Skip to main content

Drive By: Judy Greer Lands Lead in HBO's "Suburban Shootout"

Holy Judy Greer, Batman!

The former Miss/Guided star has been cast in HBO's comedy pilot Suburban Shootout, the US adaptation of the darkly comic UK series about warring gangs of, um, homicidal suburban housewives in a seemingly idyllic and picturesque town.

In a fantastic twist of fate, Greer has been cast as the lead in Suburban Shootout, where she will play the wife of a police chief who moves from urban sprawl for quieter pastures, only to learn that the 'burbs are just as every bit dangerous as the city.

The script, from writer Michelle Ashford and executive producer/director Barry Sonnenfeld, was absolutely fantastic and pitch perfect (they did have amazing underlying material to work with, after all) and I am glad that rather than cast some faceless ingenue for the lead, they went with the quirky and adorable Greer, who will bring a distinct edge to the role.

Casting on the pilot for Suburban Shootout has become a hotbed for solid female actors, with Kelly Preston, Kerri Kenney, and Rachael Harris already booked.

I haven't been so happy about a Judy Greer casting since she first lit up the screen as disturbed glasses-on-hair-up executive assistant Kitty Sanchez on the still-much-missed Arrested Development. I'm extremely eager to see how HBO will translate the comedy format of Shootout to the US. Fingers crossed that it's more in line with The Office and less with Coupling...

Stay tuned.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Price is Right Million Dollar Spectacular (CBS); Law & Order (NBC); Farmer Wants a Wife (CW); Lost (ABC; 8-10 pm); American Idol (FOX; 8-10 pm)

9 pm:
Criminal Minds (CBS); Law & Order (NBC); Farmer Wants a Wife (CW)

10 pm: CSI: New York (CBS); Law & Order (NBC); Boston Legal (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

8-10 pm: Lost.

Missed the last two episodes of Lost or just itching to watch them again? You're in luck as ABC does us a solid and reairs both "Cabin Fever" and "Something Nice Back Home." Now if only they were airing the fourth season finale this week instead of next week. I'm going insane from anticipation.

9 pm: MI-5 on BBC America.

If you missed MI-5 (aka Spooks) when it aired on A&E a few years back, you can catch it tonight on BBC America. On tonight's installment ("The Special"), the gripping fourth season opener, the team rushes from Danny's funeral after a terrorist detonates a bomb in a market and threatens to explode more if their demands are not met.

10 pm: Top Chef on Bravo.

On tonight's episode ("Restaurant Wars"), the chefs are forced to work on the line at a diner during the breakfast rush; Jose Andres stops by to put the chefs to the test; the contestants must open and run competing restaurants in one of the all-time favorite Top Chef elimination challenges.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Cool! I was not a fan of Miss/Guided and am happy to see that the lovely Judy Greer's talents will (hopefully) be put to better use.
eAi said…
The original British version never quite worked for me. It's seemed too overplayed, or something. Either way, it's entirely possible the US version will be better - the concept I thought was great, just the way it was executed seemed off...

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