[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Details are slowly emerging about the next season of British import Torchwood . Producers have cast four actors for the series' condensed third season, entitled Torchwood: Children of Earth . Lucy Cohu ( Meadowlands ) will play Alice, "a woman keeping many secrets from the past," according to producer Peter Bennett. Susan Brown ( The Riff Raff Element ) will play Bridget Spears, "a character vitally connected to the government, which plays an important part in this story." Cush Jumbo will play Lois Habiba, a secretary who "hacks into some vital information," and Rik Makarem will play Doctor Rupesh Patanjali, a "junior doctor at St Helen's hospital who gets drawn into Torchwood's investigations." I can't wait! ( Digital Spy ) ABC is developing an adaptation of classic 1980s mini-series V , about reptilian aliens who enslave Earth, with The 4400 co-creator/executive producer Scott

Just in time for the end of November sweeps, FOX has cancelled struggling drama Vanished , just a day after announcing that Vanished would take a breather for the rest of sweeps. (Make up your mind, guys.) The Gale Harold-led--oops, scratch that--the Eddie Cibrian -led serialized drama had been airing Friday nights at 8 pm and had only four episodes left to air from its original 13 episode order. (Producers had been told in advance that they would not be getting a back nine order and were told to resolve the storyline.) The few lingering fans that remain of the series can catch the missing episodes on Vanished' s MySpace page , where FOX will begin streaming the remaining installments on November 17th. Subsequent episodes will appear each Friday, with three episodes available at any given time. The series finale of Vanished will be released online on December 8th and then, well, vanish forever. Meanwhile fellow, Vanished 's timeslot will be taken over by fellow struggling fre

One of my favorite annual pastimes is going through the following season's pilots and trying to figure out which ones I'll watch and which ones I'll skip. There's certainly no science to it and much of it is really just my gut reaction to the material and that little voice in the back of my head asking me whether or not I'd watch the series. But the true test of a series isn't necessarily the pilot. In fact, more often than not, it's the second episode that's the real indication of whether or not I plan on investing my time with a particular series. On that note, I sat down Monday evening to watch the second episode of FOX's missing woman conspiracy drama Vanished . Longtime readers of this blog will remember that I ended up liking the pilot, which--like its second episode--was directed by Mimi Leder. Here's what I had to say about the original pilot I watched back in June: "Created by Josh Berman ( CSI: Crime Scene Investigation ) and dire

The cast of Vanished just keeps... appearing. Variety is reporting that Eddie Cibrian has joined the cast of FOX's upcoming serialized drama Vanished , where he'll portray an FBI agent on the hunt for a missing senator's wife. The series revolves around the conspiracy surrounding her disappearance and plays out through the various perspectives of her family, the police, and the media. Cibrian, last seen on ABC's Invasion , joins a cast that included Gale Harold, John Allen Nelson, Rebecca Gayheart, Joanne Kelly, Margarita Levieva, John Patrick Amedori, Chris Egan, Ming-Na, Penelope Ann Miller, and Esai Morales. Additionally, Josh Hopkins ( Pepper Dennis ) has also signed on to Vanished in a recurring role as the former flame of the missing senator's wife. Hopkins will also recur on ABC's fall drama Brothers & Sisters , where he'll play a love interest for Calista Flockhart's character.