[Televisionary]

HBO's family drama-with-a-twist Big Love returns this Sunday for a third season positively overflowing with long-buried secrets. (You can read my advance review of the first three episodes of Season Three here .) Speaking at last week's Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, Big Love creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer and stars Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin had a lot to say about Season Three, the hiatus following the writers strike, and the P-word: polygamy. Several returning series were greatly impacting by the timing and length of the writers strike, which lasted 100 days beginning in November 2007. Big Love , which was gearing up for its third season on HBO was one such series. Returning to work after the strike ended, Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer decided to start fresh and write new scripts rather than use the several that had been broken before the strike. "It's always good to have more time and more ti

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

What defines us as individuals? Is it the terrible choices we've made and those made for us? The mistakes we've committed? The flaws in our characters? The people we've loved and lost? The horrors we've witnessed? What truly defines us when everything else--career, rank, nationality--is stripped away? Are our natures programmed for us from birth? In other words: what truly makes us, well, us ? It's these existential questions that the intellectually dazzling Battlestar Galactica has always played with, throughout its four season run on Sci Fi. For most of the series, the humans and Cylons have engaged in a battle that presented the stakes as very much Us against Them. Them being the unknowable Other, so different from us in matters of birth, life, and death that it's nearly impossible for each side to sympathize with the other. And yet over the course of the first half of the fourth season, a fragile alliance between the humans and Cylons has been forged in the

Bet you didn't see that coming, huh? I'm talking of course about this week's episode of FX's Damages ("Burn It, Shred It, I Don't Care"), in which the mystery surrounding the murder of Daniel Purcell's wife Christine deepened, new alliances reared their heads, Tom was nearly tempted into making a life-altering decision, and Wes did some cutting and pasting. You've all had a chance to read my advance review of the first two episodes of Damages ' second season but I'm excited to get my hands dirty talking specific plot points about the second episode of the current season and see what you all thought of this week's installment. So, take off your tie, pour yourself a tall one, and let's discuss. Once again, the ground rules: I've already seen next week's episode of Damages , but I promise not to reveal anything below that occurs in that episode. Deal? This week, the mystery surrounding Christine's murder definitely deepe

While I love Flight of the Conchords ' Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, the real breakout stars of their HBO series are Murray, played by Rhys Darby, and the Conchords' stalker/number one fan, Mel, played with pitch perfect precision by New York-based comedian Kristen Schaal. Flight of the Conchords is set to return to HBO on Sunday with a second season of what Schaal promises are "madcap adventures." I caught up with the baby-voiced comedian last month to discuss Mel, why Matthew Weiner made her put her cigarette down while filming the Mad Men pilot, her comedic influences, and what character she'd most like to play on 30 Rock . Televisionary: What it is like working with Bret and Jemaine and the writers of Flight of the Conchords ? How involved are you in coming up with any storylines for the show involving Mel? Kristen Schaal: Pretty involved, but they come up with amazing ideas and they are great to collaborate with, so I can say, I don't think Mel wou

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

At yesterday's Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour press Q&A , Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly didn't directly mention drama pilot Virtuality , from Battlestar Galactica 's Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor, by name but he did speak about the network's commitment to airing programs that are "bold" with a "point of view." By its very definition, Virtuality , about the crew of interstellar vessel Phaeton who find escape from their mundane existence in virtual reality (where they are seemingly attacked by a glitch in the system), would seem to perfectly fit that description. The two-hour pilot, directed by Peter Berg ( Friday Night Lights ) and produced by Universal Media Studios, stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, James D'Arcy, Sienna Guillory, Clea DuVall, Kerry Bishe, Joy Bryant, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Erik Jensen, Gene Farber, Omar Metwally, Jimmi Simpson, and Richie Coster. After the press Q&A, James Hibberd of Hollywood