[Televisionary]

Sorry, Dirt fans, it's do or die time and it looks like it's more of the latter and less of the former. According to TV Guide , cabler FX has axed soapy tabloid drama Dirt starring Courteney Cox Arquette. "It just got canceled," Cox Arquette told TV Guide when asked about the possibility of a third season renewal for the series, which starred Cox Arquette, Ian Hart, Josh Stewart, and Alex Breckenridge. The news is hardly shocking. After okay numbers the first season, Dirt was renewed for a sophomore season... which was itself cut short (from thirteen segments to just seven) in light of the writers strike. (Ratings for the truncated second season of Dirt , which moved to Sunday evenings, weren't anything to write home about; Season Two launched with 1.6 million viewers but, by the season finale, those numbers had dwindled to 1.06 million.) FX went to great pains to say that the episodic count reduction would in no way influence the network when looking at ABC S...

FX has scaled back the episode orders for two sophomore dramas set to launch in the next few months. Both Dirt and The Riches , whose production was impacted by the writers strike, have had the episodic order for their second seasons reduced to seven episodes apiece , following FX's decision not to produce any more installments of their series after the strike has ended. Both productions ran out of scripts during December and will have to wrap their sophomore seasons without any resolution to their current storylines. The basis for FX's decision to cut back their Season Two orders is said to be pure economics and will not impact either series' shot at getting a third season order. But let's be realistic here. Neither series was a smash hit in the ratings their freshman year (though I do love The Riches and miss it terribly), so the creators of both series were left with quite a lot to prove to the network suits and the critics. Dirt 's second season is scheduled t...

In a season plagued by shortened seasons of nearly every scripted series, networks have had to make tough choices about whether to press ahead with condensed installments of returning series or wait until after the strike ends to try and complete them. So it's no surprise that FX has pulled the trigger on Season Two of its tabloid magazine drama Dirt , starring Courteney Cox as icy editrix Lucy Spiller, despite having only filmed half of the season. While 13 episodes of Dirt had been ordered by the cabler for its sophomore season, only seven were completed before the start of the writers strike in November. FX will launch Season Two of Dirt on Sunday, March 2nd at 10 pm, hoping to use the drama to launch a Sunday night lineup. In addition to Cox, Ian Hart, Alexandra Breckenridge, and Josh Stewart will return for the second season as series regulars; Laura Allen, Rick Fox, and Jeffrey Nordling will pop up either as recurring or guest actors. Also on tap for FX: the final season of...

Oscar Wilde once said, “Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.” While Wilde may have been speaking of that eternal dirt nap we're all headed for, he may as well been speaking of dirt more metaphorical, of gossip, tabloid, and le grand scandale . And he might just have been talking about FX's new series Dirt , starring and produced by Courteney Cox Arquette, working overtime to erase Friends ' Monica from our collective memory. In Dirt , Cox Arquette plays tabloid editor Lucy Spiller, an uptight control freak who oversees editorial for two publications: supermarket tab Dirt and the more up-market Now magazine. Lucy is dedicated body and soul to her job. We know this (A) because she has no social life whatsoever and lives, sleeps, and dreams her job (not to mention pictures the people around her as a series of cover shots) and (B) because she winds up time and time again in her luxurious bed surrounded by magazine mock ups, unable to escape her life even for a...

AMC to Get "Mad" Cabler AMC has greenlit its first original one-hour drama, Mad Men , about the professional and personal lives of Madison Avenue advertising execs in the early 1960s, ordering 13 episodes from executive producer/writer Matthew Weiner (The Sopranos) and studio Lionsgate ( Weeds ). According to an article in Variety , production begins in April in New York City. Series will star Jon Hamm ( We Were Soldiers ), January Jones ( American Wedding ), Elisabeth Moss ( The West Wing ), Vincent Kartheiser ( Angel ), Christina Hendricks ( Kevin Hill ), and John Slattery ( K Street ). " Mad Men centers on thirty-something Don Draper, creative director for the Sterling Cooper ad agency, which hawks everything from cigarettes to political candidates. Pilot episode centers on Don's fight to keep a major tobacco account from leaving the agency while juggling his increasingly complicated romantic life." Weiner wrote the script when he was on staff on the CBS s...