[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. I'm now way behind on last night's telly offerings as Wednesday appears to have become overfilled with series but I made a special point to not only watch Pushing Daisies but to watch it live... just in case the numbers actually do matter. James Van Der Beek speaks about his return to his old Dawson's Creek stomping ground in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he's filming three episodes of the CW's One Tree Hill , where he will play a feature film director who is interested in adapting Lucas' novel into a film. "I thought it was a real fun character," said Van Der Beek about his Tree character. "I'm excited to work with my friends and to play a little bit." ( Associated Press ) One reason to celebrate: Pushing Daisies beat out NBC's Knight Rider in the key adults 18-49 demo for the very first time last night. Huzzah! ( Futon Critic ) Lifetime has filed a countersuit in a Manha...

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. While everyone is buzzing about last night's presidential debate, there are more than a few television-related news tidbits to discuss as well. Following several months of discussions, FX has confirmed that it will not be renewing drama series The Riches for a third season, due to falling ratings for the drama. In its second season, which was shortened to seven episodes due to the writers strike, viewers dropped 44 percent in the key 18-49 demo. The move is hardly a surprise: showrunner Dmitry Lipkin is currently working on his HBO pilot project Hung and I had assumed for a while now that The Riches would sadly not be returning to the cabler. ( Variety ) TV Guide talks to Pushing Daisies star Lee Pace about what to expect for Season Two, a certain game of "slap jack" between Ned and Chuck that never made it to the screen, and the Pie Maker's family. ( TV Guide ) Sadly, there might not have been a new episode ...

While the expression "an embarrassment of riches" might refer to having more of something good or pleasant than you need, that was just the opposite this year with the severely truncated season of The Riches , which wrapped its second season last night on FX. Originally ordered for thirteen episodes this season, The Riches found itself downscaled to just seven when production was shut down during the writers strike. Personally, I am a huge fan of this series and hope that the shortened season doesn't bode against renewing this compelling, subtle drama for a third season. (Not helping matters is that creator Dmitry Lipkin has sold a pilot script for Hung to HBO.) Especially since last night's unintentional season finale ("The Lying King") left nearly every characters' plotlines hopelessly dangling in the wind. While some viewers have found this season to be creatively uneven, I've been really intrigued by the second season of The Riches , which place...

Oh, Malloys, how I have missed you. I raced home last night after Chuck 's Paley Festival panel to catch the second season premiere of FX's pitch black dramedy series, The Riches ("The Last Temptation of Wayne"), last night. When we last saw the Malloys--who had assumed the identity of the dead Riches--they were about to flee Eden Falls after being discovered by so honest-you-want-him-dead Pete and dangerous-as-fox-on-acid Dale, who wasn't about to let them escape from their fate. Eeek! The second season finds them trying to escape their precarious situation by running into the night. Dahlia quickly packs up the kids and Cherien's senile mother as they hit the road--joined by jilted neighbor Nina who wants to leave behind her life of suffering for adventure on the open road--and Wayne stays behind to deal with Pete... who winds up bludgeoned to death in the back of Wayne's car, courtesy of sociopath Dale. I was a little confused as to whether Dale intende...

While there might only be seven episodes this season (cut back from a typical thirteen), fans of FX's darkly comic drama The Riches have one reason to celebrate: it's coming back on the air. Cabler FX will launch the second season of The Riches , which stars Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver as members of a family of Irish Traveler conmen who assumed the identities of a dead family, on Tuesday, March 18th. Season Two will pick up when the freshman season ended with the Malloys attempting to escape their past lives and fit into so-called normal society. The sophomore season's seven episodes are expected to run consecutively without any repeats or pre-emptions. Series, which also stars Noel Fisher, Shannon Woodward, Aidan Mitchell, Margo Martindale, Gregg Henry, Todd Stashwick, and Jared Harris, comes from creator Dmitry Lipkin, FX Prods, and Fox TV Studios. Personally, I can't wait for the return of The Riches , which grew on me more and more during the course of its firs...

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...

While watching this week's episode of FX's The Riches , in which the Molloy clan returns to the Traverlers camp to attend the funeral of the murdered Earl (and nearly attends the wedding of DiDi to Ken Dannigan), I couldn't help but reminded of the commune on HBO's Big Love (which thankfully returns to the airwaves after way too long on June 17th). The two series are definitely distinct in their own ways, but they do share some similarities in the familiar theme of outsider families pretending to be something they're not, in suburbia, no less. While the series' leads couldn't be more different from one another (I don't, for example see Dahlia and Boss Lady knocking back drinks together), it's impossible not to compare the two series' most insane characters. Yes, I'm talking about examining the crazies: Big Love 's Alby (Matt Ross) and The Riches ' Dale (Todd Stashwick). Name: Alby ( Big Love ) Occupation: Commune enforcer Likes: Kniv...

Teehee. I may have found my new Monday night TV fixation, a night which I've found to be sorely lacking lately with any dramatic tension (don't even get me started on last night's lackluster episode of 24 ). Looking for something different and a little dark? FX has got that in spades with its new drama, The Riches . The second episode of the series, which aired last night, put to right some of the problems of tone that the pilot episode had; instead of being darkly humorous or painfully bleak, it was all over the place. But that, boys and girls, is what happens when you smush two different pilots (from two different directors) into one single episode. Quick recap: the Malloy family are Travellers, gypsies and con artists extraordinaire. When Dahlia Molloy is released from prison (the sight of Minnie Driver in cornrows is hilarious), the family takes off with some stolen cash from the Travellers and is forced to hide out in suburbia after they inadvertently kill a married co...