TVSquad

Edward Woodward, probably best known to U.S. audiences as crime-fighting ex-agent Robert McCall on the cool 80s series The Equalizer, has died at the age of 79.

Of course, before taking that role, Woodward had a long, distinguished film career, starring in such classic films as Breaker Morant and The Wicker Man. Long before The Equalizer he did a British series where he played a spy in the series Callan, which ran from 1967 to 1972.. He appeared in several other TV shows over the years, including The Defenders, The Saint, La Femme Nikita, CI5, Over My Dead Body, Nice Work, 1990, The Edward Woodward Hour, and many others.

This year he guest starred in several episodes of the classic British show EastEnders. He was also an accomplished stage actor and singer.

Think of the most popular American daytime soap. Then, multiply that by a factor of 10. That's the ongoing craze known as the BBC's immortal EastEnders. Premiering in 1985, the working-class melodrama remains one of the U.K.'s highest-rated series.

Now, EastEnders is set to kick off its own web spinoff series next year. According to a Beeb press release, the online BBC Vision Multiplatform commissioned EastEnders: E20 to go live in January, 2010.

In addition to taking advantage of TV's online evolution, the web series will help to celebrated the EastEnders 25th anniversary.

Now, the question is if anyone in Hollywood can catch on to moves like these and adapt more successful U.S. shows into big name web series. Shows like 24 tried brief web dalliances, but nothing this ambitious has yet to take flight from American networks.

When I first saw the commercials for ABC's Eli Stone, I didn't recognize Jonny Lee Miller. Then, after watching the first episode and liking him, I decided to find out who he was. Imagine my surprise when I learned that I had seen him, multiple times, in a variety of roles. And he was British! I was duly impressed and intrigued. Jonny Lee Miller was a helluva an actor, a chameleon who could be as convincing as a junkie named Sick Boy in Trainspotting as he was a San Francisco lawyer named Eli.

My first introduction to The Avengers, the classic cult 60s show with Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman and Linda Thorson, was actually the second version of the show in the 70s, The New Avengers. CBS used to run the show late at night, back in the day, when they showed crime and action shows after the local news.

"Back in the day?" I'm getting really old.

The new version also starred Macnee, but this time he was paired with Joanna Lumley (as Purdey), who later went on to fame in Absolutely Fabulous, and Gareth Hunt, who played Mike Gambit. Isn't that a great name for an action hero, Mike Gambit? I really liked this show (and the original series, which I started watching repeats of later). Supposedly it only lasted 26 episodes, though it seems like more.

Hunt died of pancreatic cancer this week in London. Besides The New Avengers, he appeared in Upstairs, Downstairs, EastEnders, Space: 1999, Doctor Who, The New Adventures of Robin Hood, and many other TV shows and movies. Lumley has a lot of nice things to say about her costar.

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that British actress Michelle Ryan has landed the role of Jaime Sommers in NBC's forthcoming remake of the Bionic Woman.

22-year-old Ryan shot to fame in the top-rated BBC soap opera Eastenders, playing troubled teenager Zoe Slater, but hasn't made much of an impact in anything else of note, which makes the casting all the more unusual.

However, she's tall and exceptionally beautiful -- in the Jennifer Garner mode -- and if she can shake off the east London accent, she may be able to convince American viewers that she truly is composed of $50million-worth of discarded computer parts.

Every now and again a show with a cult following will be on the verge of getting the axe and you'll hear a story about fans banding together to try and save it. There are petitions, mass mailings, websites, and all sorts of projects involved. Unfortunately, more often than not, those campaigns are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and the shows disappear anyway. So, it's nice to hear a story about fans that actually pulled it off.

American fans of the BBC soap EastEnders sprang into action when WETA, the Washington D.C. PBS, threatened to cancel the show because of acquisition costs. After being told that two years of air time would ring up at $50,000, the group presented the station with 143 checks that added up to $52,504. That's putting your money where your nutty TV obsession is.