Thanks to Mo Ryan at the Trib for filling in some of the blanks.
January 10th SyFy airs Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. I'm assuming the partial nudity will be edited for TV, so if that's important to you, I'd rent it.
Archer premieres January 14th on FX. They're airing the episode they sneaked several months ago right after the first episode. Try to catch them both. The sneak preview episode was fantastic.
Another premiere for SyFy has Caprica starting on January 22nd. I pretty much hated the pilot that's been on DVD for some time now. I'm torn about watching this. I feel more obligated than anything.
Other programming notes:
Fringe will be back in January and one episode in February and then take a break until April.
Breaking Bad is scheduled to come back in March but no date has been officially announced. This gives you time to catch up with the first two seasons on DVD before the third season starts.
One of my favorite shows in recent years, the original UK Life on Mars, is going to start airing on KTEH here in the Bay Area this Friday. If you haven't seen it yet, then I urge you to set your DVRs and watch. It was two seasons of eight episodes, so 16 total. Not a huge commitment, but worth every minute.
]]>Source: Ausiello at EW
Heroes (if anyone is still watching): January 4.
Dollhouse is back for its final few episodes on January 8.
Chuck premieres for its season on January 10 and then moves back to Mondays on January 11.
Also on January 11: House, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory and Castle.
CSI: NY and Leverage come back January 13.
CSI, 30 Rock, and Fringe return January 14.
Law & Order comes back January 15.
24 opens its two-night four-hour premiere on January 17. I believe it also settles on Monday. Traffic Jam!
White Collar returns on USA on January 19.
Lord help me, Smallville comes back on January 22.
As previously mentioned, Lost returns on February 2.
Pretty much everyone is avoiding February because of the juggernaut that is the Olympics on NBC. The Olypmics run from Feb 12-28.
FlashForward comes back March 4.
V returns March 30.
Glee is back April 13.
There are two new shows this winter, Human Target (Jan 17) and Parenthood (March 1), that look intriguing. More on them as time approaches.
Also a few special events of note. The Golden Globes are on January 17. The Screen Actors Guild Awards are on January 23. Dollhouse ends on January 22.
I probably said the same thing last year, but isn't that what resolutions are for? There's a massive news post in the offing soon, but first I wanted to do a few mini reviews for some things I've seen in the last month or so.
Let's start with the good. Avatar. I really wanted to hate this. Jar Jar Smurfs brought to us by the guy who did Titanic? Pass. Ever since I missed the Comic Con panel, I'd done a pretty good job of avoiding anything and everything about this movie. I had only the slightest idea of the plot, such as it was. I had also still not seen a movie in 3D IMAX, so I figured, why not? Going in I was worried that the 3D would either give me a massive headache or make me ill, but luckily neither of those things happened. I found the 3D to be mostly inoffensive with the shots that were all about particulate matter in 3D being annoying. I'm intrigued to check this one out on Blu-Ray and non-3D and see what it feels like then. I really just don't have a grasp of whether this 3D stuff is really worth the effort. Regardless of the 3D, Avatar was astonishing. A true achievement in film making. The plot is predicable and thin and I didn't care at all. I was along for the ride and it was thrilling. C says run don't walk to check this out in the theater.
Unfortunately for it, the week after I saw Avatar I got GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra from Netflix on Blu-Ray. I bet I could have at least enjoyed the effects if I hadn't just seen Avatar. As it was, it was incredibly stupid and couldn't really be rescued by flash effects and big explosions. Or Christopher Eccleston, come to think of it. I though seeing him on film would redeem it a little, but nope. His accent was super distracting, not lovely as I would have hoped. C says pass on this one.
And then there's Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. This was really disappointing. It was nice to see some scenes and moments from a different perspective, but this didn't really work for me. It was supposed to be from the Cylons' point of view, but what it really ended up feeling like was BSG: Deleted Scenes (with boobies!). It'll be amusing to the completist, but is in no way necessary to enjoy your BSG experience. C says meh. Take it or leave it.
I have also completed a couple weeks of intensive David Tennant watching. Since Thanksgiving he's been on British TV or radio more than 70 times. The main highlights were his final episodes as the tenth Doctor, which I'm still trying to process and won't bore you with here, and the film of his Hamlet from the Royal Shakespeare Company. It is astonishing and I will remind you all to watch it when PBS airs it in April.
I know I owe you a proper update and whatnot, but this made me think of Rob and I had to share it.
Lost will return on February 2nd at 9:00pm. That's a Tuesday, folks. Plan accordingly.
Also announced today: Chuck returns January 10th, Leverage returns January 13th.
Oh, and some talk show from Chicago is going dark in September 2011.
The big news of the week is that Dollhouse is officially canceled. Fox is planning on airing the 13 episodes they ordered, but there will be no more. Honestly, I'm kind of relieved. It was an interesting idea for a show, and might have been successful with a better lead actress. Eliza Dushku is such a blind spot of Joss it's not even funny. In good Joss news, he's set to direct an episode of Glee in the near future.
The list of other shows heading to the scrapheap of TV history include Eastwick, Hank, Southland, Trauma. Poor Southland didn't even get a chance to air. NBC exiled it to Friday night and then canceled it the week it was supposed to premiere. The real problem there is that Southland is a 10:00 show. NBC no longer has any 10:00 slots because they're taken by The Jay Leno Show. Southland did get lucky, though. TNT has decided to pick up the show. They may not produce any more episodes, but they did buy the rights to at least broadcast the ones already in the can. On the other hand, ABC has ordered five more episodes of a show I'm not watching, The Forgotten.
I have also finally officially broken up with Heroes. It was the third thing on the Tivo at 8:00 and when House went on vacation for the baseball playoffs, I realized I really didn't want to watch it. So it's gone. Off the Tivo and off my Hulu list. Bye-bye Heroes.
AMC's remake miniseries of The Prisoner starts Sunday. Getting mixed reviews. The general consensus seems to be that Ian McKellan is good, the rest is meh. Still going to record and watch.
I also started watching V. I've only seen the first one so far, but it's promising. It's moving way faster than the original. ABC is only showing the first four episodes this fall. It's going to take a big break and then return sometime next year. Even if it's wildly successful this fall, it's going to suffer from the long break. The other problem is, V has already replaced its showrunner and has halted production and gone through the dreaded "retooling." So we'll see how it does when it returns.
There's a new show that I've been watching on USA called White Collar. I think I've finally gotten to the point where I'd recommend it. The fourth episode just aired, and the first ones are probably still up on on the interwebs somewhere.
I'd like to take this moment to point out that the word that gives me the dyslexic trouble to type is "episode." It takes me two or three tries every time to get it to come out right, and it's a word I type a lot. We now return you to your regularly scheduled vaguely newsish post.
The Who is going to play halftime at the Super Bowl. CBS has not yet announced the show that will follow the game.
There are rumblings that ABC is in talks to bring back Charlie's Angels.
In case you missed it, Sesame Street turned 40. Everyone who knows the Spanish words for open and close say a little thank you.
The Addams Family is headed for Broadway in the form of a musical.
If you didn't see this season of Mad Men, well, it's over, but you should check it out as soon as you can one way or another. Holy crap, what a good show.
I'm working on this tonight while watching the three night CSI crossover fiesta. I stopped watching CSI:Miami ages ago. It's even more orange than I recall.
CBS has picked up the rights to Shit My Dad Says, the first show inspired by Twitter. If you haven't seen the Twitter feed, go check it out. It's pretty funny.
I'm pretty sure I mentioned a while back that there was a live action/CGI Yogi Bear movie. Word now is that Dan Ackroyd will be the voice of Yogi and Justin Timeberlake takes on Boo Boo.
Oprah announced that she is ending the run of of syndicated show in 2011. It sounds like she's moving the show to her OWN network. That's Oprah Broadcast Network to us mortals.
Bon Jovi is appearing on the season premiere of Inside the Actors Studio. Not the singer/actor. The band. No joke.
SyFy is doing a reimagining of Alice in Wonderland called Alice. It premieres December 6th.
Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin will co-host the Oscars, but that info might be trumped by the news that Ricky Gervais is hosting The Golden Globes.
There exists a Weezer Snuggie. I think I want one.
Rumor patrol: Several networks are negotiating with Apple for a $30/month subscription service. In related news, Hulu announced they are planning on starting to charge for access to content.
Comcast is set to buy NBC Universal away from GE as soon as this week. I think that will work out great, because Comcast has already proven itself a responsible network owner with the Versus/DirecTV clusterfuck. It actually might be perfect. I mean, there's nothing worth watching on NBC anyway, so if they take it away from me because I have DirecTV, then I won't actually be missing anything, right? Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Poor NBC.
In today's unnecessary British remake news, SyFy has announced they're making an American version of a show that so far has only had a six-episode first season, Being Human. Now it took me a couple weeks to warm to Being Human, but in the end, I really loved it. They're producing the second season now, and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not at all looking forward to an American version.
NBC increased the season order of Chuck from 13 episodes to 19, and the rumors are increasing that the show will return earlier than March as promised. All good news. I think NBC really is sucking wind this fall and they even need help from a nearly canceled show.
Here's an interesting idea, CBS has started a service called Eye Alerts that will let you know when their sports coverage goes long, thus making their primetime shows start late on the east coast. It won't adjust your DVR for you, but at least you'll know.
Benjamin Bratt is going to reprise his role of Detective Rey Curtis on an episode of Law & Order this season. I'm really enjoying this current season/cast/incarnation of L&O. If you haven't been watching, and were a fan in the past, check it out.
Katee Sackhoff (that's Starbuck to you an me) is going to appear on an episode of The Big Bang Theory this month.
Blackadder and Fawlty Towers both got a remaster and re-release treatment recently. If you've never seen either, now's the time.
IFC has picked up the off-network rights to Arrested Development.
Fox has picked up a new reality show from the producer of Survivor, Mark Burnett, called Our Little Genius. A.K.A. exploit your gifted kid for money.
BBC America is running a Doctor Who marathon the week before Waters of Mars premieres and a Top Gear north pole special in December.
Punkin Chunkin, the show about hurling pumpkins returns to the Science channel Thanksgiving day.
Alright. That's about all I've got for today. More soon.
Tomorrow (November 15th for those of you not playing along in real time), the next Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars airs at 7:00pm GMT. It will air on BBC America on December 19th. It will air at my house sometime between those dates.
These specials are the beginning of the end for David Tennant's tenth Doctor, and he's been making the rounds in a fairly mad fashion this week. He hosted three days of a breakfast radio show, appeared on a couple different TV talk shows and just about anywhere else he could get his mug. It's been a bounty for us nutty fans. The most funny/bizarre thing that happened is that on his breakfast show run, he donated his old bed for auction to the Children in Need charity. Personally, I think the fix was in from the beginning, because the sponsor of the show ended up "buying" the bed, but we did get some funny/scary interactions with crazy fans because of it.
David Tennant finished his Doctor Who filming in May, and has been a busy boy since then. He's got one movie coming out this week, Glorious 39, a British period piece about a family on the eve of World War II. He's got another movie coming out in December, St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold. This one sounds about as far in tone from Glorious 39 as possible. Considering it starts Rupert Everett in drag, well, you decide.
But the biggest David Tennant news is that he's landed a pilot, Rex is Not Your Lawyer, for NBC. It's unclear if it's for the production company or the network itself, but still, these days NBC is a fate worse than Fox. The other thing that sounds frightening about it is that they're going to make him use an American accent. This sounds like an Incredibly Bad Idea to me. I guess if he's supposed to be an American lawyer, it makes some sense, but it seems such a shame. I've said it before, if you're going to hire a non-American actor, let him or her use their real accent. Either way it might not turn in to anything, but it's nice to see him getting some notice in the states.
In other BBC TV news, the new season of Top Gear starts tomorrow as well. The more I watch that show the more I adore it. Can't wait!