[Televisionary]

With the return of Justified, Downton Abbey , and Shameless , and the launch of Touch, Luck , and others, I take a look at what’s coming to your TV this winter over at The Daily Beast, in my latest feature, "What to Watch on TV This Winter." (To get right to my thoughts on the 18 shows included and bypass the intro, you can click here .) January brings some fresh opportunities for the broadcast and cable networks to try and lure you back with new and returning programming. Among the highlights: costume drama fiends will be lined up for the Jan. 8 return of British drama Downton Abbey; FX’s Justified returns for a third season of Kentucky shootouts on Jan. 17; HBO’s cult comedy Eastbound and Down returns on Feb. 19; auteurs David Milch and Michael Mann unite for HBO’s Luck, launching Jan. 29; and Kiefer Sutherland returns to television with Fox’s Touch, which will get a preview broadcast on Jan. 25. (It officially premieres on March 19.) Absolutely Fabulous, the outrageou

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Former Hex star Christina Cole has been cast as the lead in FOX's untitled Ian Biederman drama, where she will play a female surgeon who suffers from adult-onset schizophrenia; Cole Hauser ( K-Ville ) will star in CBS drama pilot Washington Field , where he will play the squad's supervisor; Michael Nouri ( Damages ) has been cast in ABC drama pilot Empire State, where he'll play the wealthy father of a girl involved in a star-crossed romance with a blue-collar worker; and Anthony Carrigan, Michelle Borth, Bob Stephenson, and Rochelle Aytes have been cast in ABC's untitled Jerry Bruckheimer drama pilot (formerly known as The Unknown ). ( Hollywood Reporter ) NBC has ordered reality/comedy hybrid series The Marriage Ref , from executive producers Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen Rakieten, in which celebrities offer advice to real-life couples battling "classic marital disputes." So far there is no launch date for t

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. FOX has handed out a pilot order to a US remake of BBC comedy series Absolutely Fabulous , which follows the boozy exploits of PR magnate Edina Monsoon, her magazine editrix best friend Patsy, and Edina's uptight daughter Saffy. US version will be set in LA and the script written by Christine Zander ( Less Than Perfect ), who will executive produce with Jennifer Saunders, Ian Moffit, Mitch Hurwitz, Eric Tannenbaum, and Kim Tannenbaum. Project will be produced by Sony Pictures Television, Tantamount, and BBC Worldwide Americas. ( Variety ) Battlestar Galactica 's Jane Espenson will serve as an executive producer on BSG prequel series Caprica and will eventually become the showrunner on the series, slated to air on Sci Fi in 2010. Espenson, whom many fans will know from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls , will take over the reins of Caprica 's writers' room from co-creator Ron Moore later this year. Productio

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. I'm still recovering from the, er, excesses of the past holiday week and still have a stack of screeners to get through before the New Year. Paging GOB Bluth: Will Arnett is ready to reunite with his Arrested Development co-stars for the big screen debut of the Bluth clan as Ron Howard and Mitch Hurwitz rally the troops. "It’ll be fun to get back together with everybody and work on it,” says Arnett. “It’s been so long now, we almost have to do it. It’s like we have to finish the joke.” Arnett meanwhile offers his trademark comedic spin on the Arrested film in an amusing jab at the state of the economy. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Hollywood Insider ) Dexter 's Lauren Velez will guest star in a multiple-episode story arc on ABC's Ugly Betty this season; she'll play Elena, a nurse who becomes entangled in the lives of the Suarez clan. POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING: Details are sketchy but there is word that she is in

Feeling nostalgic for a time when Lorelai and Luke sparred over a morning cup of coffee, Felicity Porter had not yet cut her trademark locks, or Buffy was still an only child, a mini-skirted naif whose destiny was thrust onto her? Such nostalgia has gotten a little easier with the news that Warner Bros is relaunching The WB, home to such series as Gilmore Girls, Felicity , and Buffy the Vampire Slayer ... not as a linear television network, but as a web site. The ad-supported site, which has wb.com as its working title, will serve as an online home for all Warners-produced WB series that ran on the network during its brief lifespan from 1995 to 2006, including Gilmore Girls, Everwood , and What I Like About You . (It's still, sadly, unclear whether that will eventually include non-Warners produced titles like the aforementioned Buffy or Felicity , but fingers crossed.) It will also include original short-form series, all targeted at the WB's signature demographic of women 12-3

Sure, there are more than a few television mothers who are forces for good: paragons of maternal instincts, positive role-models whose children are well-behaved and look up to them or misunderstood martyrs who are just plain unappreciated. But let's be honest: the TV mothers that are the most memorable tend to play their roles in a no-wire-hangers Joan Crawford kind of way. These moms, sometimes as eeevil as can be, are usually a hell of a lot more fun than their Pollyanna counterparts. So who made my list of TV's most memorable meanie moms? Let's take a look. Name: Julie Cooper ( The O.C. ) Actress: Melinda Clarke Likes: Power, money, powerful men with money, decorating large mansions, blackmail, her daughter's cast-off boyfriends, manipulating everyone around her, Newport Living . Dislikes: Ryan Atwood, downsizing, no-fault divorces, getting jilted, being blackmailed, Chino. Acts of Treachery and Wanton Evil: Sleeping with daughter Marisa's high school sweetheart

Ah, recasting. Tis the season, apparently. Did you see the massive turnover at Boston Legal ? You could have enough confetti for a parade from all the pink slips being handed out there alone. Today, however, good news for the severely Gilmore -deprived among the readers, who can finally put aside their hatred at the CW for taking away their weekly Luke fix. Scott Patterson, who played coffee shop proprietor/on-again-off-again love interest for the elder Gilmore girl for seven seasons of Gilmore Girls , has signed on to star in the CW's new fall comedy, Aliens in America . Aliens in America follows the relationship and cultural misunderstandings between a 16-year-old malcontent in Wisconsin and his Christian family's Muslim exchange student. Patterson will play the family's spendthrift father. He replaces Patrick Breen, who originated the role in the pilot. There, Gilmore fans. Are you happy now? What's On Tonight 8 pm: The New Adventures of Old Christine /The New

Gilmore Girls has been cancelled... officially, that is. Longtime readers of this site know that I reported the cancellation weeks ago , based on information passed along to me from an insider who worked on the production. Fast forward to today. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the May 15th finale planned for Gilmore Girls will in fact be the series' last episode , which will wrap its run after seven seasons. As a former fan of the series, I can say that it's a relief that the series, which long outstayed its welcome in the face of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino's departure (and a tense, creatively weak Season Six) as well as the fantastically awful tenure of David Rosenthal during the series' weak Season Seven. As for those rumors in recent weeks that the CW and Warner Bros Television had been in discussions about a truncated 13-episode Season Eight Run? The deal didn't pan out in the end (no surprise) and the show will now end at the end of the month. T

Carole King once said, "Where you lead, I will follow," but I think we've reached the end of the road with those two girls called Gilmore. According to a source inside the production, there will not be an eighth season of Gilmore Girls , which will wrap up its run this May. While there have been rumors of a possible eleventh hour contract renegotiation with stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel (who, according to reports, have only decided to sign their contracts if the other does as well), purported (and disastrous) Season Eight storyline plans , and petitions to save the show, it seems that it's not in the stars (hollow or otherwise) for any future seasons of Gilmore Girls . According to my source, staffers on the Warner Bros. Television series have been told that the series will not be going forward and have begun to look for other employment next season. The same holds for the actors: Melissa McCarthy, who plays chef Sookie, recently signed on to co-star opposite

Hmmm, apparently there's something in the air. Following my post yesterday about why I think Lauren Graham would be perfect for Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino's new comedy pilot, The Return of Jezebel James , trouble seems to be brewing on the Stars Hollow set of Gilmore Girls . According to a report by TV Guide 's Michael Ausiello, the fate of the series lays in Alexis Bledel's pretty little hands and the younger Gilmore girl doesn't want to return for an eighth season on the CW dramedy. However, Ausiello claims that the network has a Plan B. (Now beware, ladies and gentlemen, purported and probable SPOILERS lurk ahead, so be forewarned.) Should Bledel not commit to Season Eight, the CW will reportedly look to refocus the series on "Lorelai, Luke and their new baby, with the occasional sweeps-month guest appearance by Rory." Ouch. That's a truly horrifically bad idea, especially as my fear is that Lorelai and Luke will conceive a femal

I might be sounding like a bit of a broken record at the moment regarding Amy Sherman-Palladino's new comedy pilot The Return of Jezebel James , but I just can't get Lauren Graham out of my head. Mainly because Graham would just be so insanely perfect for the lead role of Sarah Thompkins in ASP's latest project and I'd love to see Graham and Sherman-Palladino reunite on a different project, one that didn't involve a certain formerly beloved mother-daughter relationship going ever so unsubtly off the rails in recent years. Indispensable industry resource TV Tracker today released the first installment of their patented Track Vision (a boon during pilot season for overworked and overwrought buyers like yours truly) and listed Gilmore Girls as an "expected cancellation." Rumors have been swirling for months about the fate of this WB/CW dramedy staple, but after seven seasons and increasingly mounting production costs, it seems like this May will be the end

Because I've gotten so many emails asking me if I knew about this latest bit of pilot casting news, I figure I might as well share it with the rest of you out there. Scott Cohen has signed on to star in Amy Sherman-Palladino's comedy pilot The Return of Jezebel James for FOX. For those of us that follow such events, it's a blessed marriage and the reunion of two TV greats. Scott Cohen, of course, memorably played Lorelai's doomed lover and almost-husband Max Medina on Gilmore Girls . The two met at Rory's private school Chilton where Max was a tweed-wearing teacher and he and Lorelai nearly tied the knot (he proposed with 1000 daffodils in the days when there was an Independence Inn on the show), but she jilted him and instead took a road trip to Harvard with Rory. Ringing a bell? As previously reported, Amy Sherman-Palladino's comedy The Return of Jezebel James has been ordered to pilot ; it's about two estranged sisters who reunite when the elder sister

While there are a number of pilot and series orders worthy of keeping one's eye on during this busy pilot season-- The Sarah Connor Chronicles , The Canyons , and The Bionic Woman being the first three to come to mind--every now and then there's a certain project that comes along that you can't help but root for, especially when it comes from the fertile minds of one of your favorite television creators. Especially when said creator has let you down a wee bit by leaving the series that made them a mythic name around the Televisionary household after sort of sinking the show a bit. If you couldn't guess who I was talking about just from that sentence above (or if you don't bother reading the title, I suppose), here goes. Fox has ordered a multi-camera pilot from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino with the working title of The Return of Jezebel James . First of all, I'm extremely curious to see how Sherman-Palladino will handle a traditional half-hour m

It was with some trepidation that I sat down last night to watch the season premiere of Gilmore Girls . After all, creator Amy Sherman Palladino and hubby Daniel Palladino are gone now and their departure cast a rather large pall over this once mighty series and I hadn't exactly had a lot of confidence in their replacement, David Rosenthal, whose two episodes to date had left me cold. Could this be a fresh start for the Gilmore Girls that I knew and loved? Perhaps. I'll admit that I was a little concerned during beginning of the Girls ' seventh season premiere ("The Long Morrow") last night. The opening scenes seemed weak, ineffectual, and clunky and, even worse, they seemed vaguely similar to the frustrating, hot mess that was Season Six. (Look, it's Amy and Daniel... and they're running out the door and taking any narrative sense with them!) We've seen Lorelai sleep with the wrong guy and then sulk and pout before, we've seen Sookie babble on en

Fox Chases "Gilmore" Girl Only a few weeks after leaving the series, outbound Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman Palladino has set up her next series project at Fox, according to a report filed by Variety . The project, written by Sherman-Palladino (who may also direct the pilot), is a half-hour dramedy that will focus on two estranged sisters who come together when one agrees to carry the other's baby. No studio is currently attached to the project, which is a put pilot at Fox. The news comes after Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel Palladino, a fellow Gilmore Girls scribe/producer, departed the series in April after failing to reach a deal with studio Warner Bros. Television. Sherman-Palladino's replacement as showrunner on the CW dramedy series is Gilmore Girls writer/producer David Rosenthal . While I doubt that Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel will be playing those sisters (though wouldn't that be great?), I do suspect that the pilot will feature Sherm

Yesterday's Television Critics Association event in Pasadena featured the first press session with the newly minted netlet, The CW (a phoenix rising from the ashes of the WB and UPN). And, while the network and president Dawn Ostroff trotted out all of the network's returning and new series, most critics' attention was sharply drawn to two of the network's returning series, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars . Let's talk about Veronica Mars first as the news shared there excited me far more than anything teased at the Gilmore Girls panel. The most important announcement: Mac is back. Actress Tina Majorino, who plays Veronica's computer geek gal pal, has been locked as a series regular for next season. But don't expect the duo to be roomies. Among other characters making an appearance next season will be Stosh Piznarski, a roommate for Wallace (Percy Daggs III), and an as-yet-unnamed roomie for Mac. Creator Rob Thomas said of Mac's roommate, "She wil