[Televisionary]

Rumors continue to swirl about a new incarnation of the Doctor taking over as the pilot of the TARDIS over on Doctor Who , despite claims by the BBC that David Tennant is still playing the Time Lord. The latest name mentioned for the role : action star Jason Statham of recent feature film Crank , according to British news outfit WENN. An unidentified source was quoted as saying, "It will be Doctor Who meets gangland. He will do a lot more thinking with his fists and will be a sure-fire winner with the ladies." Personally, I'd take this news with a very large grain of salt, considering the source of the piece (WENN) is hardly the most reliable of news outlets. This latest rumor in Who -ville comes just days after the BBC denied reports that star David Tennant was leaving the sci fi series , entering its third season in the UK this spring. Following a report in the Sun claiming that Tennant would leave Doctor Who after the third season, Auntie Beeb shot back with a statem

Let it not be said that I am a fan of Top Chef' s Marcel. Sure, the kid might not be anywhere as infuriating as Season 1's Stephen, but Marcel is egotistical, self-absorbed, and frustratingly pretentious. Hell, even Tom and Padma were making fun of the way he tops every single dish he's made thus far in the competition with some flavor of foam. It might be his signature touch (and a constant reminder that he did study with Joel Robouchon), but it's usually completely out of place with whatever he's making. Case in point: his two dishes on last night's episode of Top Chef ("Seven"): for the Quickfire Challenge, in which the chefs were assigned a single color and had to create an entire dish in 30 minutes that was solely that color, Marcel drew brown and created a tower of steak and eggs with crispy croutons, topped with (bien sur) coffee foam, surrounded by a molten bowl of coffee grinds? I understand that he had some difficulties with his French press

Welcome to cancellation, bitch. At least that's the rumor swirling around former FOX hot property The OC , which is scheduled to air its final episode February 22, before sailing into that long, hot sunset known as cancellation, according to E! Online's Watch with Kristin . After four seasons (including this truncated, Marissa-free year), The OC will utter its last self-referential and over-written bits of dialogue before being scratched off all of its actors' resumes. But hold the presses, as Kristin is also reporting that The CW's Dawn Ostroff is potentially interested, er, make that "extremely interested," in snagging The OC for a fifth year of Newport Beach hijinx for the 2007-08 season. Though something tells me that the former Frog network doesn't have the scratch to land such a big fish. And don't they have their own take on The OC , namely Hidden Palms , waiting in the wings? UPDATE: FOX has now confirmed the rumors about The OC 's cancel

There are some things that are so rare that some are willing to search an entire world for them. The Holy Grail, a dodo egg, the mythical phoenix. In the 2006-07 season, that elusive item would be a freshman drama that's still on the air, considering the sharpness (not to mention the well-oiled frequency of use) of the cancellation guillotine the networks employed this year. One of the few new series that managed to not only sneak by Madame Guillotine, but to prosper, is the US adaptation of Ugly Betty . I had managed to avoid Ugly Betty for a few reasons: (A) I found the pilot, which I viewed back in May, to have been a little messy, an odd hodgepodge of comedy, melodrama, and outright sap, and (B) it airs directly opposite NBC's comedy crown jewel, The Office , and as any longtime reader of Televisionary knows, if there's one thing that I adore, it's The Office . But that all changed. Call karma, call it kismet, or call it the tempting hand of an 11-episode Ugly Bett

Fans of Bravo's culinary competition series Top Chef , it's time to draw your knives once again. The network behind the slicing, filleting, and backstabbing reality series Top Chef has renewed the Tom Colicchio (and Padma Lakshmi)-led series for a third season of food-related mischief and mayhem. The news of Top Chef 's renewal comes despite a lack of official renewal for a fourth season of fellow Bravo series Project Runway , due to availability issues swirling around fashionista mentor Tim Gunn .) Casting on the third season of Top Chef begins January 14th and casting crews will be hosting sessions in Miami, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco for those of you looking to lay claim to the title of Top Chef. But the real mystery is: will Padma Lakshmi return for another season or will Bravo grant us yet another host?

Oscar Wilde once said, “Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.” While Wilde may have been speaking of that eternal dirt nap we're all headed for, he may as well been speaking of dirt more metaphorical, of gossip, tabloid, and le grand scandale . And he might just have been talking about FX's new series Dirt , starring and produced by Courteney Cox Arquette, working overtime to erase Friends ' Monica from our collective memory. In Dirt , Cox Arquette plays tabloid editor Lucy Spiller, an uptight control freak who oversees editorial for two publications: supermarket tab Dirt and the more up-market Now magazine. Lucy is dedicated body and soul to her job. We know this (A) because she has no social life whatsoever and lives, sleeps, and dreams her job (not to mention pictures the people around her as a series of cover shots) and (B) because she winds up time and time again in her luxurious bed surrounded by magazine mock ups, unable to escape her life even for a

Welcome back, folks, to the 2007 edition of Televisionary. I'm now just back from the tropical paradise that is the Big Island of Hawaii and ready to start another year of highlighting my favorite television series... and perhaps making a few choice scathing remarks at the ones that don't quite match up to my expectations. It's New Year's Day, a day for all of us to recover from the previous evening's debauchery and what better way to do that than with the launch of the third season of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel? For those of you not immediately in the know , Bourdain is the enfant terrible of chefs/travel writers/food writers, a recovering addict and unrepentant bad boy famous for blowing the lid off of what was really going down in the kitchens in his bestselling book "Kitchen Confidential." He's a sarcastic (and at times caustic) personality with a genuine love for food, from fine cuisine to street food to what's