[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Liz Lemon still has a lot of life left in her yet. Universal Media Studios was able to negotiate a payout of roughly $800,000 per episode of 30 Rock from two separate off-network deals to Comedy Central and WGN America. Both channels will be able to begin airing the episodes as a weeknight strip in fall of 2011. "Pound for pound, this is one of the funniest shows on TV. The DNA of the show is fabulous," said Comedy Central's SVP of programming David Bernath. "I really believe its biggest and broadest days are still ahead of it on NBC." TBS and E! were also said to have had interest in picking up the off-net rights to 30 Rock . ( Variety ) Andrea Bowen is set to reprise her role as Julie when Desperate Housewives returns for a sixth season this fall but Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Bowen will be back in a major way: as a series regular, citing an unnamed insider with Desper...

Mistresses isn't quite a relationship drama, although it does focus on the romantic--and often illicit--entanglements affecting four female friends. Rather, it's something more akin to a thriller: sleek and seductive with a hint of menace. The first volume of British drama series Mistresses , which encapsulates the series' two season run earlier this year on BBC America, is available today for sale as a four-disc set. It tells the story of four very different women who find themselves dealing with complicated and complex relationships as they juggle the dual specters of career and personal fulfillment. But don't let the title put you off from enjoying this complex and provocative series. Yes, the twelve episodes contain more than a heaping dose of sex and scandal but there's also a perilous throughline that runs beneath the surface, giving Mistresses the feel of a noir thriller that asks questions about coincidence, fate, and manipulation. Brilliant physician Kati...

I'm not exactly the ideal audience for BBC America's newest British drama import, Mistresses (launching tonight at 9 pm ET/PT, with a "sneak peek" at 8 pm), but I also found myself sucked into this sleek and seductive new series. Originally airing in the UK on BBC One, Mistresses (which will air its first two seasons back-to-back in the US), is the story of four female friends, each with very, er, complicated relationships. But don't think that this is yet another Desperate Housewives clone: these women live lives that are far closer to our own that the hyper-real soap that is Wisteria Lane. For one, the cast of characters seems populated by women we all know in our own real lives. There's brilliant physician Katie ( Blackpool 's Sarah Parish), a hopeless romantic who falls for John, a married patient with a terminal illness, and secretly euthanizes him... only to come face to face with his twenty-something son Sam ( The Tudors ' Max Brown) who kno...