TVSquad

When you're bombarded with one panel after the other, it's sometimes hard to figure out how to group them together. One writer I was sitting with at the BBC America panel, for instance, was blogging each individual panel, and was such a frantic blur of writing and Photoshopping that she developed what can best be described as SCTS (Sudden Carpal Tunnel Syndrome).

You gotta do what you gotta do, I guess. Me, I figured that there were three panels that could be put in what I call the "Comic-Con group": Spartacus on Starz, and Doctor Who and Being Human on BBC America. These shows got extensive showcases in San Diego over the weekend, and there wasn't many details revealed in any of these panels that you wouldn't have heard over the din at SDCC. So I'm going to go over the three of them in brief after the jump.

Let me give you a good teaser: If you were on the fence about seeing Spartacus, the prospect of a naked Lucy Lawless may convince you.

If this trailer, straight from Comic-Con International, is any indication, then January 2010 can't come soon enough! The 13-episode Starz (You read that right, Starz!) series Spartacus: Blood and Sand boasts Sam Raimi (Spider-Man), Rob Talpert (Drag Me to Hell) and Steven S. DeKnight (Smallville) executive producing. It features Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess), Peter Mensa (300) and Erin Cummings (Dollhouse).

Everything about this trailer makes the show look amazing. Amazing costuming, good casting and dialogue. The effects style borrows heavily from the hyper-realism of 300, which adds a great dramatic flare. Damn, what more can I say? Just watch the thing and wait with bated breath until January like me.

I'm combining Sunday's panel reports because neither the Women in Sci-Fi panel nor The 4400 panel was brimming with revelations unless you count as a revelation the fact that Lucy Lawless' fans bear a striking resemblance to the core audience of the WNBA, but you shouldn't.

The Battlestar Galactica panel was really a celebration of Battlestar's women. The panel opened with a montage video featuring all the female characters swearing or, at least, saying "frak" alot following the weighty words, "Well-behaved women rarely make history."

The networks are revving up a few new pilots, and they've hand-picked some ladies from the, um, lady garden ... of entertainment. Yeah. So, anyway:

First, Louise Lombard will play Judy in ABC's Judy's Got a Gun, about a single suburban mother who investigates suburban crimes. She'll balance work and family because balancing things is common in television land. Seriously, every season there are at least a dozen new shows that involve somebody balancing something and something else. You gotta have balance, you know.

Hey, Brigitte here with TV Squad Daily. I'll be covering the TV stories I find interesting each day, Monday through Friday, in this video blog.

Today on TV Squad Daily:

• You'll always remember where you were when you heard the news: Miss USA may be dethroned.
• The downside of being A-list: Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller were both denied guest roles on 24.
• Just like Dustin Diamond will always be Screech to me, Lucy Lawless will always be Xena. But she's trying to turn her new love of singing into a career in music.
  

The video's embedded after the jump below, or you can download the file directly (Quicktime required). You can also subscribe to this vodcast via our feed.

Well, that wasn't much of a surprise, was it? In a show that should have lasted all of ten minutes, Alfonso Ribeiro was named winner of the first Celebrity Duets competition. By winning, $100,000 was donated to his charity Fresh Start. And, I wouldn't be surprised if David Foster, one of the judges for this competition, didn't ask Alfonso to stop by his studios one day. Personally, I always thought Alfonso was the front runner since the beginning of the competition, and I'm glad that he won.

I'll admit that I fast-forwarded through a good portion of tonight's fluff, but there were some highlights. We actually got to see what Little Richard was most famous for . . . singing and pounding the piano keys. Although he seemed a bit out of it (more than usual) he really belted out a version of Good Golly Miss Molly. Wayne Brady also performed this evening with Boyz II Men (now known as just 'Men'). If you had never heard them before, you would have thought that Wayne was part of the group since the beginning; he's actually quite good. Another highlight was solo performances from the remaining three finalists. I thought Alfonso did the best job, and Hal was much less screechy than in past duets. I thought that Lucy's solo performance was the worst, mostly because she looked like she was having a seizure up on stage.

All in all, I liked Celebrity Duets. I think they had a good mix of semi-professional and novice singers and it was actually quite entertaining. If there is another season of the show I would drop Little Richard from the judges tables and switch David and Marie Osmond, so that David could speak first. Definitely keep Wayne as host. If you have some ideas for improvements (besides canceling the show) let me know.

(S01E05) Alfonso Ribeiro, Lucy Lawless and Hal Sparks. These are your three remaining Celebrity Duets performers.I'm rooting for Alfonso, who I always felt was the front-runner. Even a bit better than Jai Rodriguez. Although, I do have a soft spot for Hal. So, without further ado, here are the night's performances.

I haven't reviewed the Celebrity Duets live results show, but I decided that I should this week because the three finalists would be picked. Well, it's good that I did because I got to see the elimination of Cheech Marin (big surprise) and . . . Jai Rodriguez?

What? The? Hell?

Yes, you are reading this right. Jai Rodriguez, who was a front runner since the beginning of the competition a few weeks ago, was eliminated this week over, ready, Lucy Lawless! Okay, Lucy is a decent singer, but Jai was head-and-shoulders above her and I thought he would be in the finals along with Alfonso Ribeiro, who you knew was going to make it after his very first duet. I guess, like in all other Simon Cowell produced shows, the fix was in. Although, in the show's defense, Lucy looked absolutely shocked that she was in the finals. I believe that she was mouthing something like 'Are you sure you didn't make a mistake?'.

(S01E04) Folks, it's a late night once again, so I'm going to get to the show quickly. Right after these few announcements. First, it was revealed at the beginning of Celebrity Duets that two contestants will be eliminated this week (one of them probably being Cheech Marin, but, heck, I've been wrong so far), leaving three for the remainder of the finale. Next, the celebrity with the fewest votes last week was Carly Patterson. I was sure it was going to be Cheech!

And now, let's get to the program. As soon as I mention this one thing. I want to thank my lovely wife, friend and partner to me for these last 9 years and mother to our four lovely children, for assisting me with this week's reviews. I was unavailable for some of the competition and she stepped right in to assist.

(S01E03) It's about 1:00 a.m. as I write this, so let's get down to the business at hand. To recap from last week, Lea Thompson was let go. I'm surprised, since I thought she did a fairly decent job. I'm guessing that a number of wives and girlfriends called to vote her off because they were tired of their husbands and boyfriends ogling Thompson in her mini-skirts. And now, this week's performances:

1. Lucy Lawless and Dionne Warwick: This was one of Lucy's better performances (this coming from the man who thought she should have been let go after her first week). She was a nice fit to Dionne's husky singing. Judge Marie Osmond liked her performance as well, but thought she was being a bit timid. Judge Little Richard also liked her performance (although it was hard to tell). Finally, Judge David Foster agreed with his colleagues, but requested that she sing her next duet in a higher harmony.

I guess I could just devote my evenings to MyNetworkTV's telenovas but that would be too easy. From the NFL, to New Caprica, Star's Hollow, the Sunset strip, Rockefeller Plaza, and west Baltimore, here's where I expect to park my butt this fall season:

Sunday
5:15 pm (West Coast) Sunday Night Football (NBC). John Madden.

10 pm The Wire (HBO). The best ... blah blah blah, etc. (Actually, I'll most likely catch these earlier in the week On Demand.)

You may remember Lucy Lawless playing fleet reporter D'Anna Biers earlier in the series, the episode ending with the surprising revelation that she is a Cylon. Reporter Biers will be returning not only for the February 24th episode of the show, but she'll also be appearing in ten episodes next season. The really great news here is that they're already lining up people for the third season, which is always good news for a show's continued lifespan.

Xena star Lucy Lawless, who has been busy lately battling locusts and vampires, wants a movie to happen, but at the same time she says that it's "a big fat pain in the ass" because nobody agrees on who owns the rights to the show.

And we're talking about a big screen movie, not a TV movie. Hey, if Firefly can come back to life on the big screen...

[via TV Tattle]

Lucy Lawless returns as a daring scientist in Vampire Bats, a sequel to an earlier TV movie, Locusts. I don't really get how it's a sequel (do vampire bats become locusts later in life, or vice-versa?). Maybe they're trying to make a series, where Lawless will battle various evil monsters. Whatever the case, anything that has people being attacked by flying creatures/bugs has to be cool.