Brace for Impact: ABC Cancels "Ugly Betty"

Looks like it's curtains for Betty Suarez.

ABC today announced that this will be the final season of Ugly Betty and that the series will wrap up its run this spring.

The series had been placed on life support on Friday nights this season before being given a last chance with a Wednesday night 10 pm ET/PT timeslot as part of the network's comedy block.

"We’ve mutually come to the difficult decision to make this Ugly Betty’s final season, and are announcing now as we want to allow the show ample time to write a satisfying conclusion," said ABC in a prepared statement. "We are extremely proud of this groundbreaking series, and felt it was important to give the fans a proper farewell."

What do you think of the news? Was it time to bid Betty farewell? Is it good that the producers will have time to wrap up the series' storylines before a final episode?

Discuss.

When I Am Through With You: "Damages" Theme Song Heads to iTunes

Nearly three years later, one of the most enduring and popular posts here at Televisionary is an August 2007 post about the theme song for Damages, the VLA's "When I Am Through With You."

In an age where many series--both comedies and dramas--have either eliminated opening title sequences or reduced them to a few quick chords, Damages' breathless credits not only capture the brutal wit of the series but also create a vivid atmosphere of ruthlessness and vengeance.

Besides for some stunning visuals, this is achieved masterfully through the use of the VLA's song ("When I Am Through With You"), which continues to win fans over. (Fans who then come here to determine just who sings this incredibly evocative song.)

Good news then for fans of the VLA and Damages. An email from the band's Jason Rabe has alerted me to the fact that the theme song is now available for purchase on iTunes and can be found here.

If you're lucky, Patty Hewes will send you a $3000 Chanel bag as a thank you.

Season Three of Damages airs Monday evenings at 10 pm ET/PT on FX.

Rabbit, Rabbit: Seasonal Ingredients and an Upset Badger on "Last Restaurant Standing"

I'm still scratching my head over the format changes that happened between the second and third seasons of BBC America's Last Restaurant Standing (which airs in the UK as The Restaurant).

I'm especially heartbroken that the series' producers opted to get rid of the intense and drama-laden Challenge in every other episode. Forcing the three lowest-performing couples to fight for the chance to remain in the competition, the Challenge element offered further opportunities to see these couples' strengths and weaknesses on display as well as see how they coped with added pressure and were able to adapt to constantly changing scenarios.

Losing this competition element means that Last Restaurant Standing has effectively been cut down in size (there are only a handful of episodes this season) and we're already now down to the final four couples. Which is shocking in and of itself as I don't feel like I know any of them particularly well. At this point in other seasons, I had a clear-cut understanding of the couples, their personalities, and their quirks. But here we're at the halfway mark already and more than half of the couples have already been eliminated. Yes, the stakes are high but I don't feel like I'm really along for the ride as much as I was in previous seasons.

Last night's episode of Last Restaurant Standing ("The Seasonal Ingredient") made me feel this more than any of the previous installments this season. With five couples in the competition, I would have expected to be connecting with them more than I am and I was surprised and shocked to see how several of the teams performed, considering they've already made it halfway to the final round.

The emphasis this time round seems to be more on the individual restaurant concepts and the success or failure of the weekend service than on the myriad challenges, tasks, and tests that Raymond throws at them. This week, the couples were told that they had to prepare local and seasonal fare at sell it at a local farmers market. Easy peasy, really. Not only would it showcase their cooking and concept, but also allow the couples to market themselves directly to the public.

It's this last thing that nearly all of the couples seemed to either forget about or never realize in the first place. Only Stephen and Rebecca brought menus and made a point about pushing bookings at their restaurant, The Front Room, and they singled themselves out by preparing two locally sourced and seasonal items that could be heated and eaten at home. (They wisely also included directions for heating.) It was a simple trick that everyone else seemed to miss out on.

That said, I thought that Chris and Nathan did the best job with the market task, preparing five offerings for the market public and foraging in the forest for wild garlic and elderflower. I thought they did the best job setting up their stall and placing the focus on the locality and seasonality of their offerings, including an elderflower lemonade, wild garlic mayonnaise, and several beautiful-looking savory dishes.

Daisy and Nadine completely missed the point of the assignment, offering up food that was neither local nor captured the essence of their Westernized Nigerian cuisine concept. Yes, the fish was line-caught but it was from Penzance and it lacked any of the heat, spice, or flavor of their restaurant concept. Likewise, JJ and James once again proved their lack of culinary knowledge by offering skewers of beef shin, a tough cut of meat that requires hours of slow braising. Instead, they cooked the beef for a half-hour in the oven and then finished it on a grill to order, rendering the meat chewy and tough. (Poor Sarah struggled to get it down.)

Of course, they all at least showed up at the market. Barney and Badger, after reeling from a cup ordering fiasco, didn't even turn up to serve the soup that Barney cooked because Badger had second thoughts about remaining in the competition and wanted to withdraw. I felt really bad for Barney; this has been the culmination of a dream of his and an extraordinary opportunity to start something new and fresh with his career, outside of the army. For Badger to just decide that he can't do it--after winning Restaurant of the Week--felt like a slap in the face. Yes, he's outside his comfort zone but so are all of them, really. Grr.

Raymond had another surprise for his couples as they discovered upon returning to the restaurants: he had sent over a slew of rabbits and pigeons to be transformed into dinner specials. Once again, Chris amazed me with his innovation, adaptation, and creative vision, transforming the seasonal ingredients into stunning dishes that demonstrated his significant skill. (Sadly, he was let down once again by Nathan in front of house.) I was pleasantly surprised by Stephen and Rebecca's performance this week; he seemed to take on the judges' criticism of the heaviness of his food and offered somewhat lighter fare this week. (Though the terrine was MASSIVE and customers still complained of being too full to order to dessert.)

Elsewhere, Daisy and Nadine once again struggled and JJ again didn't cook anything in the kitchen. To add insult to injury, he only used about a third of the seasonal ingredients that Raymond had sent over, somehow deciding to only offer eight portions of rabbit, despite having about ten of them on hand... and the pigeon they served was terribly overcooked.

Barney and Badger forged ahead, despite Badger's misgivings about remaining in the competition, knocking out a service that was their best yet and which had Raymond praising Barney for the significant improvement week-to-week (and for the deliciousness of his sauces this time around). But it was still too much for Badger and he wanted to withdraw from the competition. Given the fact that they had failed to turn up at the farmers market, Raymond closed their restaurant. I'll admit that I was sad as I felt that Barney had a lot to offer and they were a very strong team. Just a case of a bad partnership where the team members wanted different things. Sad.

But it was Stephen and Rebecca, on the other hand, who had impressed Raymond and the judges. They walked away with Restaurant of the Week, much to the surprise of the other couples. (I had thought it would go to Chris and Nathan but I think the judges are extremely wary of Nathan's less than stellar front of house skills.)

What did you think of this week's episode? Depressed by Badger's decision? Should Raymond have found a way to keep them--or at least Barney--around? Who is the strongest team remaining? Discuss.

Next week on Last Restaurant Standing ("The Cake"), the final four teams get a chance to show off their baking skills when they take bookings from VIP guests with special requests and each group wants to end their evening with a celebratory cake. But first, the couples must cater a tea dance and serve afternoon tea to over a hundred guests.

Channel Surfing: Julianne Moore in Demand, Whedon Talks "Dr. Horrible," Flockhart to Cut Back on "Brothers," "House" Spinoff Possible, and More

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing.

Could Julianne Moore become the lead of the US adaptation of crime series Prime Suspect? If NBC gets their way, she very well could be. Moore is being pursued by NBC for the remake of the Helen Mirren-starring British series as well as ABC to star in another remake: this time Scoundrels, based on Kiwi series Outrageous Fortune. Moore has some competition for the Prime Suspect gig as Maria Bello has also been approached about starring in the remake as well as starring in Jerry Bruckheimer-produced drama pilot Chase, which has offers out to Bello, Tea Leoni, and Christina Applegate. Other in-demand stars this pilot season: Matt Dillon, Jason Isaacs, Michael Chiklis, and Josh Lucas. (Hollywood Reporter)

E! Online's Megan Masters has an interview with Joss Whedon, in which the Dr. Horrible creator talks about the possibility of a sequel, directing FOX's Glee, Neil Patrick Harris, and more. "We very much want to do it," Whedon told Masters about Dr. Horrible 2. "We meet, we hammer out stuff, we have songs, we have ideas, we're really working it, but it's a slow-moving train. We're very passionate about it, and Neil's been great... He's always checking in before he takes a gig." As for whether Harris will turn up on Whedon's episode of Glee, nothing has been settled yet, according to Whedon. ("That's something that's trying to be worked out, but I haven't heard whether or not that's going to take place," he admitted. "I hope so, that'd be great, [but] I don't know anything about it. I'm just a director on hire for that.") (E! Online's Watch with Kristin)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Brothers & Sisters star Calista Flockhart will scale back her workload next season on the ABC drama series but will remain a series regular. News comes on the heels of an announcement that co-star Rob Lowe will depart the series at the end of the season. "A Brothers & Sisters insider confirms that Flockhart’s lighter workload was a contributing factor in Lowe’s decision to flee," writes Ausiello. "The West Wing alum already felt his role on the show had become diminished. The prospect of his TV spouse appearing in fewer episodes would’ve only increased his sense of marginalization." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

While the Michael Weston-centered House spinoff is definitely NOT happening, FOX president Kevin Reilly has indicated to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello that executive producers David Shore and Katie Jacobs have a "standing offer" to develop another House spin-off. "They have really high standards," Reilly told Ausiello. "These are not guys who commercially are going to chase something just to announce they have a spinoff and then figure out the show later on. They’re probably the most thorough producers... I’ve ever worked with." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

CBS has given a pilot order to hybrid comedy Livin' on a Prayer, from executive producers Carter Bays and Craig Thomas (How I Met Your Mother) and writers Kourtney Kang and Joe Kelly. Project, from 20th Century Fox Television, will follow a Pittsburgh couple who are debating whether to take their relationship to the next level. (Variety)

Elsewhere at CBS, the network ordered three additional pilots: Chaos, about "rogue CIA operatives who combat bureaucratic gridlock, rampant incompetence and political infighting," from executive producer Brett Ratner, Tom Spezialy (Desperate Housewives), and 20th Century Fox Television; an untitled police procedural, from executive producers Ed Redlich (Without a Trace) and John Bellucci, CBS Television Studios and Sony Pictures Television, about a female NYPD detective who has total recall; and legal drama Defenders, from writers Niels Mueller and Kevin Kennedy and CBS Television Studios, about "two charismatic and fiery Las Vegas defense attorneys who go to the mat for their clients." (Hollywood Reporter)

ABC ordered a pilot for an untitled crime drama from writer Richard Hatem (Miracles) and director Gary Fleder, who will executive produce with Bert Salke and Chris Brancato. Project, from ABC Studios, revolves around a female detective who joins forces with a tarnished former cop to solve crimes "and untangle the conspiracy that sent him underground." (Hollywood Reporter)

Over at NBC, the Peacock has given a greenlight to an untitled Conan O'Brien-executive produced drama pilot (formerly known as Justice) about a ex-Supreme Court justice who starts his own legal practice. Project, from writer/executive producer John Eisendrath, hails from Universal Media Studios, where O'Brien's shingle Conaco has a year and a half left on its overall deal. (Variety)

Stan Lee will guest star as himself on the March 1st episode of CBS' The Big Bang Theory. According to TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck, Lee will "pop up in [the boys'] favorite comic book shop hangout." (TV Guide Magazine)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has an interview with NCIS: LA executive producer Shane Brennan about the departure of one of the series' lead actors, which will spark an overarching storyline that will play out through the season. "To my mind, particularly in the first season of a show, there is no main cast," Brennan told Ausiello. "The audience is meeting a whole bunch of characters and you get the opportunity to play around with them. I’m a great believer in playing with the audience’s expectations. It’s about making it as different and fresh as often as you can. And I certainly took that approach with this first season… I want them to know that nothing is sacred. And the cast is aware that this is the game I play. No one’s safe." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Not such good news for FX, sadly, as the Season Three launch of serialized drama Damages lured only 1.4 million viewers, down a staggering 17 percent from its second season premiere. However, once DVR numbers are factored in, the series is expected to receive a boost in the ratings and FX has been quick to point out in the past that many viewers often DVR and save multiple episodes to then watch in a marathon-style viewing pattern. Those viewers who watch more than seven days after the broadcast are not included in any ratings reports. (Variety)

Looks like the cast of MTV's Jersey Shore will be returning for a second season, after all. While MTV refused to comment on the contract negotiations, sources told The Hollywood Reporter that MTV has doubled its episodic offer to the stars of the reality series, offering $10,000 an episode. A deal is thought likely to materialize by the end of the week, a relief for the cabler which wishes to get a new season of Jersey Shore on the air this summer. (Hollywood Reporter)

Martha Stewart is moving her eponymous daytime talk show from first-run syndication to cable, echoing the steps that Oprah Winfrey herself is making over the next year. The Martha Stewart Show will move this fall to Hallmark Channel as part of a programming strategy overhaul that will see telepics shift to Hallmark Movie Channel and Hallmark become a destination for lifestyle shows, series acquisitions, and holiday-themed programming. The Martha Stewart Show will air at 10 am Monday through Friday and then be followed by a 90-minute block of other Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia programming. (Variety)

FOX has promoted Shana Waterman and James Oh to VPs of current programming and promoted David Sleven to director. (via press release)

Stay tuned.

Up in the Air: Another First Class Episode of NBC's "Chuck"

Is it just me or is Chuck getting even better each week?

This week's fantastic installment of Chuck ("Chuck Versus First Class"), written by co-creator Chris Fedak, found our typically hapless spy on his very first solo mission, which just so happened to involve swordplay at 35,000 feet, a very large Ring operative (guest star Steve Austin) with a penchant for gut punches, and a gorgeous traveling companion, Hannah (Kristin Kreuk).

It also found Brandon Routh's Shaw stepping up to become the leader of our little band of Los Angeles operatives and making some decisions that fly in the face of Casey and Sarah's logic, while also rendering himself even more of a tragic figure than we had previously thought. Meanwhile, Casey helped Morgan deal with "insurgents" at the Buy More.

In other words: an absolutely fantastic installment that advanced the overarching plot, offered the series' trademark blend of comedy and action, and introduced and deepened some new members of the cast.

So what did I think of the episode? Let's discuss.

As I mentioned previously, I'm very impressed with Routh's turn as the deeply nuanced CIA Special Agent Shaw. This could, in the hands of lesser writers, have become a cartoonish, hard-assed agent that we've seen numerous times in espionage stories but Fedak and the writing staff--and Routh himself--have rendered Shaw into something else entirely, a shadowy superspy who seemingly abhors violence but isn't afraid to use it and who doesn't coddle his assets but rather pushes them to their full potential.

It's that last trait that's perhaps the most interesting. His assessment of Chuck and his handlers found that Casey and Sarah protected Chuck more than they did empower him and that if Mr. Bartowski has any chance at becoming a real spy he needs to do more than flash on things and stay in the car. His decision to send Chuck into the field--and not totally briefed about the mission, at that--could have backfired horribly but it was also a true test of Chuck's Intersect-derived abilities and also his ingenuity and reactivity. Would he sink or swim? Can he adapt to new challenges and shifting scenarios?

There were some nice dynamics to Shaw's relationship with Chuck and also with Sarah as well. The underlying theme this season would appear to be the consequences of spy relationships and a nice subplot that had Shaw interrogating Sarah about why she went off the grid during Chuck's time in Prague and was photographed in Lisbon. If anyone understands Sarah's predicament, it's Shaw. We learn, by the episode's end, that his wife Evelyn was killed by a Ring agent five years earlier and gave her life to safeguard some valuable intelligence about the Ring. His sense of loss is palpable but it also gives his life and his mission meaning. Sarah, meanwhile, revealed that she went to Lisbon to dispose of Bryce's ashes, per his wish that they be scattered there. These two are linked by their shared losses, by their knowledge of just what it means to fall in love as a spy and with a spy.

But while Shaw would advise against Sarah becoming emotionally involved with Chuck, Shaw also cares deeply about his asset and, while he's not aboard the plane with Chuck on his solo mission, proves that he's thought this through ahead of time and is able to seize control of the plane's controls in order to assist Chuck.

As for Chuck, I have to say that he did very well indeed on his first solo mission, considering he was a guy who Shaw described as a cross between James Bond and Jerry Lewis. While not everything went according to plan (to wit: the poison pen, hiding in the coffin), Chuck accorded himself quite well this time around. Loved that he didn't get to use the nunchucks but he did get to engage in the world's best fencing match aboard a moving vehicle. Ever. (And, given his distaste for violence, he smartly severed the cords holding the luggage in place and instead knocked his opponent unconscious.)

I also have to say that I'm really enjoying the inclusion of Kristin Kreuk's Hannah thus far. She represents something diametrically opposed to Chuck's life but different than the superspy fantasy of Sarah or Casey: she's a woman who has seen the world, lived in Paris, had an exciting job, and has lost it all. She's looking to regain her footing again. It was no surprise that she ended up at the Buy More at the end of the episode but I'm quite all right with that: it makes sense narratively and I think she'll add another layer of tension within the world of the Buy More. Chuck has gotten a little too complacent there; with Morgan taking over as Assistant Manager, there's less danger in Chuck's workplace life than there should be. Hannah, by the fact that she doesn't really know Chuck, represents a new liability for him as well as a potential romantic interest. I'm excited to see where it's going.

Loved the "insurgents" storyline with Casey becoming Morgan's lieutenant and helping him end mute Lester's reign of terror (or at least stopped the constant pranking). Was extremely surprised by how far (and how seriously) Casey took his assignment, even going so far as to kidnap and brainwash Lester in order to make him fall in line. (BTW, nice footie pyjamas, Lester.)

All in all, another top-notch episode of Chuck that has continues to pay off the promise and potential of Season Three, mixing up its formula and bringing in new and compelling characters while still keeping the focus squarely on the central relationships.

What did you think of this week's episode? Another stellar installment? The best yet? Discuss.

Next week on Chuck ("Chuck Versus the Nacho Sampler"), Chuck attempts to juggle his two lives as he trains new Nerd Herder Hannah and gets his very own asset who is caught up with The Ring; Awesome must lie to Ellie when she starts to ask questions about Chuck; Morgan, Jeff, and Lester do some recon work to learn more about Hannah.

Confessions and Secrets: Lying in the Gutters on the Season Premiere of FX's "Damages"

Everything is disposable.

That applies, apparently, to mobile phones, $3,000 Chanel handbags, and indeed corpses; everything eventually ends up in the trash to be picked over by modern society's answer to the Victorian rag and bone man: the destitute scavengers of Manhattan, picking through the trash and collecting the refuse into the reusable, the resellable, and the useful.

The lawyers of FX's Damages are no strangers to digging through the trash but last night's third season premiere ("Your Secrets Are Safe"), written by Glenn Kessler, Daniel Zelman, and Todd A. Kessler and directed by Todd A. Kessler, took this to a whole new level, rendering Season Three's financial scandal storyline into a class-oriented drama that fused together Charles Dickens and David Lynch. (Think of it as "Bleak House" or "Little Dorrit" by way of Mulholland Drive.)

You had the chance to read my advance review of the first two episodes of Season Three of Damages but, now that the first episode has aired, we can begin to discuss specifics of the latest case. (Note: while I've seen the first two installments, I'm keeping my comments restricted to just the season premiere.)

I thought that "Your Secrets Are Safe" was a masterstroke of a season premiere, shuffling the deck and giving us new situations for our core trio of characters, while introducing a new case, a new overarching mystery, and several intriguing story threads to ponder while we wait for the next installment. Roughly a year has passed since the end of Season Two and the characters have all seemingly moved on from the events of the last few years. Ellen's office at Hewes & Associates remains empty though Patty has clearly been unable to fully let go of her protege; Ellen has changed sides and taken a position with the narcotics team at the D.A.'s office; Tom is about to finally get his heart's desire: his name on the wall, beside Patty's.

But this is Damages and things can only remain static for so long. This season's case is clearly meant to evoke the recent Bernie Madoff financial scandal; in this case, it's Wall Street financier Louis Tobin (Len Cariou) who has swindled thousands of investors out of billions of dollars thanks to a Ponzi scheme. Patty Hewes has been appointed by the court to aid in the restitution process and track down any hidden funds following the house arrest of Louis Tobin and the freezing of the family's assets. Ellen isn't working the prosecution side of the case but it's only a matter of time before she's pulled back into the orbit of this case.

Just as in the first two seasons, the producers have created two separate but interlocking storylines that will eventually meet up as the season progresses. In this case, they're set six months apart and, unlike the second season's "I lied too" storyline, this manages to ensnare all three members of the core cast and will have lasting repercussions on the series. A chance car accident involving Patty (as she listens to someone denigrate her on the radio) seems less like a chance as the moments tick by. Just what the incident means and how and why it was orchestrated will provide the season with a strong throughline and a sense of dread.

The Tobins. Here's what we know so far about the Tobin case... On Thanksgiving, Louis Tobin confessed to his family, including his recovering alcoholic son Joe (Campbell Scott) and his wife Marilyn (Lily Tomlin), that his entire business was a house of cards, an elaborate Ponzi scheme that was about to come crashing down around them. After making this confession, he made a phone call to... someone; when Joe attempts to deny Marilyn access to her grandson, she relents and gives him the phone number, which he turns over to Patty. The number belongs to a mobile phone which a certain pivotal homeless man has rescued from the trash. (Hmmm...) Louis is sentenced to house arrest but he's allowed to venture out only to see his attorney, Leonard Winstone (Martin Short). Marilyn is deposed by Patty but claims to have known nothing about her husband's criminal activities and claims that, if Louis hid money anywhere, she doesn't know anything about it. But then Louis tells Joe that there is money "out there." And Joe is in a pretty tough position already; he's attempting to cooperate with Patty and clear his name but she pushes him to assault a plaintiff in the case. Naughty, naughty...

Patty. Interesting that the season should begin with Patty so vivacious and, well, happy. It's a state that the ruthless Patty Hewes is so rarely in, after all, but we glimpse her at her freest: laughing at a restaurant before she's approached by the "sort of architect" Julian Decker (Keith Carradine), who seems to be romantically pursuing her. But Patty's only just concluded her divorce from Phil and she's not ever been one to fall for a cheesy pick-up line or desperate flirtation. But it is clear that Patty's lonely and likely has been since Ellen left.

It's my belief that the only person who ever saw Patty's true self was her protege Ellen... and Patty's inability to truly let go speak volumes about just what's missing in her life. Ellen's office has sat untouched for nearly a year and, despite Patty's insistence that it be cleaned out, she can't help herself but look at and touch Ellen's things. It's a chance to remember, to hold onto the pain and loss. But it's not Ellen's newspaper clippings and photographs that Patty sends on to the District Attorney's office; rather it's a luxurious Chanel bag. A peace offering? A bribe? Or just a gift? It's pretty rare for there to be no strings attached when it comes to Patty Hewes.

Ellen. Ellen seems to have moved on from thoughts of vengeance, either against Patty and against Arthur Frobisher. She's settling into her new job in the D.A.'s office and is doing a cracking job. Working a drug case, she pushes a dealer to flip and become a cooperating witness against a major supplier but she can't quite get him to flip. So when some thugs show up at his place and total his Harley with some baseball bats and he finally flips, her boss is suspicious: did Ellen have anything to do with it?

While I wondered whether Ellen had learned a little too well at Patty's feet, it quickly becomes clear that she had nothing to do with his change of heart. But she did happen to mention her situation to Tom... So did Patty apply a little leverage to the witness? She claims no but Ellen thinks otherwise. Maybe the Chanel bag was just a precursor to her true gift, bestowing praise upon her former associate by having her save the day with this case.

I thought that having Ellen and Patty come face to face again in the ladies' restroom was a stroke of genius, a move that gives the episode a sense of full circle from the pilot. (After all, the first time they met was in a restroom at Ellen's sister's wedding.) Regardless of whether Patty was or wasn't involved in getting Ellen's witness to flip, Ellen makes it clear that Patty doesn't have to play games if she wants to talk to her; she need only pick up the phone. Could relations be thawing? Certainly seems that way.

Tom. Tom, meanwhile, is still slaving away at Hewes & Associates after eleven years of working for Patty. But the fateful day arrives in which he's finally rewarded for his hard work and penchant for morally grey situations: Patty tells him, rather unemotionally, that she wants to put his name on the wall. That it's in the same breath as her command to hire a new associate is just par for the course with Patty. But he's finally gotten what he's always wanted... and, following his piece of good news, he gets in touch with Ellen for a chat that's cut short. Things are going well for Tom, though. And that's never a good thing in the universe of Damages.

Six Months Later. Which brings us to the future storyline, as Patty is involved in an automobile collision in Manhattan. What makes the incident all the more alarming--and indeed odd--is that when Patty staggers out of the car to see if the other driver is injured, there's no one in the driver's seat, though the air bag was deployed... and the passenger door is open. After a trip to the hospital, she meets with Detective Victor Huntley (Tom Noonan), one of my favorite supporting characters on the series. The car's VIN number is run down and found to be registered to none other than Tom Shayes, Patty's newly minted partner. But the apartment that the car was registered to is a squalid hole in the wall. There's no sign of Tom but there are dozens of empty water bottles, a mattress in the corner, hundreds of print outs, and some blood on the wall. A quick check out of the window reveals a familiar-looking homeless man, the same one who answered the number that Louis Tobin called...

And that's not all. Said homeless man has, among many other pieces of detritus, Ellen's Chanel bag--the one Patty gave her six months earlier--and it too has blood on it. Plus, the homeless man can't tell Huntley or his partner where he got the bag, saying only that it was maybe a gift. Worse, right next to his half-constructed shelter, the police have found something else in the dumpster: a body. Tom Shayles' body, in fact.

Just what does it all add to up to? Why did someone try to kill Patty using a car registered to Tom Shayles and a potentially fake address? Why deposit Tom's body behind that apartment in a dumpster? Whose blood is on the wall and on Ellen's bag? And how does this all tie into the Louis Tobin case?

What did you think of the season premiere? Has it hooked your attention? Any theories about what's to come this season on Damages? What did you think of the gorgeous opening montage/recap? Discuss.

Next week on Damages ("The Dog Is Happier Without Her"), Patty Hewes digs deeper into the secrets of the Tobin family; Ellen Parsons provides valuable assistance to Tom Shayes.

Talk Back: BBC America's "The Inbetweeners"

I've been raving about British comedy The Inbetweeners, created by Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, for almost a year. (You can read my review of the first three episodes here and my review of the first two seasons here.)

I spent last night at a little gathering in West Hollywood hosted by Iain Morris and his lovely fiancee (congratulations, you two!) for The Inbetweeners' US launch on BBC America last night. Despite having seen the first two episodes about three times already, my wife and I--and the entire party--were rolling on the floor with hysterics as Iain gleefully shouted out the bleeped-out words that had been censored from the American broadcast. (And, believe me, there were many.)

Now that the first two episodes have finally aired Stateside as of last night, I'm curious to know what you thought of the series. Did you find it painfully funny? Did you laugh and cringe in equal measure? Did you feel relieved that you're no longer in your teens? What did you think of the cast and their chemistry? Did you scream at the telly when Simon (Joe Bird) threw up on Carly D'Amato's little brother? (Did you wonder why BBC America haphazardly censored some expressions and not others and wish, as I did, that they just let it air as is?)

And, most importantly, will you tune in again for the next episode?

Talk back here.

This Wednesday on an all-new episode of The Inbetweeners ("Thorpe Park"), the boys take Simon's new car for a spin during an ill-fated trip to Thorpe Park.

Channel Surfing: Forest Whitaker Circling "Criminal Minds," Macaulay Culkin Could Find "Big Love," "Damages" Twist, "Mad Men," "Fringe," and More

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing.

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Forest Whitaker (The Shield) is nearing a deal to come aboard CBS' in-development spin-off of Criminal Minds as the series lead. The spinoff would air as a backdoor pilot as an episode of Criminal Minds this spring. "Whitaker would play Cooper, the new team’s fiercely loyal and intensely private leader," writes Ausiello. "A former star profiler in the BAU, Coop’s been off the grid for the last eight years — leaving only a trail of rumors in his wake." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck is reporting that Macaulay Culkin could be destined for a role on HBO's Big Love next season, should the drama be renewed by the pay cabler. Culkin, who is friends with Golden Globe winner Chloe Sevigny, visited the set recently and spent time with co-creator Will Scheffer. "He watches the show and we can see him fitting into either the compound or the Mormon world," Scheffer told Keck. Scheffer also said that the Culkin could be a part of the series' drive to "expand [the] show's youth franchise" and would "make a great young evangelist." (TV Guide)

Wondering just why the producers of FX's Damages decided to employ that particular plot twist in last night's shocking third season premiere? Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has a short interview with creators Todd A. Kessler and Glenn Kessler about the twist (which I won't put here.) But in brief: it ties into what Todd A. Kessler says is "the theme of the entire series being 'What price success?'" (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

It seems as though Mad Men's Bryan Batt--who played the closeted Salvatore Romano--won't be heading over to the new agency for Season Four of Mad Men, set to air this summer on AMC. While production is slated to begin on the new season in March, Batt has yet to hear anything from the producers, despite his notification period being up on December 31st. “"e don’t murder people on our show, but for there to be any stakes, there have to be consequences," said executive producer Matthew Weiner. "[Losing Bryan] was a tough moment for the show, but that’s where we are. I know how people felt about Bryan. I obviously love working with him, and he has been an indelible character since the pilot. But I felt it was an expression of the times that he couldn’t work there anymore. It’s the ultimate case of sexual harassment." (TV Guide)

SPOILER! Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has some clues about what's coming up on FOX's Fringe as the countdown to the season (and possibly series) finale gets underway. That finale will contain a showdown between John Noble's Walter Bishop and Leonard Nimoy's William Bell. "William and Walter will finally face off in the finale," consulting producer Akiva Goldsman, who is directing the two-part season finale, told Ausiello. "We’re going to be looking very closely into Peter’s [Joshua Jackson] identity, Walter’s choices in the past, and Walter’s choices in the future. And by the end of the season, we’re all going over to the other side." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

CBS has renewed comedy How I Met Your Mother for a sixth season. Move comes on the heels of series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas signing a three-year overall deal with studio 20th Century Fox Television, which will keep them overseeing HIMYM for another three seasons. (Hollywood Reporter)

Elsewhere at the Eye, CBS has renewed reality franchises Survivor and The Amazing Race, with Survivor on track for another two cycles (the series' 21st and 22nd) and Amazing Race to return for a 17th cycle. (Variety)

CBS has handed out pilot orders to two comedy pilots. Multi-camera comedy Hitched, from executive producers Josh Schwartz and Matt Miller (Chuck) and Warner Bros. Television, revolves around a newly married couple in their twenties who are still getting to know one another, while the untitled multi-camera comedy from writer Tad Quill and CBS Television Studios centers on a widower who attempts to get back into the dating world while raising a pre-teen son. Elsewhere, ABC gave a pilot order to superhero drama No Ordinary Family, from writer/executive producers Jon Feldman and Greg Berlanti (Dirty Sexy Money) and ABC Studios, about a family that suddenly discovers they have superpowers. Also at ABC: multi-camera comedy Freshman, about three newly minted members of Congress, from writer/executive producer Greg Malins, executive producer Arianna Huffington, and 20th Century Fox Television; and an untitled multi-camera comedy pilot, from Joe Port, Joe Wiseman and ABC Studios, about siblings trying to come to terms with their parents' divorce. FOX ordered a pilot for legal drama Pleading Guilty, based on Scott Turow's novel, from writer Jason Tracey, director Jon Avnet, and executive producers Peter Chernin and Katherine Pope. (Variety, Hollywood Reporter)

Pilot director alert! Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer) will direct FOX drama Midland, about a polygamist in the oil industry. Over at ABC, Jeff Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow) has will direct drama pilot 187 Detroit, about the top homicide division in Detroit. (Hollywood Reporter)

TV Guide's Will Keck talks to Harold Perrineau about his return later this season to ABC's Lost. "I was always open to returning because there was stuff I thought was unresolved," said Perrineau. "I’m hoping we can put Michael to rest in a way we haven’t done so far." (TV Guide)

The CW is developing a spinoff of its supernatural drama Supernatural but the project, entitled Ghostfacers, won't air on linear television but rather online. Project, which revolves around a group of ghost hunters who film their adventures, will run as ten three-minute episodes, at least initially. Ghostfacers--written by A.J. Buckley and Travis Wester and starring Buckley, Wester, Brittany Ishibashi, and Austin Basis--will premiere on TheWB.com and will also run on the CW's website. (Variety)

Syfy has announced that 1.6 million viewers tuned in to Friday's broadcast of the two-hour Caprica pilot while the premiere has already been viewed by "2 million viewers on various distribution platforms including Hulu, Syfy.com, DVD sales, free on demand offerings, Apple and Amazon downloads and film-festival screenings prior to its Syfy debut." (Broadcasting & Cable)

Over at Starz, 553,000 viewers tuned into the launch of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the best series debut numbers in the pay cabler's history, while another 460,000 watched on Encore. (Variety)

ABC Family is said to be close to ordering a pilot for drama Sasha Paley's young-adult novel "Huge," about two girls at a weight-loss camp who fall for the same guy. Project, from Alloy Entertainment and executive producers Leslie Morgenstein and Bob Levy, will be written by My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman and her daughter, Savannah Dooley. (Hollywood Reporter)

History has given a series order to Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy, in which the comedian will explore "the country, immersing himself in different lifestyles, jobs and hobbies that "celebrate the American experience.'" (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)

FOX's musical game show Don't Forget the Lyrics is returning, but this time to syndication. Twentieth Television has cleared the series, to be hosted by Mark McGrath, on first-run syndication on FOX owned and operated affiliates in the top 10 markets and the series will also be stripped weekdays on VH1. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Mr. Henrickson Goes to Washington: The Politics of Relationships on "Big Love"

At its core, HBO's family drama Big Love has been about the often complex and always complicated interpersonal relationships that we encounter in our lives: the bonds between family, spouses, lovers, the pangs of unrequited love, the enmity between rivals. In other words: the series is a microcosm through which we can explore our own relationships, a rubric for understanding the Gordian knot of love and hate between ourselves and others and, often, the conflicting natures within our very being.

This week's episode of Big Love ("Strange Bedfellows"), written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and directed by Adam Davidson, found the Henricksons separated in more ways than one. While Bill headed to Washington D.C. with Nicki and Cara Lynn, Barb and Sarah's efforts to spend some time together resulted in a car accident involving a young woman on the reservation and Margene gave into temptation, a subconscious action that will likely have lasting repercussions for several of the characters.

It was this fateful moment between Margene and Ben as well as parallel storylines involving Alby and his secret lover Dale (the newly appointed state trustee on the UEB board), Barb and Sarah, and Nicki and Cara Lynn that gave the episode its emotional resonance. Is it sinful to be imperfect or is it the greater sin to give into your imperfect nature? In other words: can we help who we are or are we doomed to give into our impulses?

It's these impulses that offered a strong throughline to the season's third episode, one that was split among the political powerhouse of Washington, in the Henrickson's suburban home, on the Native American reservation, and in the backwater of Juniper Creek as several secrets spilled out, actions were taken that can't be undone, and the twin vipers of Alby and JJ made their opening move.

Bill. I'm glad to see that Bill attempted to reconcile his relationship with Nicki but his plans for rekindling their relationship were derailed by Nicki, who brought Cara-Lynn along for the weekend. I had almost written off Bill and Nicki's marriage as irreparably damaged but Bill seems to be making an effort to get things back on track, even if he doesn't quite realize just how unhappy Nicki is. Her betrayals last season, both with Ray Henry and with her efforts not to get pregnant, speak to larger issues within their marriage that can't be solved with a weekend getaway to D.C. or some sexy bottomless lingerie.

For a man with three wives, Bill still isn't the the most knowledgeable guy when it comes to women. In addition to misreading Nicki's signals, he botches an important liaison when he meets Marilyn (the fantastic Sissy Spacek, here a strawberry blonde spitfire), a key Washington lobbyist who holds the keys to accessing an endorsement from a prominent Utah Congressman. Mistaking her for an assistant, Bill berates Marilyn for making him wait in the lobby and then blows an opportunity to get a ticket to a fundraiser where Congressman Paley (Perry King) would be. Marilyn isn't one to be charmed by Bill's aw-shucks attitude nor his slightly chauvinistic view of women in the workplace... and she manages to block his access to the Congressman at several turns. But it's not Bill who manages to undo his actions.

Nicki. We've long known that Nicki has a manipulative streak that can't be controlled but in this episode she actually applies those traits to something positive: namely, winning over Marilyn and convincing her that she needs to help Bill. While Nicki believes that she's won the lobbyist over by talking up Bill's strengths, it's really the mention of the Indian gaming casino that sparks Marilyn's attention. Still, Bill wouldn't have gotten to the Congressman if it hadn't been for Nicki's interference...

But while she saves the day here with a Hail Mary, Nicki isn't exactly known for her judgment, such as her decision to bring a concealed weapon with her to Washington "for protection." (She truly is her father's daughter.) As soon as Nicki pulled out that firearm, which she checked separately on the plane, I knew that it would come back to haunt her. I just never expected that it would be Cara Lynn who would (metaphorically) pull that trigger.

It's their estranged relationship that provides one of the best illustration of what I was discussing earlier. Nicki's main character trait is her manipulative nature; she can't help who she is but she can choose whether or not to give into her nature... or to use her powers for good, as she does with Marilyn. But Cara Lynn has inherited her mother's nature: she's devilishly manipulative. Despite her agreement with Nicki, Cara Lynn doesn't tell JJ that Nicki and Bill are taking her Washington because she knew he wouldn't agree to it; rather, she lets Bill and Nicki receive the irate wrath of her father rather than stand up to him herself. (That wrath includes a surprise and rather menacing visit at Margene's house.)

Likewise, angry that Nicki forced her to wait downstairs in the lobby for so long, Cara Lynn brings up Nicki's abandonment of her as a baby. When Nicki attempts to explain, Cara Lynn storms off, leading to a tantrum in which Cara Lynn tells the security guard that Nicki has a gun. A classic Nicki move, really. Cara Lynn might pretend to be sweet and naive but she has as much of a gift for emotional subterfuge as her mother. It's in her nature, really... and as much as Nicki might want her daughter to turn out differently, they might be doomed to the same fate.

JJ. Understandably furious at learning that his daughter has been flown across the country without his consent, JJ flies off the handle and confronts Margene, who is home with the Henrickson kids and Jodean. His threatening manner and anger recall Alby during Season Two of Big Love, a shadow forcing its way through the cracks in the Henrickson home.

But despite his anger toward Bill and Nicki, JJ has bigger plans that involve Wanda and Joey and he manages to convince them that the authorities are suspicious about Roman's death and intend to exhume his corpse. Knowing that Roman has his DNA under his fingernails, Joey panics and digs up Roman's body himself... while JJ's cancer-stricken wife Malinda watches nearby. (If this whole scheme weren't creepy enough, we learn that it's JJ who is acting as Malinda's physician, performing her blood transfusions and biopsies himself.)

Alby. Alby's twisted relationship with Dale got even more complicated this week as they continued to give into their mutual attraction to one another, both at the compound offices and in a hotel room. Despite his hunger for Dale, Alby maintains that he is not gay but just "likes fooling around." Dale, however, believes that his homosexuality is a test from Heavenly Father and that he must try not to give into his base desires, knowing that same-sex attraction doesn't exist within the celestial kingdom and is only limited to their time on Earth. The sin, he says, isn't being gay, which is in their nature, but in giving into those feelings.

While it's clear that Dale is falling for Alby despite his efforts to remain pure (loved the scene where he asked about his facial scar, the result of his aborted attempt on Adaleen's life last season), I can't help but question Alby's devotion to his lover. The fact that he snapped a photo of them naked in bed together raises some looming issues: Alby can now hold this proof of their relationship over Dale's head if he needs to should the state trustee go against his authority down the line.

However, Dale now has something over Alby as well: he knows that the UEB has spent $100 million of the trust in building a top secret satellite compound in Kansas. It's this compound that JJ alluded to when he urged Nicki to make sure Bill doesn't start poking his nose into Kansas. But just what is going on there? Why is Malinda in such a rush to return. Hmmm...

And then there's the little matter of Roman's spirit hovering over the action, manifested all the more three-dimensionally by Alby, who appears to have absorbed Roman into his subconscious, hearing the hateful sting of his scorn following his night with Dale. As he dresses in his Temple garment, Alby pictures his father sitting in an armchair, watching him, judging him, loathing him. Yes, things just got a hell of a lot more insidious...

Jodean. I was so happy to see Mireille Enos return this season as the sullen Jodean Marquart. Still reeling from her sister Kathy's death, Jodean seems to have nothing to live for and exists firmly under her husband Frank's thumb. But there are signs of a friendship blossoming between her and Margene, one that I hope continues to be explored. The palpable sense of relief and comfort that washed over Jodean when she and Margene embraced spoke volumes about the isolation and loneliness she feels now that her twin is dead. Sad and touching.

Barb and Sarah. Barb and Sarah's efforts at reconciliation didn't so much as hit a wall as they did a woman... meth trafficker Leila Stilwell (Frozen River's Misty Upham). After Barb's sensitivity seminar crashed and burned (loved that woman's fiery reply to Barb's insistence to tell her how she really felt), the mother and daughter got their own taste of racial sensitivity training. Despite Tommy's insistence to let them handle this issue, both Barb and Sarah return to the reservation to check on Leila and get sucked into the drama without really having an understanding of the underlying issues. Tommy tells Barb that Leila is a mule bringing meth onto the reservation from Canada and that the tribe has a strict policy about meth: houses used to store it are razed and traffickers are banished. That Barb would offer Leila an inroads to the casino is mindboggling to him; they are trying to keep meth as far away from the casino as possible.

But it's too late for Sarah, who feels some personal responsibility for Leila. Besides for giving her money at the clinic, she returns to the reservation and is seen at Leila's house looking after Leila's baby. Considering her own brush with motherhood last season (and her eventual miscarriage), I'm concerned about Sarah's involvement with Leila, especially if there are drugs involved. Sarah is in way over her head but doesn't quite realize it yet...

Margene. She's not the only one in over her head, though. After everyone bailed on showing up to the television station to support Margene's primetime appearance, she's ecstatic to see Ben show up for offer some emotional support... especially after he came to her rescue earlier with JJ. She's so happy in fact that she gives into the seething sexual tension that has existed between them since the start of the series and they share a kiss.

Margene is horrified by what she has done and immediately realizes that she has made a huge mistake, but that mistake is compounded when Ben is identified on television as Margene's husband while Barb watches in shock. This storyline has been four seasons in the making and I'm glad to see that Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer are delving into this plot headfirst. I only wonder just what the fallout will be from this illicit kiss, a move that both surprised and shocked Margene. Has she crossed a line that can't be uncrossed? Will her actions further splinter the already fragile Henrickson clan?

All in all, another fantastic installment of Big Love that doled out some tantalizing tidbits about this season's many mysteries, amped up the tension, and kept the characters questioning their true selves. Next Sunday can't come quickly enough...

Next week on Big Love ("The Mighty and the Strong"), an audit uncovers insurance discrepancies at Home Plus, forcing Bill to take drastic steps to protect his secrets and save his candidacy; J.J. approaches Alby with a potential solution on how to dispose of a “flock cast adrift,” flummoxing Nicki; Sarah gets a taste of motherhood, albeit with someone else’s child; Bill decides that a change of scenery might be best for Ben.

Ep. 38: The Mighty and Strong - Preview

Master of Disguise: Televisionary Talks to "La La Land" Creator/Star Marc Wootton

In addition to roles on such well-regarded British comedies as Gavin & Stacey and Julia Davis' Nighty Night and such series as The Eleven O'Clock Show and My New Best Friend, Marc Wootton truly made his mark on the British comedy scene with the eight-episode High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman, a Borat-like comedy confection in which Wootton performed a variety of eccentric characters--most notably egocentric psychic Shirley Ghostman-- while interacting with real people.

Wootton is set to migrate the comedic style of High Spirits along with its central character Shirley to the West Coast of America with his new series, La La Land, which debuts tonight on Showtime.

The series finds Wootton again performing an array of characters--in this case, outrageously awful psychic medium Shirley, desperate documentary filmmaker Brendan, and naive cabbie/wannabe actor Gary--as they attempt to find fame and fortune in Los Angeles, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

I caught up with Wootton via telephone in London to discuss La La Land, brushes with law enforcement, his methods for getting into character, why Brits love Los Angeles, what's up next for the comedian, and much more. (What follows is an edited version of the transcript of our 45-minute conversation.)

TELEVISIONARY: When you began developing this into La La Land, did you know at that time that it would be a sequel of sorts to High Spirits?

WOOTTON: The thing that was pitched was pretty much what we did--I mean, there were several characters actually originally and we narrowed it down to three--but it was a multi-character, kind of documentary format. There’s a show I’ve seen in England years ago called Paddington Green, which followed the lives of people who all shared the same postcode. Sometimes you can link characters through location or a theme [and that’s what] they’re trying to achieve. We were looking at possibly putting them all in the same motel; I think the working title at the time might have been Motel California. Bleh. And Shirley was in the mix and Gary and Brendan was in there along with some crazy blind chef. The blind chef would have really been good fun to do, so I’m hoping I’ll get to do it. [If there is a] second season, we will see the blind chef. He’s kind of a man-child.

If you saw High Spirits, there’s a character in that called Ian Jackson who was that kind of slightly remedial, a bit like The Jerk, there’s been lots of those man-childy type characters we’ve seen over the years comically. But we developed the character more like a Chauncey Gardner kind of affair, called Robin. We in the end, I think, once we got to dressing him and walking him around, I went out, because with characters, I still go out and test-drive it if you’d like, just go out and hang out with people, which is a bit absurd considering there’s no cameras. And when we took Robin out, I got in a lot of trouble, just with the way people were reacting to me. I think some felt really sorry for me; some people got really irritated by me. But I worried, I supposed, that it wouldn’t be in the best taste. So maybe that’s for the second season, too. It was fun. It was a really good fun character. I had this ridiculous suit on which was a bit too small for me, that looked incredibly tragic. And I think people—I don’t know what they thought. I don’t know if they thought I was some sort of [mental] that had escaped. It just didn’t flow in a way—I think people felt too sorry for me. And I like, I find that difficult to deal with in this part for television. I like the mix of the characters we’ve got on the show.

TELEVISIONARY: La La Land is obviously in the same vein as High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman. It is deals with mining comedy out of the awkward and uncomfortable, which I happen to find hysterical.

WOOTTON: Yeah, me too. I think that’s what laughter’s kind of all about, really… I’m a big fan of physical comedy as well and when you boil slapstick down—a guy slipping on a banana skin and pretty much hurting himself—I think we’re laughing-- Without getting too philosophical without it sounding like I’m disappearing up my own bum, we’re laughing because of fear. Monkeys when they smile and do that crazy laughing thing is actually fear that they’re displaying. They show their teeth and we do that when we feel a bit anxious. That’s why when we enter a room, we give that inane grin to everyone. But I think laughter is from those uncomfortable kind of situations.

A lot of really great slapstick, if you think about it, is incredibly painful and humiliating and stressful… I like to create characters and I hope we achieved that and if we didn’t, we’ll try better next time... I suppose I love it when you have people just go, "That guy’s a f---ing idiot" and people put my character in his place, rather than like I think happened with other characters like Robin, because people felt so sorry for him. The balance felt just a bit unfair because no one would put that character in his place at all. No one would actually say, “Hold on a minute, you’re an idiot.” I think that’s probably also why I like Gary as well, the actor guy, because people tell him what a buffoon he is.

TELEVISIONARY: How much are the people surrounding the characters—like Ruta, Kiki, or Chico—in on the joke or are they not in on the joke at all?

WOOTTON: They’re not in on the joke. It wouldn’t really work if they were, because then you’d get really horrible, schmuck-y, tease-y…I don’t know, that really kind of bad reality television where it all feels too manufactured. Chico would turn up in the morning to pick me up as Shirley, so I’d get into character, do my hair, coiffeur, get my bangs sorted out and I’d... jump in the back of the car. He’d phone me... on Shirley’s little iPhone, and I would pop down with the address of a location where we were filming. He was hired as my driver, so he’d pick me up from the airport when I, the character, arrived.

When we’re not filming, I can sit down and have lunch with everyone, relax and I’m not sort of going, oh, I’m Shirley now. But we do have quite a great time I suppose to make sure that nobody knows. With Chico, he picked me up from the airport, he was hired as a driver, but he was prepared to appear as part of a documentary-style program and he dropped me off at the airport in the end. He’s completely for real. If he was in on it, it would really stick out like a sore thumb and it would feel really cheesy, because I think the moment that you let someone in on it, it dilutes the whole show.

I did the same thing with High Spirits. Some people in the audience, they got it [and] we [put] them [on camera] as well. And some people got irritated like, why did you feature people who looked silly laughing? It’s because I kind of want people to know that no one’s in on it and some people are cleverer than others and work it out. But I never fix anything or use actors, because I think as soon as you do that, you dilute the whole thing and then as soon as you think “is he an actor?” you’re gonna think, “Eh, he’s an actor. Or maybe that PI, he’s an actor.” And then suddenly, you ask too many questions of the program… That’s why there’s a card on the top. If everyone knows from the beginning of the show, okay, Marc’s playing these characters in the real world and they get on board, and then hopefully it’s in there and you can tell. I can normally tell if you watch film or television in this genre. You get a real strong suspicion [and] sometimes you think, “God, this is definitely fudged. This doesn’t feel right. But hopefully, because of the way people react, I think you can tell it’s real because they wouldn’t give those reactions otherwise.

TELEVISIONARY: What is the most shocking thing to me is how long people actually stay with Shirley or Brendan or Gary given the craziness of the situations that they find themselves in.

WOOTTON: There’s a quote, isn’t there… if you turn the world on its side, everything loose ends up in Los Angeles. The people are quite eccentric and interesting, but they’re willing to sort of take the time… When I wasn’t filming, I fell in love with the place. I’d love to come back because people are so nice. You go to the grocery store and you’re involved in a conversation before you know it, or you’re on the street even and someone says hello and a genuine sincere conversation arises out of a chance meeting. I think because of that culture, people seem to be tolerant---maybe they’re tolerant of Brits, I’m not sure, but they definitely engaged... I don’t know what to attribute it to. I think there’s a part of me that thinks that the camera filming you makes you feel like you have to stay with it. And then there’s the character, which I’d like to think I don’t put my foot on the pedal too much. I take it off the gas when I feel that something is going to break and then I’ll ease off and just sort of coast along for a while, and a lot of it is about listening. Obviously, there’s a lot of footage you don’t see and there’s a lot of genuine conversation that goes on, and you’re totally in the moment. But no one punked out of it, everyone stayed with it. Maybe it’s because I’m getting advice from people, I don’t know.

TELEVISIONARY: I mean, the one that stands out the most from this is the minute man that performs, I think, 71 takes with Brendan for the single-take documentary.

WOOTTON: There’s obviously a mixture in this show. Sometimes there’s a satirical-- I don’t want to get too kind of intellectual. I’m pulling satire because some of it is just when you boil it down, it’s a knock and run game. What do you call it when you knock on someone’s house and you run around the corner and giggle, and then Mr. Jenkins comes out and asks, “Who knocked on my door?” Do you play that game?

TELEVISIONARY: I think it’s “ring and run.“

WOOTTON: “Ring and run.”

TELEVISIONARY: Yeah, something like that.

WOOTTON: Though in LA that would be a nightmare, you’d be running for miles.

TELEVISIONARY: Well, here you just drive up I think in your car and take off in your car. Since nobody will walk anywhere.

WOOTTON: [Laughs] Do they then chase you down in their car and pull you down on the hard shoulder and then 9 times out of 10, you’re running down a little cul de sac and you get trapped?

TELEVISIONARY: And someone beats you with an Oscar statuette. Yeah.

WOOTTON: That’s brilliant. But yeah, sometimes it’s that. Sometimes it’s a satirical agenda going on. Obviously with the minute man, there was a point to that, and also a little bit of a grievance with me about how that guy is with what he does every day in his life, which is to defend the borders of America. And I suppose his carrot was he was hoping to get his point across and I obviously explained in the beginning of that day in great detail how I’m this auteur filmmaker who wants to do everything in one take, it’s never been done and nobody’s ever achieved it, but I’m going to do it, and my reason to him was--which I think is in the show--that I wanted the truth. Because it won’t be cut, then everyone will see the truth, rather than a version of the truth… I have like researchers/film producers who are amazing people. They help to locate these folks that we work with and they then manage them, I suppose. I think the minute man thought that I would be making a good point and supporting him in what he was doing, what he was trying to achieve. So to go back to the beginning, I suppose it was to show off to everyone how he stops those “dreadful Mexicans.”

TELEVISIONARY: But what’s ironic to me is that he is obviously with two non-Americans and doesn’t seem in any way perturbed by that fact.

WOOTTON: Well, not with me, but he was with Kiki. There was one [exchange] that made me feel quite uncomfortable that we poured over in the edit. It just wasn’t funny; the whole tone of the piece changed it. Not that he was outrageously racist, but he definitely had an issue with Kiki.

TELEVISIONARY: Hmm. That doesn’t surprise me.

WOOTTON: He wanted her out. [Pause] He was lovely.

TELEVISIONARY: What’s ironic to me is that you do have people like Kiki, Chico, and Ruta, Each of them in their own way is absolutely fantastic and lovely and wonderful. I thought that was just great because you’re giving each of these off-kilter characters a grounded sidekick in a way that makes them somewhat relatable more to the audience.

WOOTTON: You make it sound really nice. That’s what we’re hoping to do. I rather want it to be real and I thought it was really important that each of those characters have someone we meet every week because, if it’s just me, you'll never get any—not necessarily the voice of reason, but Ruta, for instance, is a voice of reason, isn’t she every time she tells Gary in the nicest possible way that you’re an idiot, pretty much? But she’s so charming, she’s willing to tolerate me each time I go back with [some] new thing.

TELEVISIONARY: What is it about Los Angeles that intrigues Brits so much? There seems to be a distinct sort of romance between the Brits and LA.

WOOTTON: Yeah. Isn’t there a quote like 52-- maybe that’s too many--suburbs in search of a city? [Laughs] It is such a sprawling big place. But I fall in love with LA. It’s really strange, I’m desperate to come out again. I think just it’s such a populous place. What the intrigue is, I suppose is there’s a lot of very interesting diverse people that have all arrived somewhere. How do I say this without sounding like a freak? I mean odd characters, one of the things that links them is mummy and daddy and parental approval if you like, and I think there are a lot of people who are desperate for parental approval that are trying to make it or trying to get recognition for something, maybe me. I think it’s just a real interesting mix, and there’s a spiritual side going on, and there’s this harsh TV and film industry and God, I don’t know what the key to it is. I don’t want to beat on it, the actual state is amazing, I spent time in Yosemite hunting bears--I didn’t really hunt bears, but I was "hunting bears." I love it up there and I love San Diego. And I thought San Francisco has some of the most beautiful architecture I’ve seen for a long time. I just love, I love it, down to Monterey Bay, exploring down around Los Angeles and all the other lovely places in California.

I think it’s probably the fact that there is extreme people there, you know? [As] Gary, [I] went and saw this really very interesting guy who regressed me spiritually… and [I spent] the piece pretending to be a caveman. I was fighting dinosaurs and stuff. We did finish and shot an ending. But this guy is able to operate what he does for a living—he has an office, he’s able to get money in his pocket and pay his mortgage and live as well as a fantastic photographer and as well as a fantastically talented, beautiful Hollywood grandee like Ruta Lee, fittingly in her heels.

All of that talent is exciting, I suppose. All of that talent doesn’t exist as much anymore, does it? That’s what I love about Ruta, that she just represents someone like Gary as well, and that’s why we cast someone like that. She just represents so much talent and she’s an amazing dancer, she’s a brilliant singer, and accomplished performer, and that’s quite rare in an age of people winning [TV] competitions and becoming famous. Celebrity sort of changed. Back then it was people having raw amazing talent. And we thought, oh, she’s got a little star on Hollywood Walk of Fame. We thought we could cast her against Gary because Gary’s got nothing, he’s this cab driver. He’s the guy who will try out for this competition and thinks I can do that. Doesn’t matter which competition he’s on. He’s one of the people who sits in his armchair and looks at other people and says, “I can do that.”

[Los Angeles is] just such a weird mix… You’ve got just so much going on and there is this dream, I suppose. It feels like dreams can be achieved. There’s a real can-do attitude out there. I’ve spent some time down in Australia and it has the same sort of vibe. Of just making things happen, which is really exciting and really ignites your imagination.

TELEVISIONARY: Has the police ever been called? Has it ever gotten to that point?

WOOTTON: When I steal the silverware from Alan Thicke’s house, he’s really hardcore and you hear the police in the background, but then three police cars show up and they penned all the crew in. I managed to escape and the crew was all penned in for ages. It’s happened a few times. Obviously what happened in Episode 2, all the park rangers turned up and they penned us in. Three park rangers in the end all came and one guy was so angry. “I just left my dinner table, my kids, my wife, and you wasted my time.” I was in so much trouble. The problem that I have is that I’m in character, and all my identification is the character’s identification. So I’ve got a fake driver’s license and all the things that you would need to make you a believable rounded character other than a silly comedy thing.

In order to hang out with these people for such a long time, I have to live and breathe as the character. And the police want to see identification and you show them and you try and keep it going and then there’s that horrible awkward moment where you feel like you have to go, “Actually, I’m not really Brendan, I’m not really Gary” and that’s a tough one to call… I’d say the police have shown up 5 or 6 times during shooting and by the end of the Alan Thicke [incident], they were posing for photographs with the crew and everyone saw the funny side, including Alan, which was just great. It doesn’t always go that way. Sometimes statements are taken and I’ve had detectives ask me questions about what happened.... Luckily, I can say to the fact that the police think, okay, we don’t do anything truly naughty or illegal... There is no harm that comes to anybody or maybe I might be arrested for wasting time. But I feel the time we wasted with [the Spirited auditions] was with people who I have a bit of a personal problem with anyway, which are people who charge other people money to tell them stuff about dead folk. And that, I don’t know how that sits with me. It certainly feels like I’m out allowed to waste people like that, their time. But yes, police turn up lots. Lots and lots.

The reason we can’t speak to the police is because they never want to sign anything and they don’t want their face on the show. There’s a park ranger in there that we’ve blurred and when the police turn up at Thicke's, we had to stop filming because police generally is a time where they never go, “Yeah! Put me on camera.”

TELEVISIONARY: You mentioned earlier about the process that goes into creating characters and Gary goes to see a sort of method acting coach. How Method are you, actually? Obviously when you break for lunch, you’re Marc, not Brendan or Gary or Shirley, but how deep into these characters’ backstories do you go?

WOOTTON: Oh, backstories, massively. Because if you can’t look someone in the eye and answer a question about [them]… Like Shirley, I can tell you how he was brought up and what happened to him at age six. I will sit and explore on the hot seat, we’ll go right in and get the backstory only because these characters have to function in the real world… Obviously there is a certain amount of improvisation as well, but I feel I can only really, truly be believable if I am the thing I’m pretending to be.

However, I think some journalists before have said, “Marc never comes out of character and makes the crew call him…” Obviously the crew has to refer to me as the character I’m portraying at that point, otherwise the whole thing would be rumpled. But I’m not too precious. There are stories about Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, and Dustin only says just try acting, I think it was Marathon Man they were working on, and Dustin turned up having not slept and disappeared, but really deeply into the character. He’s acting isn’t he, but he’s pretending at the end of the day. And occasionally you get a little prize for pretending. We do it as kids. Kids slip out of it really well, don’t they? I think children are brilliant. I just made a film in the UK called Nativity, which is working a lot with children, lots of 7 to 10-year-olds, and they’re really good. Having the innocence to pretend to be the things they’re not. And that’s all it is. It’s not rocket science. It’s not brain surgery. It’s not anything that’s cute or clever.

So I do spend a long time, but I don’t think I take it too seriously. We film in blocks as well, so I’ll start with Brendan with that big beard and that’s actually my real beard and that’ll get shaved off, and then I’ll dye my hair—and this is going to make me sound like a freak-- and then I have extensions for Shirley and then all that hair comes off and Gary’s hair cut. Everything is obviously real because it has to be because you’re up close with people, whether it’s the paint on your nails or your shoes need to be worn shoes, because it would be awful if the bottom of your shoe, you put your foot up and had a beautiful shiny shoe with a big price sticker on the bottom… Luckily I have a great team, a fantastic director and some great writers. Liam who I write with, I’ve done a lot of shows with: My New Best Friend, High Spirits. We’re all into it, the people I surround myself with are all into detail and I think it probably is all in the detail as far as being believable and rounded. Having a suit that’s been worn… everything needs to feel lived in and real. The wallet needs to feel real when it comes out of my pocket.

TELEVISIONARY: I've been following this project since it first got announced and I’ve seen you turn up on things like Gavin & Stacey and Nighty Night--

WOOTTON: Oh wow, I’m actually working with Julia [Davis] next week! We’re doing a new thing. ABC Australia has just given us a bit of money to develop a thing, which we’ll have to put on hold if I get a second season of La La Land. But we’re getting together actually next week for the whole week to create and improvise some characters and to see what comes out of that. A week of work with Ms. Davis! Which could turn into something really nice, but it would definitely be long-term if I have to do a second season, and I think she’s doing something with Baby Cow too.

TELEVISIONARY: Julia is fantastic.

WOOTTON: She’s extraordinary. Really talented and brilliant, an excellent performer. She’s very gifted in writing. And that same sense of [finding] humor in the awkward. You’re kind of gnawing off your hand because it’s in front of your face and you’re thinking, Jesus, she’s so evil. Deliciously evil.

La La Land premieres tonight at 11 pm ET/PT on Showtime.

The Daily Beast: "Diary of a Not-So-Secret Call Girl"

Showtime's British comedy series Secret Diary of a Call Girl returns with its third season tonight (or at least a behind-the-scenes special before the official launch next week) as Hannah (Billie Piper) returns for another round of clients and romantic entanglements.

Head over to The Daily Beast to read my latest piece, entitled "Diary of a Not-So-Secret Call Girl," in which I talk to series lead Billie Piper about meeting the real-life Belle de Jour, Dr. Brooke Magnanti, and about what's coming up on Season Three of Secret Diary.

Season Three of Secret Diary of a Call Girl begins tonight with a behind-the-scenes special in which Piper and Magnanti meet at 10 pm ET/PT on Showtime.

Tune-in Reminder: BBC America's "The Inbetweeners," Season Three of FX's "Damages," and Showtime's "La La Land"

Wondering what to watch tonight? Chuck, of course, but there's also three premieres tonight that you need to be aware of and should definitely tune in for... and none of them actually conflict with NBC's Chuck. (Always a perk.)

At 9 pm ET/PT, it's the US premiere of Iain Morris and Damon Beesley's British comedy The Inbetweeners on BBC America. But this isn't a comedy of social conventions but rather a raucous and touching British sitcom that's almost the anti-Skins in a way. Laugh and cringe in equal measure as four sex-starved social outcasts attempt to fit in, find love, and lose it, not always in that order. (You can read my review of the first three episodes of The Inbetweeners here and my review of the first two seasons here.)

Season Three of FX's gripping legal thriller Damages begins tonight at 10 pm ET/PT and gets off to a rollicking start by offering a riveting case, new mysteries, and old rivalries. You do not want to miss this season. You can read my review of the first two episodes of Season Three here.

At 11 pm, be sure to switch over to Showtime for the premiere of hysterical Borat-style comedy La La Land, in which British comedian Marc Wootton plays three men--an aspiring actor, a documentary filmmaker and a psychic--who arrive in Hollywood with dreams of making it big. You can read my advance review of Season One of La La Land here.

Channel Surfing: Mystery Men Back on "Lost," "Rex" Not Dead at NBC, Slew of Guest Stars for "30 Rock," "Mad" Man to Wisteria Lane, and More

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing.

Looks like the Final Battle isn't over yet. The Hollywood Reporter's Nellie Andreeva is reporting that Titus Welliver (The Good Wife) and Mark Pellegrino (Supernatural) will return for Season Six of Lost. Welliver will reprise his role as the mysterious man in black during the second half of Lost's final season while Pellegrino will return as Jacob in at least six episodes of Season Six of Lost. (Hollywood Reporter)

[Editor: Meanwhile, also be sure to check out Part Two of Maureen Ryan's fantastic and in-depth Q&A with Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse here.]

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that NBC has yet to make a decision about the fate of legal drama pilot Rex Is Not Your Lawyer, starring David Tennant (Doctor Who). But while the pilot's sets are being dismantled this week, the project isn't dead. "The sets are on fold-and-hold," an unnamed insider told Ausiello. "They will still be available if the show is picked up for the fall." And it's still possible that Rex will make it to air, as that same source told Ausiello that the project is still under consideration for a fall slot on the schedule. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

TV Guide Magazine's William Keck is reporting that a bevy of male stars are being lined up to guest star in 30 Rock's Valentine's Day episode, shooting this week. Among the eligible bachelors reuniting with Tina Fey's Liz Lemon: Jon Bon Jovi, Dean Winters, Jason Sudeikis, and Jon Hamm. But it's Sudeikis' Floyd who might have gotten under Liz's skin the most. "Liz is upset to learn Floyd is not only getting married, but is competing to get a free wedding on The Today Show," Fey told Keck backstage at the SAG Awards. (TV Guide Magazine)

Mad Men's Sam Page is heading to ABC Desperate Housewives, reports Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello. Page has signed on for a multiple-episode story arc on the ABC drama series, where he will play Jeremy, described as "a well-trained cook who idolizes Bree (Marcia Cross) and her old-fashioned values." His first episode is slated to air in late February. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

How I Met Your Mother creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas have signed a three-year overall deal with 20th Century Fox Television said to be in the eight-figures range. Under the terms of the deal, the duo will remain on board HIMYM as executive producers through an eighth season (should one be ordered by CBS) and develop new series projects for the studio. The first project under their new deal will be an untitled comedy from writers Kourtney Kang and Joe Kelly about a Pittsburgh couple who are considering taking their relationship to the next level. (Variety)

Joanna Garcia (Privileged) has been cast in ABC's untitled Shana Goldberg-Meehan multi-camera comedy about two sisters, one of whom is unmarried but in a long-term relationship and one who finds herself pregnant and marries her boyfriend. Garcia will play the latter. Elsewhere, Steve Hawey, Shanola Hampton, and Jeremy White have been cast in Showtime's American adaptation of British drama Shameless. (Hollywood Reporter)

Pilot order alert! FOX has given a greenlight to drama Breakout Kings, from Prison Break's Matt Olmstead, director Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Nick Santora and 20th Century Fox Television; series follows a group of US Marshals who team up with former convicts to track down escaped prisoners. FOX also ordered pilots for comedies Traffic Light, based on an Israeli scripted format about three male friends, each in various stages of romantic relationships, from writer Bob Fisher; and Most Likely to Succeed, about a "group of friends who were superstars growing up and are now dealing with the reality of adulthood," from writer Dave Walpert (Scrubs), who will executive produce with David Nevins and Brian Grazer. The latter hails from 20th Century Fox TV and Imagine TV. Elsewhere, ABC scored a pilot pickup for drama Edgar Floats, from Warner Bros. Television and executive producers Rand Ravich and Far Shariat, about a police psychologist turned bounty hunter. NBC ordered two comedies as well: Nathan vs. Nurture, from Moses Port and David Guarascio (Aliens in America) and Sony Pictures Television, about a cardio surgeon who reunites with his biological father and brothers 35 years he was given up for adoption; and This Little Piggy, from writers Stephen Cragg and Brian Bradley (Scrubs), about a married guy whose comfortable family life is turned into chaos when his adult siblings move in with them. (Variety)

SPOILER! Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Melinda Clarke has signed on for a multiple-episode story arc on the CW's Vampire Diaries, where she will play Matt's trashy mother Kelly... who will soon become involved with Ian Somerhalder's Damon. "If I didn’t have Kelly and Damon hook up there would be no God,” executive producer Kevin Williamson told Ausiello. "What’s the point of doing TV if you’re not going to put those two characters together? That’s going to be a fun relationship to explore... We’ll reveal that she was friends with Sheriff [Elizabeth] and Elena’s mother. The three of them were really tight friends back in the day. Sheriff and Kelly, in particular, have ongoing issues to deal with." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

FOX has moved up the launch date for supernatural drama Past Life to Tuesday, February 9th at 9 pm ET/PT, directly behind American Idol. The series will then settle into its regular timeslot on Thursdays at 9 pm ET/PT on February 11th. (Futon Critic)

Alan Cumming is set to guest star on CBS' The Good Wife later this season. According to TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck, Cumming will play an image consultant named Eli Gold hired to help Chris Noth's Peter makeover his image. (TV Guide Magazine)

Does Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) know something about Katee Sackhoff's Dana Walsh? TVGuide.com's Natalie Abrams caught up with Rajskub to find out. "It's just getting really interesting," said Rajskub about Sackhoff's story arc this season on 24. "In the next few episodes, there's going to be some pretty twisted stuff happening. Honestly, you can't really grasp what's going on with her for many episodes, and we're all just trying to do our own stuff. Although I give her a look and we suspect [something], it doesn't really come out for a while." (TVGuide.com)

TVGuide.com's Natalie Abrams has an interview with Life Unexpected creator/executive producer Liz Tigelaar, who said that viewers shouldn't think of Cate (Shiri Appleby) and Baze (Kristoffer Polaha), the biological parents of Brittany Robertson's Lux who slept together in the pilot, as soulmates. "Obviously when something big happens like that in the pilot, with two characters carrying a significant secret, you're waiting for it to come out," Tigelaar told Abrams. "That will definitely happen, and as most secrets do, they come out at an inopportune time. In terms of Cate and Baze's relationship, these are two people who have to really reconcile what their feelings are about each other. Because of TV, we're trained to think that Cate and Baze belong together. But there's a good question in there: 'Really? You're the soul mate of the guy who knocked you up in high school in the back of a minivan? Really?' Logic says that's ridiculous." (TVGuide.com)

TVGuide.com is reporting that Odessa Rae (Leverage) has been cast in the CW's Smallville, where she will play Siobhan McDougal, a.k.a. the Silver Banshee, described as "a vengeful spirit of a fallen Gaelic heroine [who is] accidentally released from the underworld, and takes out her vengeance at an unassuming country bed and breakfast." (TVGuide.com)

Debmar-Mercury and ITV Studios have teamed up to bring British daytime talk show host Jeremy Kyle to the US, launching relationship/lifestyle series The Jeremy Kyle Show in a test run this summer during daytime first-run syndication. "We believe there's a market for it if he can hit the right tone for this country," said Debmar-Mercury's Mort Marcus. "It's so rare that you get to try out a new show with somebody who has done this kind of TV a thousand times before." (Variety)

Former Universal Cable Prods. executive Nikki Reed has been hired as VP of original series at Disney Channel and Disney XD. Reporting to Adam Bonnett, Reed will oversee the development of live-action programming at both cable networks. (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

Prometheus Bound: Televisionary Talks to the Cast of Syfy's "Caprica"

Caprica might be set in the past but it's the perfect time to take a look into the future.

Now that the pilot for Syfy's Caprica has aired, I can take the lid off a series of interviews I did with the main cast of the Battlestar Galactica prequel series a few months back about what lies ahead for the inhabitants of the doomed planet as they make their fateful first steps towards the annihilation of the human race.

Traveling up to the series' Vancouver set a few months back, I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with the four adult leads of Caprica. The dining room of the Adamas' Caprica City apartment provided the focal point for our conversation and the space's warm terracotta and earth tones and Mission-style furniture seemed light years away from the sleek and icy modernity of the Graystone's high-end home, just a few steps away.

But it was that comfortableness that created a cozy environment as I met with Eric Stoltz, Paula Malcomson, Polly Walker, and Esai Morales to ferret out what lays ahead for their respective characters Daniel and Amanda Graystone, Sister Clarice Willow, and Joseph Adama this season on Caprica.

At Caprica's center is the intertwined destinies of two families, the Graystones and the Adamas. On the surface, these two clans couldn't be more different but they are united in their grief and in their efforts to move past the death of their loved ones. But many may be willing to break their moral compasses in order to snatch a second chance with the ones they've lost.

Stoltz likened his character, brilliant (and possibly mad) scientist Daniel Graystone, to a tragic figure in Greek mythology. "He’s smart and conflicted. He exists in a grey area; he thinks he is doing good. He thinks everything he does is wonderful--like most brilliant scientists--but he has a fatal flaw, which is that he can’t see what drives him might also eventually result in the destruction of society," said Stoltz of Daniel. "He’s so hungry for knowledge that, like Prometheus, he steals fire from the gods, gives it to man, thinking he’s doing a good thing and is eternally punished for it."

Stoltz said that portraying Daniel's sense of loss over his daughter Zoe's death was cathartic "in the best possible way" and that acting can be "a healthy outlet for any unresolved issues you might be dealing with." Still, Daniel's grief won't be easily erased, even after he attempts to resurrect Zoe by any means necessary.

"As anyone knows who has lost someone that they loved deeply, that stays with you for quite some time," said Stoltz. "You think you have your life together and then you find yourself weeping in a corner and you’re not even sure. You take three steps forward and then four steps back. It’s a continual monkey on your back for years. One thing our society does not help us with much is loss and how to deal with it."

That sense of loss has also infected Paula Malcomson's character, Amanda Graystone, whose guilt at a vicious fight with teenage daughter Zoe right before her death is exacerbated by a realization that she didn't know anything about her own child.

"To lose a child is an extreme," said Malcomson, speaking with her natural Northern Irish lilt. "I’m asking the viewers to come with me on that [journey]. It’s hard to get her out of there for a while and it might be taxing to take that journey with someone in so much pain. But I didn’t want to cheap out on it and throw in lightness. There is still that, there is fun, there is sex in the middle of it, there’s horniness in the middle of all the things that come up. I just wanted to be true to the enormous loss and the timeframe that we’re playing this. It’s an incredibly short amount of time; the first ten [episodes] are set over a matter of months since the accident."

Morales' Joseph Adama is both a man of the law but is actively breaking the law, walking a fine line between observing the moral code he's sworn to uphold and rejecting his heritage and cultural beliefs. Those beliefs are tested even more by his own mourning process.

"We don’t actually wake up doing what people can easily analyze from the outside," said Morales. "We just try to make a living. It’s just one mission at a time... We are all guilty of something or another. And if you’re not guilty of something than usually self-righteousness is your sin. You don’t have to look too far to see where we stray from the ideal. I have to think then that my character is not thinking he’s a crooked lawyer, [but rather] he’s living within the system. He’s making do as best he can, trying to stay true to his culture without getting arrested, trying to assimilate to this new world without being ejected from it."

But don't think for one second that Adama has anything figured out, especially after the death of his wife and daughter.

"He’s a mess," admitted Morales. "He’s lost the female half of his life, with the exception of his mother-in-law, who is a constant, irritating reminder of what he’s not, which is a good Tauron who is proud of his roots. He’s looking and searching; he’s terribly distraught and has to raise his son and doesn’t know how he’ll get the wherewithal to cope and be there for him. He’s floating. He’s in a pool looking for something to hold onto."

It's that sense of being rudderless that sinks in for Malcomson's Amanda as well. "It’s pretty dark and it’s twisted and it’s tortured," said Malcomson about Amanda's emotional journey this season. "She is not in a good place by the time we find her in the episode that we’ve just been shooting [the season’s ninth]. She’s despairing, she’s losing control, certainly; she’s losing a grip on things. We have to follow her down the slippery slope a little bit."

After all, one might argue that Amanda is a character whose job is to save people but she failed at the most crucial moment to save her daughter.

"She’s unable to save her own child and the fallout from that is devastating to her," she said. "In the midst of all of that her husband is busy, as men are in terms of getting into their own work. Little does she know what he’s doing. She’s no idea. There’s a lot of deception operating around her. There are enormous obstacles for this character in the first ten episodes. It’s been insane, and really, really challenging."

In the original version of Caprica's pilot, Malcomson's Amanda was involved in an extramarital affair with Thomas Vergis (played in the original pilot by Roger Cross), a storyline that was eventually scrapped and not included in either the DVD version of the pilot or the one that aired on Syfy.

Malcomson said it was for the best. "What’s funny is that those scenes, as written and when I was working on them, I didn’t believe them," she admitted. "That’s not to say I didn’t do everything I could to make them work, but there was a more natural chemistry to my own husband [played by Stoltz]. There was something between us. Eric and I knew each other already and there was just something between us: trust, respect, all of these things that were just more interesting than a fling, which is ultimately what that was. I think it was a smart choice to go with what was really kind of natural in the story."

Even more interestingly, Malcomson told me that she didn't originally audition for the role of Amanda Graystone but for private school headmistress Sister Clarice Willow.

"[Amanda] looked to me like a character that I didn’t know how to play and it was a character that I hadn’t played before," said Malcomson. "Coming from Deadwood, I thought that this was the pinnacle of playing a female character archetype and Amanda felt a bit like that. I don’t think it’s a secret that when I originally read and met with the director that it was for Sister Clarice and he thought I’d be a great Amanda and then they said, 'how about that?' I was terrified about it. The status, the position, it all seemed to me much further from me than anything I’d ever played before, which was incredibly enticing to me."

In other words: it worked out for the best, especially as
the role of the morally ambiguous Sister Clarice went to dynamic British actress Polly Walker.

When we first see Clarice in the pilot, she seems like a fairly straightforward academic/religious type but we slowly begin to learn that there is a darkness to her and that her personal life isn't quite that of a traditional religious figure. Not only does she live in a communal, plural marriage but Clarice is also a drug addict, to boot. Not exactly the prim and proper headmistress she appears in the pilot.

"She’s got a big agenda about society in its entirety," Walker told me about Clarice. "She’s a very conflicted character. She has very strong beliefs about what you should and shouldn’t do and yet she finds it very difficult to live up to those personally. She has a massive drug problem; she’s a drug addict and yet she’s selling herself as this perfect character. She’s pretty ruthless. She’s very powerful, she’s very manipulative and very narcissistic. She’s very interesting to play… [Clarice] can’t feel any of those things. [She] feels completely misrepresented by people and believes that [she is] a very good person."

While Clarice seems to be operating within the confines of a specific ideological philosophy, her actions seem to diverge from any sense of moral obligation.

"She will do what she needs in order to achieve what she wants," said Walker. "She is fairly reckless with her treatment of people. But she is incredibly bright and incredibly driven and she is an obsessive. I’m not quite sure yet about her. She is very vulnerable because she is so flawed. She’s got a weird heart. I’m not sure how much of it is actually flesh and blood. It’s a weird old heart in there that’s beating."

"She gets upset about herself and the things she does. She has a conscience, at least about herself," continued Walker. "When she falls off the wagon and she gets wasted on this opium-like drug, the next morning, she feels really guilty and she vows never to do it again. Of course, she does. As far as people are concerned, I haven’t seen much regret."

While Clarice seemed fairly separate from the Graystone/Adama storyline in the pilot, viewers can expect to see her slowly become more integrated into the overarching plot.

"She strikes up a relationship with Paula’s character, Amanda, and that’s an interesting dynamic because they are both strong women, though coming from very different places," Walker revealed. "That’s a very interesting relationship to watch. Obviously, I won’t divulge what happens there. I haven’t come across Daniel yet; I am sure I will at some point and I’ve not met any of the other main characters. She’s quite a lonely person, Clarice, but obviously she doesn’t feel that way. She has her agenda and that’s what she’s working towards. She’s a very, very committed terrorist."

Clarice's ruthlessness isn't too much of departure for Walker, who is known for playing deeply flawed and manipulative characters, like the murderous Atia of the Julii on HBO's Rome.

"You get what you get put in front of you and for some reason that’s what’s coming my way," said Walker about her penchant for playing deeply complex characters. "Sometimes I say, why aren’t I playing the kind of fluffy girlfriend/wife figure? Sometimes I wonder what does that say about me? Is that good or bad? Complexity is always interesting to play and that’s what fuels me as an actor. The worst thing that could happen to me as an actor is if I were bored. What’s the point then? Then I’d just become destructive."

What's certain is that each of these characters has an emotional journey ahead of them that will take each of them to some very dark places. Still, Caprica isn't just about death and loss but also about how technology, both physical and emotional, enables us to interact with each other and the world around us.

"Two things that Caprica deals with that I find a relief and strangely foreign at the same time are loss and a deeply loving marriage," said Stoltz. "Those two things... are rarely presented to us, certainly in film or television. There is plenty of fiction or nonfiction that gives that to us but as examples of how to live, I’m hard pressed to think of any."

Stoltz, meanwhile, has stepped behind the camera to direct the 10th episode of the season, written by Ryan Mottesheard and Jane Espenson. While the plot details are being kept firmly under wraps, Stolz offered some thematic clues about his directorial debut on the series.

"One of the themes that my episode deals with is fathers, lost fathers and finding and healing your family," said Stolz. "And that’s an overriding theme of the whole show: family. The difficulties and beauty of maintaining a family and all that it takes."

Caprica airs Friday nights at 9 pm ET/PT on Syfy.

Lost Reduced (in London): Five Season of "Lost" in Ten Minutes

Lost fans in the UK, this one is for you.

Sky1, the home of Lost in the United Kingdom, has partnered with the Reduced Shakespeare Company to offer a live production that will conflate five season of Lost into a single ten-minute production to be held in Covent Garden on Thursday, January 28th. Attendees will be comprised of winners of various online and radio competitions.

Sky1 will also make the performance available via their online Sky Platform Anytime service.

Better yet, Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have given their permission for this exhibition, so it's legit.

"We are all ginormous fans of Lost," said Austin Tichenor, the co-author of Lost Reduced. "We've followed every twist and turn in the labyrinthine plot since the very beginning. Being trusted to reduce the first five seasons to just ten minutes is a humongous responsibility. All the years we spent poring over Oceanic Airline flight manifests and arcane theories of time-travel will not have been in vain. We can't wait to see the final season! Damon and Carlton will explain everything!"

"We feel this offers a really unique interpretation of Lost that will delight both the dedicated fans and bring everyone right up to date in advance of the Season 6 launch," said Sophie Jones, Controller of Marketing, Sky1 HD, Sky1, 2 & 3. "We’re enormously grateful that executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse along with ABC Studios have given the project their blessing."

The full press release from Sky1 can be found below.

LOST REDUCED
FIVE SEASONS OF LOST IN TEN MINUTES

Reduced Shakespeare Company to perform world premiere in London on 28th January

With the hotly anticipated sixth and final season of LOST launching on February 5th, Sky1 HD is proud to announce LOST REDUCED – a specially created ten minute play from the widely acclaimed Reduced Shakespeare Company.

The celebrated comedy theatre troupe have condensed all five seasons into a fast paced flight through the story of the Oceanic plane crash survivors. The world premiere is to be held in London on Thursday 28th January, performed for an intimate audience of competition winners. The production will also be filmed for internet broadcast as well as on the Sky Platform’s Anytime service.

Conceived by Brothers and Sisters Creative for Sky1 HD the proposal was warmly received by the Reduced Shakespeare Company who quickly agreed to write and perform LOST REDUCED. Austin Tichenor, co-author of Lost Reduced with Reed Martin enthused "We are all ginormous fans of Lost. We've followed every twist and turn in the labyrinthine plot since the very beginning. Being trusted to reduce the first five seasons to just ten minutes is a humongous responsibility. All the years we spent poring over Oceanic Airline flight manifests and arcane theories of time-travel will not have been in vain. We can't wait to see the final season! Damon and Carlton will explain everything!" Martin and Tichenor are managing partners of the Reduced Shakespeare Company and will perform Lost Reduced with long-time company member Matt Rippy.

Co-creator and executive producer Damon Lindelof and executive producer Carlton Cuse have praised the idea and granted permission for the production to go ahead.

Sophie Jones, Controller of Marketing, Sky1 HD, Sky1, 2 & 3 says: “When Brothers and Sisters brought this idea to us it immediately leapt out as far too good to pass up and we swiftly commissioned the script. We feel this offers a really unique interpretation of LOST that will delight both the dedicated fans and bring everyone right up to date in advance of the season 6 launch. We’re enormously grateful that executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse along with ABC Studios have given the project their blessing.“

Tickets will be given away to fans through a series of online competitions and radio promotions.

LOST REDUCED is written and performed by the Reduced Shakespeare Company with the project overseen by Sophie Jones and Brothers and Sisters Creative for Sky1.

The final season of LOST launches on Sky1 HD and Sky1 on Friday 5th February at 9pm.

"Lost" Countdown: New Promo, Real-Time Crash of Oceanic Flight 815

With the start of the sixth and final season of Lost only a few weeks away (blessedly), ABC has released a new promo for Season Six that features the first actual real footage.

Or, well, a single shot of new footage. In this case, it's a gun-toting Claire (Emilie de Ravin) in the jungle, along with some new Jacob-friendly phrases like "Plant a good seed and you will joyfully gather fruit," and "Everything changes."

Take a look at the new ABC promo below as well as the kick-ass real-time crash of Oceanic Flight 815, assembled by a diehard Lost fan who has no idea that they may have created the single greatest ancillary video for Lost yet.

Lost: Season Six ABC Trailer #14:



Lost: Flight 815 Crash in Real Time:



Season Six of Lost launches February 2nd on ABC.

Robots in Disguise: An Advance Review of Season One of Syfy's "Caprica"

One of the year's most eagerly anticipated series begins tonight on Syfy with the two-hour series premiere of Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica.

While the pilot episode of Ronald D. Moore, David Eick, and Jane Espenson's Caprica has been available via DVD or digital download for some time, tonight will mark the official linear television start of the series as the two-hour pilot gets its broadcast debut. (You can read my original thoughts on Caprica's pilot episode here.) For those expecting a space-set battle royale or a ragtag band of human survivors, Caprica will be a very different kettle of fish. For one, it's set way before the events of Battlestar Galactica and is set on the planet of Caprica not only decades before its fall but also during a time of peace.

But that peace is one that's short-lived. The comfortable existence enjoyed by the well-heeled denizens of Caprica is ripped apart by a shocking terrorist act in the pilot's opening minutes, one that involves a group of teenagers espousing a monotheistic belief. When a passenger train is blown apart by one member of the Soldiers of the One, two families are instantly united in their grief and loss. Brilliant scientist Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) and his doctor wife Amanda (Paula Malcomson) must grapple with the loss of their rebellious daughter Zoe (Alessandra Torresani) and with the realization that they didn't really know her at all. Meanwhile, corrupt mob lawyer Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) loses both his wife and daughter aboard the train and suddenly finds himself thrust into the unwelcome role of single fatherhood.

But what if death didn't mean the end of these people? What if there was a way to bring their loved ones back to life? It's these questions, posed by Graystone to Adama, that provide Caprica with its narrative hook.

Given that we know that Graystone's scientific inquisitiveness result in the creation of the Cylon race and the destruction of the Twelve Colonies, there's already a sense of dread and foreboding cast over the proceedings here. But that his actions should stem from a parent's grief and a love for a dead daughter render everyone involved as a tragic rather than villainous figure.

While the pilot episode deals with Graystone uncovering Zoe's research and figuring out how to create a digital avatar of her, it's Zoe who successfully manages to somehow be downloaded into the body of a Cylon prototype, prompting another round of Moore and Eick's favorite question: what does it mean to be human?

That question lingers over the action, which is comprised of numerous subplots. While the pilot offers a strong and visceral beginning to Caprica, the second and third episodes don't quite hold up as well. The subsequent two episodes deal with not just the fallout from Graystone and Adama's decision to pursue this line of scientific inquiry, the machinations of secret monotheist Sister Clarice Willow (Polly Walker), the quest for answers set about by Zoe's best friend Lacy (Magda Apanowicz), and the investigation into the cause and culprits behind the train bombing, but also the media reaction (embodied rather brilliantly by Patton Oswalt's Baxter Sarno), the military-industrial complex, robots, virtual spaces, legal proceedings, and bribes. Whew. There are a lot of plates to spin and not everything quite manages to remain up in the air.

The second episode in particular feels all over the place and lacks a clear-cut throughline that a second installment really needs to keep the audience invested. A subplot about the young William Adama and Joseph's mobster brother Sam (Sasha Roiz) feel extremely leaden, though I do welcome these episode's increased focus on Walker's Sister Clarice, as the audience gets the chance to follow her home and learn more about her complex backstory. Additionally, Paula Malcomson's Amanda has more to do in the following two episodes than she did in the pilot (one of her main storylines from the pilot episode was scrapped) and she feels more integral to the overarching story. (It's worth noting that Malcolmson is also utterly fantastic here, giving Amanda a palpable sense of loss and confusion.)

However, I'm still not sold on Torresani as Zoe. Rather than imbue Zoe as powerful, mysterious, and compelling, she renders Zoe as just another bratty teen. While that could be the point (Zoe isn't an unknowable mystical trinity but the digital soul of a teenage girl), Torresani isn't a particularly strong actor either; her performance in the train explosion scene in painful and not in a good way. Fortunately, she's usually on screen with Apanowicz, whose Lacy is becoming more and more compelling.

While there are a few growing pains that need to be dealt with, there is a hell of a lot of potential within Caprica and even if these first few episodes fall short of the quality of Battlestar Galactica standards, I have every hope that these diverse storylines will knit together into a compelling and imaginative series about humanity, artificial intelligence, spirituality, and the nature of reality. It's definitely worth checking out.



Caprica launches tonight with a two-hour series opener at 9 pm ET/PT on Syfy.

Talk Back: ABC's "The Deep End"

The ratings are in and ABC's new legal drama The Deep End tanked in the ratings.

But, given the lackluster results, I am curious to know which of you out there watched the first episode of The Deep End. Just what did you thought of the series? (You can read my review of the original pilot episode, written last summer, here.)

Did you find it engaging? Self-indulgent? Ridiculous? Did the presence of Matt Long, Mehcad Brooks, or Tina Majorino make up for one-dimensional characters and an effort to capitalize on the soapiness of Grey's?

And is there any way you would ever tune in again?

Talk back here.

Into the Arena: A Few Quick Thoughts on Starz's "Spartacus"

Some of you have asked what I thought about Starz's blood- and sex-laden drama series Spartacus. After watching the first four episodes that were sent out for review, my thoughts on the series are just as muddled as they were when I first heard about the project.

Created by Steven DeKnight, Spartacus recounts the exploits of a Thracian warrior (Andy Whitfield) betrayed by the Romans, torn away from his wife, and forced to compete as a gladiator in a series of vicious battles for the amusement of the public. His only desire: to train as hard as possible in the ludus (gladiator school) in order to win, so that that he can finally be reunited with his wife, who has been sold into slavery. (He'll eventually launch a slave rebellion against the Romans.)

And when I say vicious battles, I mean vicious. The bloody and gruesome action is set against a series of a computer-rendered backdrops that recall 300, without that production's gargantuan budget. Which basically means a never-ending parade of slow-motion, hacked body parts, and gratuitous curtains of blood. The visual style is intriguing for about five minutes or so but then it quickly becomes repetitive. (Seriously, there's only so many times you can see that curtain of blood appear behind Sparactus without beginning to yawn.)

Likewise, this being on pay cable means pushing the envelope as far as it will go in terms of both violence and sexual content... but rather than render Spartacus as daring or provocative, it seems there merely to draw attention away from the project's numerous flaws.

I've been negative about pilots before but Spartacus' first episode is just downright awful... as in laughably bad. While the plight of Spartacus is meant to be a gripping and horrific journey, it was impossible not to laugh out loud at the wooden acting (some of it quite terrifyingly bad), gratuitous nudity (both male and female), and absurd dialogue.

I also felt extremely sorry for the talented John Hannah and Lucy Lawless to find themselves in this muck; they both deserve much, much better and their presence in the pilot seemed like mere afterthoughts.

Subsequent episodes do focus more on their characters but they're less richly plotted than any of the colorful cast on HBO's similarly period drama Rome. There's some improvement in the overall quality of the production but it felt not only extremely repetitive and I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters, not the leather loincloth-wearing gladiators nor the conniving members of Capua's ruling class. One can't help but feel that Polly Walker's Atia would have them all beheaded or poisoned within a day.

The Rome comparison will continue to crop up over the course of the first season. (The series has already been renewed for a second season.) While Rome also offered an ancient world drama that was drenched with sweat, blood, and sex, it did with an intelligence and wit, creating a period soap opera enacted against the inevitability of this society's downfall. Here, there's an intentional silliness to the action; Spartacus takes itself way more seriously than it should; rather than revel in the cheesiness of its sword-and-sandals spectacle and perhaps become subversive, its very seriousness draws more attention to the qualities the series is lacking.

It's clear that Starz hopes to take on HBO and Showtime in the original series arena but Spartacus won't make either of the pay cable giants shake in their sandals, unless it steps up its intelligence quotient and realizes that slickly-shot slo-mo sword fights are cool but they can't make up for a lack of substance.



Spartacus launches tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on Starz.

Playing Cupid: An Advance Review of "Emma" on PBS' "Masterpiece Classic"

"Better to be without sense than misapply it as you do." - Mr. Knightley

Jane Austen's novel "Emma" remains an enduring masterpiece of biting wit, scathing satire, and Regency society-trapped-in-amber since its publication in 1815. Even nearly 200 years later, there's still quite a bit of relevance and humor to be found in its pages and the novel's matchmaking heroine Emma Woodhouse--young, spoiled, and naive--remains a favorite for readers of all ages.

Douglas McGrath's 1996 Emma, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Toni Collette, Alan Cumming, and Ewan McGregor, remains a favorite of mine when thinking of Austen adaptations. Daringly breaking away from the stylistic constraints of 19th century English novels, McGrath infused this story with modern flourishes, creating something timeless in and of itself. Likewise, the 1995 feature film Clueless transplanted Emma Woodhouse to mid-90s Beverly Hills, transforming the Austen heroine into the vapid Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), a matchmaking naif addicted to her cell phone, the mall, and the cheeky banter she shared with her own Mr. Knightley, Josh (Paul Rudd).

While it's difficult to place those utterly fantastic adaptations out of your head when considering "Emma," there's something to be said also for authenticity and straightforwardness. Which brings us to the most recent "Emma" adaptation, Masterpiece Classic's Emma adaptation (it aired on BBC One last year), written by Sandy Welch and directed by Jim O'Hanlon. It might not feature cell phones, smash cuts, or breakneck pacing, but this Emma is a pleasurable if slightly imperfect adaptation.

Airing as four installments in the UK, Emma will air over two weeks here in the States and the format allows screenwriter Welch to give the deftly comic plot time to breathe without rushing through the action. There's a somewhat painful/nostalgic opening that my wife and I dubbed "Emma Babies," which features our main characters in childhood scenes of heartbreak and loss, displaying a seriousness that's at odds with the comedy to come. While I didn't mind the sequence, I did find the use of narration slightly intrusive at times.

In this version, Romola Garai (Atonement) is Emma Woodhouse, the sweetly naive and well-off young woman whose penchant for matchmaking has thrown the little social circle of Highbury into chaos. While Garai captures the quick wit of Emma, her performance at times errs a little too much on the bratty side. There's definitely fire behind her banter with neighbor (and brother-in-law) Mr. Knightley (Eli Stone's Johnny Lee Miller) but I wanted her to be a bit more brazen and mentally acute. Garai is perfectly fine but I couldn't help shake the feeling that she lacks a certain je ne sais quoi that makes Austen's Emma such a pleasantly flawed character. Likewise, Miller's Knightley is perfectly serviceable but his performance doesn't quite capture the unexpected heat that develops between him and Emma.

Still, the plot itself unfolds in a leisurely and faithful manner, allowing the diverse cast to each get their moment in the sun as Austen targets the class constraints of Regency England with a precise eye. The colorful cast of characters assembled here includes Michael Gambon, Tamsin Greig, Laura Pyper, Jodhi May, Louise Dylan, Christina Cole, Blake Ritson, and Rupert Evans.

As always Emma's plot is straightforward: Emma yearns to create happiness for those around her but her mischief backfires several times over when she takes the even more naive Harriet Smith (Dylan) under her wing and sets about to match her with the village's dishy vicar (Ritson). And while Emma falls for the dashing Frank Churchill (Evans)--only to have her hopes dashed by a surprising twist--she slowly comes to learn that her truest match is the person who has goaded her into becoming the best possible version of herself.

While this Emma might not be as flashy or modern as its adaptation predecessors, there's still pleasure to be had in its comic grip and it offers perhaps the best way to wind down a weekend of modern-day excess. Or the continual mating rituals of human life, today still fraught with as much peril as they were in Austen's day.



Emma begins Sunday night at 9 pm on PBS' Masterpiece Classic. Check your local listings for details.