AbcFamily-related stories
Posted Oct 16th 2009 2:04PM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Reality Shows, Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Food/Home/DIY, Programming, The Simpsons, Children, Reality-Free
I visited the pumpkin patch last weekend and totally massacred a 30 lb. pumpkin and feasted on its flesh, so I am officially in the Halloween spirit. Luckily, there's a crapload of TV to help sustain my ghoulish mood. TV Tango has compiled a pretty comprehensive list of
Halloween-themed programming starting today and going through the rest of the month.
Some of the highlights include a
Moonlight marathon starting today on SyFy, as part of their "31 Days of Halloween" programming. On Sunday,
The Simpsons is airing their 20th "Treehouse of Horror" episode, while Monday has a some good kids' fare, with Halloween-themed
America's Funniest Home Videos on ABC Family, and
Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie on Disney.
Continue reading For the rest of the month, TV is all Halloween, all the time
Posted Aug 5th 2009 9:30AM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Reality-Free
In a move that should bring some veteran dragon slayers out of their parents' basements long enough to turn on the TV,
Legend of the Seeker is headed back for a second season.
According to producing partners Disney and ABC, the syndicated fantasy adventure show will return this fall. A descendant of the
Hercules and
Xena food family,
Seeker tells the story of a woodsman whose life "gets turned upside down after discovering that he has a profound destiny to fulfill as the Seeker."
It's a burdensome duty that thrusts him into an unfamiliar world of magic, sorcery, evil and heaving wenches. The Seeker fights to protect innocent lives by confronting dangerous and evil forces because that's generally what heroes do in these sword and sorcery tales.
Continue reading Legend of the Seeker second season on its way
Posted Jul 25th 2009 2:00PM by TV Squad blogger
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, TV on DVD, Interviews, Reality-Free, Comic-Con
Recently, the cast of
The Middleman, the comic book-based ABC Family show about a secret agent crime fighter and his female sidekick,
reunited at Comic-Con for a panel and a table reading of the unreleased final episode of the series, which is soon to be a comic.
Middleman creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach talked to
Laura Hudson from our sister site
Comics Alliance before the panel about how comics gave him the freedom to create Stormtroopers riding missile-equipped kangaroos, whether the show could ever come back to TV, and why
Batman: Streets of Gotham writer Paul Dini is the godfather of it all.
We previewed this interview yesterday, but CA has kindly let us reprint the entire interview here. More after the jump.
Continue reading Middleman creator talks about the show's Comic-Con reunion -- and possible revival
Posted Jul 24th 2009 5:05PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Comic-Con
Wouldn't it be great if
The Middleman DVD, available July 28, sold so well that ABC Family had no choice but to put the show back in production? Of course it would. There wasn't a smarter or more clever show of its type on television at the time (sorry
Chuck).
Laura Hudson had a chance to sit down with the series creator in San Diego. In her interview over at
Comics Alliance,
Javier Grillo-Marxauch says that if DVD sales are great, The Middleman would probably go back into production. I suspect his enthusiasm had more to do with the excitement that comes with being at San Diego than anything ABC Family has indicated.
The fans stopping at the booth are excited about the show and that fever can be infectious. They'll do what they can to spread the word, but I just don't think that fan-base is big enough to change the network's minds. Or that ABC Family is interested enough to care.
Continue reading Could the Middleman follow Family Guy and Futurama back into production?
Posted Jul 8th 2009 1:38AM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S01E01) Just as the new
Parenthood series coming to NBC is a re-imagining of the classic movie,
10 Things I Hate About You is a very loose take on the film of the same name. And the film itself is a loose take on Shakespeare's
The Taming of the Shrew. The only real connection to
that source is an early name-drop for the playwright.
If you let yourself get frustrated at how this doesn't even come close to mirroring some of the themes of Shakespeare's comedy, you'll miss out on what the show does offer, besides Larry Miller reprising his role from the movie as the sisters' father. Just think of it as a high school comedy featuring two very different sisters. In this one episode, we got pretty effective glimpses of virtually every social strata that exists in a high school. It's no
My So-Called Life, but
10 Things does a pretty good job of being a family high school comedy. And isn't that what it's trying to be?
Continue reading 10 Things I Hate About You: Pilot (series premiere)
Posted Jul 5th 2009 9:38AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Programming, OpEd, Children, Reality-Free
For my daughter's twelfth birthday, she decided to have four of her friends sleep over, and it turned out to be the same night that
The Secret Life of the American Teenager season two was premiering. OK, she actually sort of planned it that way. All but one of her friends is allowed to watch the show, and she managed to talk her mom into it "just this once." I totally respect that. I write a family movie column and have kids of my own, so I'm fairly in tune with what is and isn't appropriate for various age groups.
I watched a few episodes of
Secret Life last season, and while the subject matter isn't geared for little kids, it seemed OK for kids twelve and older. But this season, it seems like the show has really kicked the sex talk up several notches. Yes, I know it's a show about a teenager who gets pregnant and is forced to deal with the consequences. I'm ok with that. It shows kids that there
are consequences, and that sex shouldn't be taken lightly.
Continue reading The Secret Life of the American Teenager: appropriate for 12-year-olds?
Posted Jun 22nd 2009 3:22PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Casting, Reality-Free
We all watched her grow up on
Full House and then we watched her disappear from our television screens, seemingly forever. I don't know if I'll go so far as to say Candace Cameron was to the early '90s what Alyssa Milano was to the late '80s, but that's because I'll be forever loyal to my boyhood crush on Samantha Micelli. But while Milano has been on the airwaves virtually every season since the question of
Who's the Boss? was answered when the network canceled it, not so for Cameron.
She got married and went off to raise her kids for ten years, giving us only a few appearances in that time. Now 33 and ready to get back to work full time, Candace Cameron Bure will be one of the stars in
ABC Family's gymnastic-themed Make It or Break It, premiering tonight at 9pm ET.
Continue reading Candace Cameron (Bure) returning to television on Make It or Break It tonight
Posted Apr 30th 2009 2:16PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Programming, Web, Reality-Free
It's official. I'll finally be able to watch
Lost online for free without having to get up from the couch to click "Continue" after an ad plays on ABC.com.
Disney, owners of ABC and ABC Family, has become a
joint venture partner and equity owner of Hulu.
That means a slew of ABC shows will be popping up on Hulu soon. Here's the list of ABC/ABC Family shows Disney reportedly plans to make available for free streaming on Hulu (ranked by awesomeness):
Continue reading Here's the list of ABC shows coming to Hulu
Posted Apr 14th 2009 12:01PM by Eliot Glazer
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Video, Reality-Free
As a TV Squad contributor who, admittedly, could be considered a "niche viewer" (in that I watch few shows, but never miss an episode), I was naturally hesitant to check out
Roommates on
ABC Family. A friend guaranteed me that the show was not only as bad as one might expect, but that it was so utterly, bafflingly wretched that investing thirty minutes in it turned out way more entertaining than I'd expected, and not just in the so-bad-it's-funny way, either.
Roommates is
so atrocious, its production should be considered a criminal offense, considering that, even as a basic cable program, hundreds of thousands of dollars (at the very
least) have surely been invested in the show. And that's money that could have easily gone toward refugees or food banks or, say, into the budget of
ABC Family's other critically lauded programming like
Greek or
Secret Life of The American Teenager.
Continue reading Yep, Roommates is atrocious - VIDEO
Posted Jan 5th 2009 4:35PM by Richard Keller
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Programming, OpEd, Web, Reality-Free
Damn the TCA's, screw billboards and to hell with magazine advertising! Slowly, ever so slowly, TV networks are beginning to realize that the Internet is the way to go to promote new and ongoing shows. The ways I mentioned above, those are the Stone Age, man. The newfangled World Wide Web is how their shows are going to become hits.
Case in point: the season 3 premiere of Kyle XY. While it's network television premiere is next Monday on ABC Family, you denizens of the technological world can see it over at Fancast right now. Heck, you can't even see it on ABC Family's website -- those primitives. For the interested, this is the conclusion to the season two cliffhanger that left Kyle searching for the abducted Amanda.
Look, if you are one of those people who like to stay one step ahead of everyone else, get your butt over to Fancast and watch the premiere. Then, you can let all of your commoner friends know what happened. Just make sure you limber up first because you are sure to be chased by fans of the show after you reveal all the spoilers.
Posted Nov 20th 2008 9:08AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Programming, OpEd, Reality-Free
It's taken nearly 10 years, but the feature film
10 Things I Hate About You is
being made into a TV show. Well, a pilot anyway. We'll see if it goes the distance. This project has a few things going for it:
1) It's on
ABC Family, which has done a fabulous job with their programming. Have you watched the network lately? This is edgy stuff that's like the next step up from
Nickelodeon and
Disney Channel:
Lincoln Heights,
Greek, and
The Secret Life of the American Teenager top the list.
2) The cast is great. Some you might have heard of, others not: Lindsey Shaw, Meaghan Jette Martin, Kyle Kaplan, Nicholas Braun and
Ethan Peck. That's him, pictured. He's the grandson of Gregory Peck, and he kind of looks like him, doesn't he?
Continue reading ABC Family assembles 10 Things cast
Posted Sep 3rd 2008 8:38AM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Middleman
(S01E12) "Can't wait to hear this guy's monologue. 'I am the Palindrome. Feel my power. Power my feel. Palindrome the am I.'" --The Middleman
Paul's out and about traveling;
I think he's been recruited to the exciting world of temporary employment by the Jolly Fats Wehawkin Temp Agency; so I'm stepping in to cover the first season finale of
The Middleman. I'm not even going to consider this as a series finale because it's just too smart and too good to end. ABC Family has yet to make a decision one way or the other about the future of the show, but apparently ratings haven't been great so it's riding the bubble right now.
Continue reading The Middleman: The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome (season finale)
Posted Aug 26th 2008 2:02PM by Isabelle Carreau
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Early Looks, Reality-Free
"Our friendship can be tested anywhere." - Rusty to CalvinSince it's July 9, 2007, premiere on ABC Family,
Greek has been one of weekly TV guilty pleasures. I've been enjoying its light and fun stories as well as the evolving and imploding relationships and friendships between the characters.
Having had the chance to read a few
spoilers about the upcoming season these past few weeks, it looked like
Greek would be as fun to watch as it was in its first season. However, something can look good on paper and turn out quite differently on the screen. Luckily, it is not the case for
Greek; at least not according to the season premiere, which I had the chance to watch.
Slight spoilers coming up!Continue reading Greek season two -- an early look
Posted Aug 12th 2008 2:18PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: OpEd, Episode Reviews, Casting, Reality-Free
(S01E9) "He's looking at me all pervy, isn't he?" --Wendy Watson about Middleman 69
Well, if anyone was going to bring the leather catsuit from the
Avengers inspired intro sequence into the show proper, it would be a Middleman who'd been frozen since 1969. It was cool how the Middleman from 1969 was such a different, more hedonistic personality than the goofily straight-laced Middleman of our era. He carried himself more like James Bond ... well, more like Austin Powers, really. The casting of Kevin Sorbo in this role was just inspired as he really threw himself into the zaniness of the Middleman Universe.
It looks like the sexual innuendos are going to continue as there were again a few lines more explicit than you'd think ABC Family would be comfortable with ("I'm looking for some hooch!"). That said, the show is still relatively clean fun and there's a level of quality amidst the silliness and snappy dialogue that is sorely missed on most shows. The depth of the characters and the world they inhabit just continues to grow after each episode.
Continue reading The Middleman: The Obsolescent Cryogenic Meltdown
Posted Aug 11th 2008 5:20PM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Programming, Celebrities, Casting
The CW's new version of
90210 isn't premiering until next month, but there's already behind-the-scenes drama. The new series, which is said to basically be the CW's last chance of survival, has been a hot topic since it was
announced back in March. Soon after news of the spinoff broke, came the chatter of original cast members coming back to Beverly Hills High. However, one previously confirmed cast member may not be making it back for the reunion.
Tori Spelling is said to have dropped out of the production.
Spelling was originally slated to reprise her role as Donna Martin (who is now a boutique owner) in the pilot but dropped out, ostensibly because she was giving birth to her second child. Now, despite publicly saying that she would probably appear later in the season, Spelling looks to be completely out. According to sources, it's not diaper duty that's keeping her away, it's cold hard cash.
Continue reading No Tori Spelling for the new 90210?
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