[Televisionary]

Viewers might know Melora Hardin best from her recurring role as Jan Levinson, the sometimes lover of Michael Scott, on NBC's The Office but Hardin, set to star next in FX pilot Lights Out , has gone behind the camera for her directorial debut. The film, YOU , is slated to be released on iTunes and Amazon this weekend... just in time for Mother's Day. Hardin stars in the film alongside Hardin's real-life husband Gildart Jackson, who also wrote the script. YOU also stars Brenda Strong, Allison Mack, Amy Pietz, Don Michael Paul, Joely Fisher, and Kate Flannery. The trailer and official description of the film can be found below. "Miranda (Melora Hardin) and Rawdon (Gildart Jackson) bask in the bliss of a perfect family moment as they cuddle in bed with their infant daughter Quincey. When their family dreams are shattered, Rawdon is left to raise Quincey alone, struggling to overcome the loss of his soulmate in the hopes of finding love again." YOU will be release

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. NBC has pulled freshman drama Kings from its schedule, effective immediately. The drama was originally set to air on Thursday evenings but the Peacock shifted it to Sundays, where it aired four low-rated episodes before being pushed to the graveyard on Saturday nights. NBC has once again managed to surprise, this time by pulling Kings from its lineup altogether, although the network has pledged to return Kings to the schedule on June 13th, when it will begin to burn off the remainder of the series' unaired installments on Saturday nights at 8 pm. In the meantime, NBC will air repeats of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Southland, and Law & Order on Saturdays. ( Hollywood Reporter ) Variety 's Season Pass has a brand-new Q&A with Lost executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse as they look back at the five seasons that have gone by and the final season yet to come. "I think our hope is that

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Melora Hardin ( The Office ) has been cast as the female lead in FX drama pilot Lights Out , where she will play the wife of a former heavyweight boxing champ Patrick "Lights Out" Leary (Holt McCallany) who is diagnosed with pugilistic dementia and must find another way to support his family before his brain turns to mush. Also cast in the drama pilot, written by Justin Zackham and to be directed by Clark Johnson: Elisa Koteas ( The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ) and Kevin Conway ( The Black Donnellys ), who will play Leary's father/former trainer and his manager/business partner respectively. Hardin, meanwhile, isn't expected to reprise her role as Michael Scott's ex-girlfriend Jan Levinson for the remainder of the current season of The Office but will guest star in at least one episode next season. ( Hollywood Reporter ) The internet was abuzz yesterday with news that FOX wouldn't be airing the final pr

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Elizabeth Mitchell ( Lost ) has been cast in ABC drama pilot V , a retelling of the cult 1980s sci-fi series. But before we start to mourn the passing of Juliet, it's worth noting that Mitchell will guest star in the sci fi pilot, from Warner Bros. Television, and not star in it, according to Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Meanwhile, Visitorsite.net has confirmed that Mitchell will play Erica Evans, a single mother and an FBI Counter-Terrorism agent. ( Visitorsite ) Editor's note: Having read the script, I can say with all authority that Erica is far from being a "guest star" in the pilot; in fact she's one of the lead roles and as intrinsic to the plot of the pilot episode as Jacqueline McKenzie's Diana Skouris was to The 4400 . In fact, she's the very first character we meet in the draft of the script I read... What this truly means for Eliz

I'm very curious to know what people thought of last night's post-Super Bowl episode of NBC's The Office ("Stress Relief"). On the one hand, I thought that the cold open was perhaps one of the most hysterical (if far-out there zany) sequences in the series' history. The look of terror on Angela's face as she removes her cat--hidden in a nearby file drawer (a la Carol's kids on The Brittas Empire )--and then proceeds to throw him to Oscar in the ceiling crawl space... only to have him crash through another ceiling panel was genius. While it certainly wasn't exactly super-realistic, the entire sequence could happen with these characters in this highly charged situation and it was filmed magnificently by the episode's director, Jeffrey Blitz. Sadly, the rest of the episode was pretty much downhill from there. I thought that the subplot that had Andy watching an illegally downloaded Hollywood flick--starring Jack Black, Jessica Alba, and Cloris

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. I don't know about you but I'm still on a high after yesterday's amazing presidential inauguration. While the nation joined together yesterday to bear witness to the 44th president taking the oath, there are still a few television-related headlines to get through this morning. Entertainment Weekly 's Doc Jensen (a.k.a. Jeff Jensen) continues his video interview series with Lost executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Up today: a segment focusing on Season Four, including discussions about the coffin, the donkey wheel, and the freighter. ( Entertainment Weekly ) Jason Priestley will direct the eighteenth episode of 90210 this season, which will feature a crisis involving several characters. "I have a lot of challenges ahead of me on how to shoot this, it's big," said Priestley, who wouldn't confirm whether said crisis is an earthquake or a car accident. "Yeah, we're in a hosp

Every now and then you do get a perfect hour of comedy on Thursday night. I haven't exactly been shy about my feelings about the post-Amy Ryan season of The Office so far this year, so I am always pleasantly surprised when an episode comes along that manages to make me remember why I once loved this series. That said, I'd be happy if co-executive producer Jennifer Celotta would write every episode of the NBC comedy; I can always tell when an episode is written by Celotta: the characters seem more grounded, more realistic, and the pacing is swift and deliberate. Last night's episode of The Office ("Duel") featured the wrap up of the season-long storyline involving the love triangle between Dwight, Angela, and Andy and had Michael heading to New York to take a meeting with David Wallace, leaving Jim in charge of the office. Perhaps proving that he is one of the most oblivious characters on television today, Andy still doesn't know that Angela has been sleeping

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. By the hammer of Thor! Good news for fans of 30 Rock and The Office : NBC has renewed both series for the 2009-10 season, which means that we're guaranteed a fourth and sixth respective season of each. Given 30 Rock 's comedy win at this week's Golden Globes (and well-deserved statuettes for stars Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin) , I would have been gobsmacked if NBC hadn't ordered an additional season of the critically beloved series. (press release) Unfortunately, there's no news of the fate of ratings-challenged but critically loved NBC series Chuck and Life , which weren't mentioned in NBC's renewal announcement (which also included another season of The Biggest Loser ). And there's even worse news for fans of ABC's Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money , and Eli Stone . According to Kristin dos Santos' sources, the Alphabet won't be airing the remaining episodes of either series until June at t

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Looks like Ashes to Ashes isn't the only series heading back to the 1980s (well, except for Mitch Hurwitz's Lost in the '80s , that is): Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage have announced that the untitled spinoff of CW's Gossip Girl will focus on a teenage Lily Rhodes van der Woodsen Bass (played in the original by Kelly Rutherford) as a wild child in 1980s Los Angeles who moves in with her sister in San Fernando Valley after a falling out with her parents and must adjust to life at a Valley public school and a nightlife on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Spinoff will be produced as a backdoor pilot that will air May 11th as part of Gossip Girl 's current season. ( Variety ) Chevy Chase has been cast in a three-episode story arc on NBC's Chuck , where he will play Ted Roark, the billionaire technology mogul and owner of Roark Instruments, a company that Chuck Bartowski has always dreamed of working for. But

As it's nearly the end of the calendar year (only a few more days to go, in fact), I figured now was as good a time as any to look back at some of the shows that that have entertained and inspired me over the past year. It's been a crazy year, between the WGA strike affecting everything from truncated freshman seasons for Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money , and Chuck , delayed seasons for FX's Damages and HBO's Big Love (and a host of others), and a generally frantic development season that only saw two relative hits emerge this fall. So, what were the favorite series in the Televisionary household? Which left me wanting more... and which ones made me eager to change the channel? Find out after the jump. Best Reality Series: Top Chef The Amazing Race Flipping Out Top Chef remains my number one reality obsession. Bravo and Magical Elves have done themselves proud with this sleek, slick production that makes the art of cooking into a nail-biting competition in which eg

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. 20th Century Fox Television has slashed its production budgets across the board, joining a slew of entertainment companies including ABC Studios cutting budgets due to the economic downturn. All of 20th's producers have been told to reduce their budgets by two percent. The budget cuts will affect both existing series such as 24 as well as new productions, including Joss Whedon's Dollhouse for FOX and ABC's Life on Mars . ( TV Week ) In yet another behind-the-scenes twist (each far more interesting than the series itself), Tom Fontana has returned to oversee NBC's midseason drama The Philanthropist , where he will replace David Eick (leaving to focus his attentions on Caprica )... who had replaced him as showrunner/executive producer on the project back in April. Creative differences between Fontana and Universal Media Studios have said to have been worked out and Fontana has returned to oversee writing on the eigh