[Televisionary]

I am absolutely hooked on Torchwood , the sleek and sexy spin-off of the BBC's venerable Doctor Who franchise, which is poised to kick off its sophomore season this week on sister network BBC America. For those of you who have missed out on this addictive series, fret not: Torchwood 's first season DVD is due out, well, today in fact. Giving you no excuse not to be up to speed when Torchwood launches its second season this weekend. Thanks to the good folks at BBC America, I was able to take a sneak peak at Torchwood 's season opener ("Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"), written by Chris Chibnall, and it is a doozy, to say the least, reuniting the Torchwood team and sending them out into the field to face a threat unlike any other they've battled so far, while they get a long overdue glimpse into Jack's past. During Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman)'s mysterious absence from the alien-fighting team he assembled (during which he teamed up with the Doctor and M

While the town was abuzz today about which pilot projects had been gutted by CBS' recent announcement that they've pulled the plug on about twenty pilots (with other networks supposedly slated to follow suit), one pilot was moving ahead and had secured the second of its two series leads. NBC's comedy pilot Kath & Kim , based on the Australian series about a woman's dysfunctional relationship with her adult daughter, has finally locked down the missing piece of its cast puzzle. Pilot, which was originally developed for the 2007-08 season, was pushed to summer when it couldn't cast its two leads in time. Enter Molly Shannon, who was cast as Kath & Kim 's abrasive Kath back in October, after a new writer--Michelle Nader ( The King of Queens )--was brought in to rewrite the script. But since then, the project has languished as the search for the pilot's other female lead continued. That search is over as Selma Blair ( Hellboy ) has now signed on to play

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this season of The Amazing Race and the final episode ("The Final Push") was no exception as we saw the final three teams make their way to the final leg of the race in Anchorage, Alaska, where they were pushed physically and intellectually on the way to the finish line. I do have to say that this final leg was perhaps one of the most complex and interesting ones in a long, long time, especially the Final Road Block, a play on that old Memory game in which a player had to correctly organize a list of vague items--each with restrictions to each particular leg of the race--on a platform in order to receive their next clue. It was a fantastic challenge, one that played up their experiences on the race as well as their intuition and puzzle-solving abilities. (To say the very least, it was a million times better than that final task in Chicago a few seasons back where teams had to eat a pizza.) How funny was it to see Phil climbing that gla

Televisionary is proud to be a member of the TV Blog Coalition. At the end of each week, we'll feature a roundup of content from our sister sites for your delectation. This week, I tuned into the first two episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and pleaded with John Connor to wash his greasy hair , was blown away by the penultimate episode of superlative Brit import Life on Mars , and finally caught up on Ugly Betty 's better-than-average recent episodes. Oh, and I waxed philosophical about Team Fierce on the avant-garde challenge this week on Project Runway , discussed the winners of this year's non-existent Golden Globes , and discussed what the DGA deal with the AMPTP could mean for the rest of this season . Elsewhere in the sophisticated TV-obsessed section of the blogosphere, members of the TV Blog Coalition were discussing the following items... Buzz issued a bold challenge to recast Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ( BuzzSugar ) Eric wrote about the French ti

Well, at least we're going into the three-day weekend with some positive strike-related news for a change, though it's still unclear whether the deal signed between the DGA and the AMPTP , signed after six days of meetings, bodes well for a return to the bargaining table in that other dispute. “Two words describe this agreement - groundbreaking and substantial,” said Gil Cates, DGA Negotiations Committee chair. “The gains in this contract for directors and their teams are extraordinary – and there are no rollbacks of any kind.” Among the highlights of the deal are increases in wages and residual bases for each year of the three-year contract, DGA jurisdiction over original programming produced for the Internet, new residual formulas for EST (double the current rate), and residual rates for ad-supported streaming and use of clips on the Internet. The new agreement will be submitted to the DGA's National Board for approval on January 26th. (For more on the DGA deal, check ou

Hola, Ugly Betty fans! I've been meaning to write about Betty lately but have gotten sidetracked among the strike news and a slew of other first-run fare, but after last week's superlative episode of Ugly Betty ("Zero Worship"), from first-time Betty scribe Dawn DeKeyser, I had to write something. Last week's episode was like a breath of fresh air in a Queens subway station. Unlike the melodrama that has put the series into a bit of a nosedive for me lately, this episode was everything that Betty has been missing for a while and was effervescent, slightly tart, and filled with heart. Sure, there were things that irked a little bit, like that Mode fashion show with "real women" which could have been rewritten slightly to tone down the sappiness and the exposition about whether Daniel or Alexis rigged those scales was a little clunky, but I overlooked those minor quibbles because the episode did what Ugly Betty hasn't done in a long time: it made

David Milch is pacting with HBO yet again, this time with a gritty drama pilot set in the world of 1970s cops at the pay cabler. HBO has ordered a pilot for Last of the Ninth , which revolves around a young detective who returns home from Vietnam to encounter a police department that is encumbered with corruption, near bankruptcy, and under attack. Milch completed writing on the pilot script prior to the writer's strike with former NYPD homicide detective Bill Clark, who worked with Milch on NYPD Blue and John From Cincinnati . Production on Last of the Ninth 's pilot, which is Milch's first work for the cabler since the cancellation of John From Cincinnati last year, is expected to begin after the strike is resolved. What's On Tonight 8 pm: Ghost Whisperer (CBS); 1 vs. 100 (NBC); Friday Night SmackDown (CW; 8-10 pm); Grey's Anatomy (ABC); Bones (FOX) 9 pm: Moonlight (CBS); Friday Night Lights (NBC); Desperate Housewives (ABC); House (FOX) 10 pm: NUMB3RS (C