ratings this season. Now in it's sixth season, the series has been shifted about a number of times in the schedule and, hell, it nearly didn't come back for the sixth season of medical-tinged hijinx and surreal fantasy sequences until NBC exercised their option for an additional installment literally at the eleventh hour. Nearly a year later and Scrubs is back in the same situation it was at the end of the 2005-06 season. It's a prohibitively expensive show to produce and, despite studio ABCTV (formerly known as Touchstone) locking up Zach Braff for a seventh season, NBC doesn't seem certain it wants the show to return next year. They might be able to come to an arrangement should the studio reduce the license fee it requires NBC to pay for the right to air the series (the longer series, like Scrubs run, the more expensive the license fee becomes), but NBC and Kevin Reilly might decide

It was just the other day ( Friday, if we're being precise ) that I said how much I wished NBC would come to their senses and move freshman comedy 30 Rock (a Televisionary fave), using The Office as a lead-in, rather than the much loved if somewhat underperforming Scrubs . Looks like someone at the Peacock was listening. NBC announced that it would do just that, shifting 30 Rock a half an hour earlier, to 9 pm, beginning April 5th. Wait, what's that you say? You thought the cruelly imposed hiatus of 30 Rock (intended to deny us our fix of such random oddities as Ray Ray's Mystery Garage ) was supposed to last much longer than that? Fortunately, NBC has surprised us again and will be returning 30 Rock to the schedule a little earlier than can be expected. (My prayers to Jack Donaghy were apparently answered.) April 5th will feature a 35-minute "super-sized" episode of 30 Rock (along with The Office and Scrubs ). NBC's lineup for April 5th will be the foll

With the Los Angeles sun beating down, I was finding it a little hard this year to get into the Christmas spirit. That is, until I watched a mash up of my favorite Christmas television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas , performed by the cast of NBC's Scrubs . While you won't get to see Dr. Kelso do the Snoopy Dance (rats!), feast your eyes (and ears) on the vocal talents of the entire Scrubs gang, including J.D., Turk, Carla, Elliot, the Janitor, and even Dr. Cox... in a stunning performance as blanket-toting Linus. Special thanks to the production crew of a certain non- Scrubs NBC sitcom for sending this my way. It's like a warm mug of cocoa on a cold winter's night.

I can't even tell you how thrilled I was yesterday to learn that NBC was going to revamp its Thursday night lineup, mere days after the Peacock announced that it was effectively going to destroy its 8 pm timeslot by filling it with cheap-to-produce reality fare like Deal or No Deal . Fortunately, Kevin Reilly didn't budge on keeping single-cam comedies My Name is Earl and The Office right where they are and shifting Tina Fey's 30 Rock to Thursdays and (finally!) bringing Scrubs back the schedule. Combined, these four series display the possibilities of the single camera format and I've been pleading with the networks to combine them into one single night of fantastic comedic TV. While CBS has its Monday night comedy lineup and CW its urban-themed laughers on the same night, there hasn't been one-stop shopping for single cam mirth until now. Sadly, I've been calling for this arrangement since the days of the dearly departed Arrested Development , but I'll