[Televisionary]

“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; / When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; / And when Rome falls - the World.” - Lord Byron While the mourning period for the end of Sci Fi's Battlestar Galactica has just begun, following the recent two-hour finale, there are more than a few Battlestar-related things to look forward to on the horizon, one being the Jane Espenson-scripted, Edward James Olmos-directed two-hour telepic "The Plan" (set to air this fall on Sci Fi) and the other being the Battlestar Galactic a prequel series Caprica , which is set roughly fifty years before the start of the Battlestar Galactica mini-series. Sci Fi plans to release Caprica 's two-hour pilot, shot last year and written by Ronald D. Moore and Remi Aubuchon, as a DVD and a digital download next month . I had the opportunity to see a rough cut of the pilot episode for Caprica a few weeks back and was captivated by the pilot's tantalizing glimpse into a civilization sliding ou...

I always hate to self-promote but if there's a time to do so it's when you get mentioned in The New York Times ... which doesn't exactly happen every day. That's right, longtime readers, Televisionary has earned a mention in the pages of The New York Times itself, with yours truly being quoted in today's Arts section. In " ‘Motherhood’ Viewers: Hold the Ideas ," an article by Brian Stelter about ABC ceasing to ask viewers for ideas for upcoming episodes of its new comedy series In the Motherhood , I'm quoted about why television series don't accept unsolicited (or, really, solicited) ideas from viewers for potential storylines... and I manage to relate the legal issue to Lost , of course. Did you really expect anything less?

"Do not look where the harvest is plentiful, but where the people are kind." - Botswana proverb This Sunday, HBO is launching its newest original series, No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency , based on the best-selling novel series by Alexander McCall Smith. The series, created by the late Anthony Mingella and co-writer Richard Curtis, stars Jill Scott as Precious Ramotswe, the owner of the very first female-run detective agency in Botswana, as well as Anika Noni Rose, Lucian Msamati, and Desmond Dube, along with a host of high-profile guest stars. A departure for the traditionally bleak dramas at pay cabler HBO, No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency offers a glimpse into an Africa that's not the tragedy-ridden one we hear about on the evening news, but a joyful place where mysteries lurk round every corner. "I was a fan of 'The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency' book series before I even spoke to Anthony Minghella about them," said the series' executive pro...

Organizing a dinner party is never simple, especially when you're thrown into it at the last second... and aren't exactly professional caterers. That's right: there's no hiding anymore, as Raymond himself put it. On last night's episode of Last Restaurant Standing ("The Dinner Party"), the three couples placed into Raymond Blanc's latest Challenge were in for the toughest trial of their lives as they catered three separate private dinner parties for three very particular (read: difficult) clients at their homes, which include a neo-Georgian mansion, a Tudor stately home, and a waterside chalet overlooking the Thames. I have to say that this was definitely their toughest task to date and I am glad that Raymond pushed them into the deep end at this point in the competition. In particular, Helen and Stephen's couple were excessively demanding about presentation, cutlery and stemware, and the food itself, which had been shot by the lord of the manor t...

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. FOX inched its way closer to renewing drama Bones yesterday, ordering six scripts for the Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz-led series. While it's not a firm renewal yet for Bones , the script order does point favorably towards FOX picking up the series, which has improved the network's Thursday night timeslot by 43 percent since the series relocated there in January and has bested ABC's Ugly Betty and NBC's My Name is Earl . ( TV Week ) Some bad news for Veronica Mars fans: don't hold your breath waiting for the feature film spin-off of the much missed sleuthing series. Creator Rob Thomas told The New York Post that a greenlight isn't looking likely, though he'll "drop whatever" he's doing in order to make it happen should it materialize. "While the pitch [to producer Joel Silver] went well and I don't think the movie's dead, right now it's looking depressing," s...

Oh, Chuck, you didn't really think that Beckman would just let you have the Intersect taken out of your head, now did you? On this week's fantastic episode of Chuck ("Chuck Versus the Predator"), written by series co-creator Chris Fedak, Chuck continued his search for the man codenamed Orion, the original creator of the Intersect software, so he could have the images removed from his brain and return to a normal life. A life that he hopes to share with his CIA handler Sarah Walker. It's nice to see the overarching plot take a turn for the decidedly serialized while still maintaining the sense of fun and quirky humor that we've come to know and love from Chuck over the past two seasons. This week's installment pulled off another fantastic parallel plot between Chuck's spy life and his life at the Buy More and gave Big Mike, Morgan, Emmett, Jeff, and Lester something to do between breaking into the Buy More and retaliating against the Beverly Hills br...

"I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence." - Charles Dickens, "Little Dorrit" Charles Dickens often wrote about money and his novels gave equal weight to the lives of the poor and downtrodden as they did the idle rich. But none of his novels pushed financial matters to the fore as much as his 1857 novel "Little Dorrit" did. Ostensibly the story of the debt-ridden Dorrit family, the plot centers on young Amy Dorrit, a young woman born in the Marshallsea Prison to a father who has fallen on hard times and spent more than twenty years in the debtor's prison that serves as Little Dorrit's home. "Little Dorrit" is a story of greed, betrayal, and malice... that resonates all the more today, given our current economic crisis. Hell, there's even a fantastically prescient parallel to our own time period's Bernie Madoff in Mr. Mer...