TVSquad

Now here's some news I can sink my teeth into. Aside from my Buffy fixation, I spend my days and nights awaiting the return of Alan Ball's True Blood on June 16. I'm on a vampire roll.

The HBO show has just picked up Evan Rachel Wood, who will play a vampire queen in the second season. You know, she sort of has that vampire look to her. Or rather, the goth look I imagine a female vamp might have. I think she'll be great in the role.

Wood's character is the Queen of Louisiana, a 400-year-old vampire who rules over the undead residents of the Bayou State. She's a pivotal character in Books 2 and 3 of the Sookie Stackhouse novels on which the series is based (loosely, some would say).

With Maggie Friedman (Dawson's Creek) behind it, I have to imagine that The Witches of Eastwick ABC pilot project just announced may feature a younger cast than the 1987 film on which it is being based. The announcement specifically states that it is a variation on the film as opposed to the controversial John Updike novel. The book has been blasted for being misogynistic, while the movie offered more in female empowerment.

This will be third time someone has made a go of adapting the film for television. I can't help but think think of this as a more serious Charmed. Will the male antagonist, played by Jack Nicholson in the film, remain throughout the series, or will he just be an early problem dealt with by the three witchy leads? Considering Friedman's resume also includes the horridly under-appreciated Jack and Bobby and the brilliant Once and Again, there are a lot of ways she could go with this.

As I'm sure you've heard by now quarterlife was a huge failure on network television. Those of you who read my unfavorable review of the show last week know that I didn't see much of a future for the show anyway and yet, I feel that the show was still treated unfairly by the people in charge, i.e. NBC.

Producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz designed this show to appeal to a very specific audience, men and women in their mid-twenties who spend a lot of time online. Now, that may seem like a very small demographic if you're a 40-year-old TV addict like me. but I actually know people in their mid-twenties who don't watch network TV. One of my friends, who is chronically hip insists that the only time he watches network television is online or on DVD. Aside from making me feel very old, his revelation cleared up some things for me.

When one of our favorite TV shows goes off the air, it can be devastating. However, many times, the cancellation is the birth of a spinoff. Sometimes it can be a great thing (Frasier) and sometimes not so much (AfterM*A*S*H). Here are some this month's spinoff ideas that I would love to see.

McCormack & Van Lowe: At Your Service
When Keith Mars becomes sheriff of Neptune and his daughter Veronica joins the FBI, Vinnie Van Lowe emerges as the county's number one private detective. His new caseload is so overwhelming and his moral compass is so out of whack that he's forced to employ attorney Cliff McCormack on a permanent basis. Together with the help of their excitable intern (Alia Shawkat), they bring their distinctive style of crime-solving to the citizens of Neptune.

It's being called a "revoluntionary step" in television entertainment. Quarterlife, created by thirtysomething's Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, has the honor of becoming the first webseries to be acquired for broadcast television. The hour-long drama will begin airing on NBC sometime in February.

Herskovitz and Zwick reportedly launched the series (about a twentysomething video blogger and her friends) directly on the web in order to maintain complete creative control. However, after viewing the series online , I began to suspect that quarterlife simply wasn't good enough for primetime. In fact, I doubted it would ever gain a strong fanbase or end up on network television.

Shows how much I know.

(S01E01)"We blog to exist...therefore, we are idiots." (Dylan Krieger)

I mentioned last week, that I am a huge fan of Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick (creators of thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again), and I was eagerly anticipating the launch of their new webseries, quarterlife. Lots of people have talked about producing programming for the internet, but nobody has been able to launch a completely original successful series with mass appeal and excellent production value -- yet. So, I put a lot of faith behind the professional team of Herskovitz and Zwick, and applauded their bold experiment.

Unfortunately, their experiment, at least to me, went horribly wrong.

Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick are responsible for creating some of my favorite TV shows: thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again. They've influenced my writing and even my desire to write for TV probably more than anyone else in Hollywood. They've been absent from the TV landscape for a couple of years, and I've definitely missed them.

Luckily, Herskovitz and Zwick are back with a brand new series, called quarterlife. The series, however, will not currently be available on ABC or any other network. Herskovitz and Zwick are bringing this new series to life on the web. And in a recent L.A. Times item, Herskovitz explains why they've left traditional television behind.

Herskovitz believes "the business of television has become an exclusive club, closed to new members," which has some producers "turning to the internet to have a voice."

Way back on September 30, 2005, the web site TV Shows on DVD announced that the third season of one of my favorite TV shows, Once and Again, would be available for sale in a 19-episode, multi-disc set, complete with actor commentaries and a blooper video. They even released an image of the DVD box.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the DVD shelves. Disney pulled the plug and indefinitely suspended the release of the award-winning show's (premature) final season.