[Televisionary]

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...

Last night, ABC launched its promotional campaign, dubbed Lost Moments , short 30-second vignettes which are a blatant attempt to sate the appetites of Lost fans dreading the 13-week wait for the second half of Season Three as well as getting those same jaded Lost fans to tune into Lost 's temporary timeslot replacement, Day Break . ABC, as canny as ever, will each week randomly place a Lost Moment clip somewhere in that week's installment of Day Break , meaning that Lost junkies will either have to watch the entire episode of Day Break each week... or at least fast forward through the episode on the TiVos. (Personally, I skipped Day Break altogether as I saw the pilot back in May and, sorry Taye Diggs fans, it just left me completely, utterly cold.) The 30-second vignettes, however, will turn up the next day on ABC.com. So I woke up this morning with a little bit of glee at the thought of seeing something--a teaser, a morsel, an amuse bouche of televisionary delights--r...

And then there were ten. Surprised? I can't say I was. After all of the chefs managed to squeak by last week when the judges couldn't figure out who to send home (all thanks to Sam, really), I was pretty sure that two of them would be packing their knives last night, especially after Padma announced that they'd be working on teams of two for the elimination challenge. After last week's Camp Glucose fiasco (I'm still having flashbacks to verboten squeeze bottles of olive oil and illicit meringue cookies), this week's episode of Top Chef was even more tense, thanks to the presence of one Tom Colicchio looming over everything. With his eagle eyes roaming the test kitchen (and the kitchen of Social Hollywood), Tom was on a rather short fuse this week... and rightfully so. Given the allegations of cheating or misunderstanding the confines of the challenge, the mood of honest competition has been completely spoiled. And I'm still stunned by the fact that Mia was...

I'm still shaking after watching the final minutes of last night's Veronica Mars . Was I the only one waiting last night for the climactic showdown between Veronica and the serial rapist? While the last few minutes of last night's episode of Veronica Mars ("Of Vice and Men") was absolutely gripping (not to mention outright terrifying), I really wish the CW had concealed that element of the storyline altogether; it would have worked even more effectively had it been a surprise, especially coming on the heels of a rather fluffy mystery this week. Seems our girl V. has developed quite a tarnished view of the male race as a result of last week's occurrences ... namely the lil' extramarital affair that seems to have knocked Papa Keith right off his pedestal in Veronica's eyes. There's no denying that there's a connection between Keith and the unhappily married (but married nonetheless) Harmony (Laura San Giacomo), but Keith isn't exactly thinki...

Seems like the oft-rumored US adaptation of The Thick of It will get made after all... at least a pilot, will anyway. ABC has given a put pilot commitment to a half-hour single-camera US version of BBC4's political comedy The Thick of It . The pilot, which had been shopped around to all the major broadcast networks last month, is from Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz and writer Richard Day. While the UK version focused on a member of Parliament who is forced to rely on the (usually very bad) advice of his handlers while battling the Prime Minister's maniacal communications chief, the action in the US version will be set in the office of a Congressman. (No word on whether the politician in question will be a Republican or a Democrat or if the US remake will use the same Office -esque mockumentary format as the original.) Richard Day ( Arrested Development , The Larry Sanders Show ) will write the pilot script and executive produce with Mitch Hurwitz, the BBC's Pa...

To everything there must be an end. And the gritty Prime Suspect series is no exception to that rule. After six electrifying cases (which aired here in the States on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre), Prime Suspect , created originally by Lynda LaPlante, concludes its run with one final installment, the aptly titled Prime Suspect 7: The Final Act . I've followed the evolving career of Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison (the glorious Helen Mirren) for the last decade and a half of so, though the gripping and haunting series of Prime Suspect miniseries, as Jane entered the police force as a woman in a man's field and was forced to not only hold her own but prove herself over and over again a thousand times a day. A lot has changed in TV Land (and I'd like to think the world) since Jane first started flashing her badge and chasing down the baddies, including the rise of the police procedural on American television and a thousand permutations of CSI and Law & Order , but ...

Just days after casting David Duchovny in the currently untitled Tom Kapinos pilot (formerly known as Californication ) and landing John Corbett, Kevin Smith (yes, that Kevin Smith), and James Purefoy for Darren Star's US adaptation of Manchild , Showtime has announced the casting of three actresses in fellow comedy pilot Insatiable . The pay cabler is in negotiations to have Andie MacDowell ( Barnyard ), Lara Flynn Boyle ( Las Vegas ), and Andrea Martin ( How to Eat Fried Worms ) join the cast of Insatiable , which is under consideration for the 2007-2008 season. Insatiable , created by Lix Brixius and Linda Wallem, follows the interconnected stories of four highly dysfunctional families in a fictional little berg where everyone exhibits signs of some sort of addiction. Fitting that Lara Flynn Boyle has been cast in the project as Insatiable's tone is said to be similar to that of the offbeat quirkiness of Twin Peaks . (Just hopefully, you know, without the dancing dwarves and...