Skip to main content

CBS Gets Its Own "Fugly" Betty, "Lovespring" Runs Dry for Lifetime

My Name is... Fugly?

Well, maybe not. But CBS has just ordered a pilot of an old script called Fugly from Greg Garcia, creator of NBC's My Name is Earl. Said project was originally written by Garcia for Fox way back in the 2004-05 season as a potential star vehicle for Pamela Anderson (who had a talent deal at Fox during that time and ended up on comedy series Stacked instead).

The comedy will center on three rather ugly sisters in North Carolina who decide to pool their inheritance money to purchase an extreme makeover for one of the sisters (I assume that originally this would have been Pam Anderson's role). Afterwards, they move to Los Angeles with stars in their eyes, hoping to start a new life (and earn back that cash) from the beautiful sister's new looks.

Garcia will exec produce Fugly's pilot in March, after the second season of My Name is Earl wraps production, in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Unlike Earl, Fugly will be a multi-camera comedy, with some single-cam elements, rather like CBS' How I Met Your Mother (which, coincidentally is another 20th show on CBS).

In other news, Lifetime has ordered 13 episodes of drama Army Wives, starring Kim Delaney and Catherine Bell, about women living in a military base, with an eye towards a March premiere date.

Cabler also has pilots State of Mind (starring Lili Taylor and Lolita Davidovitch), Marisa Coughlin-led drama Side Order of Life, and legal drama Conspiracy under consideration for next year.

What's not under consideration at Lifetime are freshman series Lovespring International and Angela's Eyes, which the cable network has opted to not renew for second seasons. Both series debuted this summer.

According to Lifetime topper Susanne Daniels, the decision was motivated by the fact that Lovespring was difficult to promote as a cable on comedy (airing at 11 pm on Mondays with no series lead-in probably didn't help) and that Angela's Eyes would have required retooling.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Oh no! No more Lovespring! I will miss this quirky little show. It wasn't "Arrested Development" but it always proved to be entertaining.

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj