[Televisionary]

The Travel Channel has unveiled the cast for the upcoming third installment of globe-trotting adventure series 5 Takes . This time, the cable network has reversed their format a little bit and instead of sending American travel journalists overseas, they've decided to send five travel journalists from the Pacific Rim to the United States. This season, 21-year-old Taiwanese Bevis Song, 28-year-old Singaporean Jaime Tan, 26-year-old Indonesian Lena Toepan, 24-year-old Australian Tim Bloxsome, and 32-year-old Filipino Zach Yonzon will visit eight major cities across the United States on a ten-week tour, with only $50 a day allotted to them. They'll be making stops in Las Vegas, Anchorage, Washington, Orlando, Miami, Memphis, New York, and Austin. (They'll also be a final stop in either Los Angeles or San Francisco, based on audience polls.) While I love 5 Takes (and was wildly addicted to the last installment, 5 Takes: Pacific Rim ), I have to ask myself if the show's pr

It's no surprise that in these somewhat crazy end times that exploring the sometimes chance connections between people seems like such a zeitgeisty thing right now. Take a look at films like Paul Haggis' Crash or television series like Six Degrees , Lost , The Nine , or Heroes . It seems like each of us is aching, in an age of instant messages, obnoxious cell phone calls, and endlessly frayed nerves, for some real contact with one another. While American television has responded with glossy dramas, hostage flashback sagas, and epic tales of possibly haunted islands with a string of linked-by-fate characters, British television has taken the opposite tack, investigating the quotidian and average in its series The Street from creator Jimmy McGovern, best known for television fare like Cracker and The Lakes as well as his feature work, Priest and Liam . Arguably a linked drama anthology series, it revolves around the residents of one painfully average street in the north of E

Call it a hunch, but I'm guessing that, unlike Starbuck, this Bionic Woman will stay the same gender. Battlestar Galactica executive producer David Eick is partnering with feature writer Laeta Kalogridis (James Cameron's Battle Angel ) to develop a re-imagining of 1970s series The Bionic Woman (itself a spin-off of the Lee Majors-led The Six Million Dollar Man ), in which Lindsay Wagner played cybernetic tennis pro/secret agent Jaime Sommers, for NBC. Eick will executive produce and Kalogridis will write the pilot for NBC Universal. Like Eick's update of Battlestar Galactica , this re-imagining of The Bionic Woman will start from the ground up and will use the title merely as a jumping off point. Unlike the original series, which centered around the rise of terrorism in the 1970s, the new version will instead explore the complicated role of professional women in present day. Or as Eick told Variety , "It's using the idea of artificial technology as a metaphor

There's a joke there somewhere about how many Amazing Race contestants it takes to paddle a row boat. The answer it would seem is zero, as none of the competitors last night seemed to be able to figure out the mechanics of water travel, with most of the teams deteriorating into squabbling messes... or nearly ending up being buffered against the rocks. It was a scary/hysterical sight. But more on that in a bit. This leg of the race found the teams leaving Hanoi, Vietnam for the coastal town of Ha Long Bay, but half the fun was seeing them attempt to reach their destination. First up: the teams made their way to a local park where their clue (not really a clue, more like a string of complex directions) was a pre-recorded message "read" aloud by a statue. There was nothing ambiguous about the clue whatsoever: it simply told the teams each of the next three steps in reaching their next clue. Yet somehow nearly all the teams seemed baffled by their instructions and jumped int

With the sudden, if saddening, removal of crime drama Smith (we hardly knew ye!) from the schedule, CBS is mulling launching a midseason drama a little earlier than expected. According to the Hollywood Reporter, CBS has ordered four additional scripts for medical drama 3 Lbs. , which stars Stanley Tucci as an brilliant but unorthodox surgeon (he obviously graduated from the House School of Medicine) who clashes with an ambitious younger surgeon (series kiss of death star Mark Feuerstein). Series was created by Peter Ocko ( Boston Legal , Dead Like Me ) and also stars Rome 's Indira Varma. With Smith 's, er, arrest from the lineup, CBS could sub in 3 Lbs. to the Tuesdays at 10 pm timeslot as the series, which had previously received a midseason order from the Eye, is already in production. CBS is said to be pleased with what they've seen so far but hasn't yet officially announced the new November launch date. In the meantime, CBS will air repeats of police procedurals

In an unexpected move, CBS has stolen crime drama Smith right off of its primetime schedule. Smith , which features an all-star dream cast including Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Amy Smart, Simon Baker, and Jonny Lee Miller, hadn't exactly caught on in the ratings like gangbusters, but it's surprising that CBS would pull the beleaguered show rather than test it in a less competitive timeslot. While CBS has yet to use the C-word (that would be cancelled, folks), it does seem like the jig is up for Smith 's team of thieves. The news comes on the heels of NBC's announcement that it would not be ordering the back nine episodes of drama Kidnapped and would shift the series, now only 13 episodes total, to the Saturday night graveyard shift. Meanwhile, the odds are that one of these series will be the next to get the axe: CW's Runway , ABC's Six Degrees , and CBS' The Class . Start placing your bets as to which will be next...

A lot of undue fuss has already been made about Britney spouse and would-be rap star Kevin Federline's upcoming appearance on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation , but I couldn't help but yelp with glee when I received the below images in my electronic inbox a few moments ago. I think they speak for themselves. Even with his jaunty cap and vacantly menacing expression, there's no missing real acting talent at work here. Here's what the CBS press machine had to say about the episode: "The CSI team investigates a series of brutal tourist beatings that take place within the span of a few hours throughout the Las Vegas area, on CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION, Thursday, October 12 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Kevin Federline guest stars as Cole Tritt, an arrogant teenager who harasses Nick and Warrick at a crime scene." If that's not enough to tempt you into watching, you can check out a preview clip of the soon-to-be-classic episode here .