TVSquad

Everything about the new Knight Rider is about to change.

Well, OK, almost everything. It's not like they're going to get rid of the car and change the show to a musical/variety hour featuring dancers and puppets. But they are getting rid of three of the stars of the show and changing the plot around to be more like the old version of the show.

Stars Bruce Davison, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, and Yancey Arias will no longer be on the show after the first 13 episodes. Also, the producers are getting rid of the stories where our hero fights professional bad guys and instead goes around and helps everyday Joes (plumbers and otherwise). Supposedly this will bring the show more in line with the other dramas on the NBC Wednesday lineup, Life and Law and Order. Though I don't think either of those shows feature a talking car.

The cringe-inducing piece of news is that they plan to do more "stunt-casting." Big name guest stars can be OK, but it's odd to announce "yes, now we are going to do more stunt-casting."

If they really want to make the show more like the old one they should bring back William Daniels.

Imagine for a second that Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons was hired to run a television show. Now imagine that the television show was a remake of an old favorite. Sounds like it would make for a pretty impatient press tour panelist, right? Well, that's what we got with Gary Scott Thompson, the new show-runner for Knight Rider.

Thompson answered most of the questions on the panel, and his message to everyone was: remember that two-hour KR movie that aired last year? Forget all about it. The characters may be the same but the story is completely different. What went on before probably won't matter for much. Even KITT is a little different.

"This place is cursed." - Danny McCoy during the Las Vegas season series finale.

Danny couldn't be more right. Over the years, Las Vegas switched timeslots so many times that I've lost counts. It also went through as many casino owners as timeslots! No matter, the show was an entertaining one. It's the type of show I enjoyed watching on Friday nights (or in most cases Saturday afternoon thanks to my old VCR) because of its lightness. I didn't have to think much while watching the gang try to catch the bad guys, Delinda put her foot in her mouth and Sam try to please her whales so they would lose big bucks on the tables.

A few days after a cliffhanger season finale, NBC decided that fans would have to do without the Montecito crew from now on; Las Vegas was canceled.

Las Vegas is an odd show. It doesn't really get much press, but just kind of chugs along doing well enough to keep NBC happy. It's one that I've watched for a long time. Apparently someone likes the cut of creator Gary Scott Thompson's jib though. He now has two new shows in the works.

Over at CBS he has a script commitment for Protect and Serve. It is a police drama that Thompson descibes as having "a procedural edge to it." That sounds like it is right up CBS' alley.

Meanwhile, NBC has also given a script commitment to an untitled drama about a New York cop that makes for Hawaii after losing his family on 9/11. It's suggested that this one will have a Magnum P.I. feel to it. Let's hope it's more Magnum P.I. than Hawaii.