TVSquad

Some day I should probably type up an official list of the actresses who, by their mere presence, will guarantee I'll watch a series. The fact that I saw every episode of Freddie should serve as proof that Mädchen Amick is on that list. After following that up with Viva Laughlin, I think we can all agree that this latest role has her career moving in the generally upwards direction.

My Own Worst Enemy was already on my short list of new shows to keep an eye on in the fall. It's an interesting premise, has Christian Slater, and the previews look great. The addition of Amick just makes it that much more intriguing. She'll be taking over the role of Henry's wife that was originally played by Yara Martinez (The Unit). It's a bit of rough luck for Martinez. Before this she was set to appear in that ill-fated Spaced remake.

This season, Law and Order was looking for a way to get some new energy and interest in the long-running NBC Emmy-winning series, so on the judicial end of the show, they promoted Sam Waterson's Jack McCoy to DA and cast Linus Roache as Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter. Roache is one of those familiar faces that you've seen on other shows, maybe a movie or two, but here on Law and Order he's making you sit up and take notice. At least that's how it is for me. After watching the first two new episodes when the show returned recently, I wanted to know more about this guy. For starters, why did he remind me of a young Bobby Kennedy?

Well, it turns out that Linus Roache played Robert Kennedy in the mini-series, RFK. The Kennedy connection was even alluded to in last week's episode; at the end of the show, after McCoy had to defend his decision to prosecute overzealous New York City cops by taking the stand in open court, Roache's character, Cutter, gives him a tie pin that once belonged to RFK. With the last line of the show, Cutter says, "I found it on EBay."

Well, here's a quirky little plot twist no one expected.

Even though NBC pulled the show - twice - the network started showing the eight unaired episodes of Kidnapped last night (or early this morning) at midnight! They'll run the show at this time each week this summer. Not sure if it can be seen at that time in all areas. I know it wasn't on at that time where I live, so it's probably on at different times overnight.

This is an interesting move by NBC, considering the episodes have been available on the web site and the complete series was released on DVD. Maybe the other networks can follow NBC's lead and show short-lived/canceled shows overnight.

When I was asked to review the DVD of the series Kidnapped, I eagerly jumped at the chance. After all, I've been a fan of the show since before it even aired: I visited the set, I went to the premiere, I reviewed the pilot, I was among the throngs at TVS and elsewhere that reported that the show was cancelled, and now I get to review the "thanks for everything, fans!" DVD. I feel like I witnessed the show's birth and death, and now I'm attending its funeral.

Despite the show's quality, it never had a chance; saddled with a bad time slot (Wednesdays at 10), NBC showed four episodes, then told the producers to stop at 13, shuttled the show to the Saturday death slot, then canned it after one Saturday airing.

When CBS first announced their new show Moonlight there were a lot of people out in tvland that raised an eyebrow. A vampire? Who just happens to be a private detective? Romantic drama with a mortal? It wasn't a tough jump to Angel. I was willing to wait and see, because there are a lot of ways the show could go. It wouldn't necessarily have to be a rip-off of Angel.

Now comes word that in addition to recasting the female lead, the network has brought in David Greenwalt as Executive Producer/Showrunner. Yes, the same David Greenwalt who was a writer/producer for Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and is credited as co-creating Angel. It's getting a little harder to give anyone involved the benefit of the doubt.

That doesn't mean the show isn't going to be good. I'd go so far as to say the addition of Greenwalt makes the show look like a more attractive option for your television viewing schedule. Along with the his Buffy and Angel work, he was also the showrunner for NBC's Kidnapped, and ABC's Miracles. While both of those shows came and went rather quickly, it wasn't because they were poorly made.

There has been an awful lot of talk about CBS canceling Jericho. Over at Observer-reporter.com, they've taken a hard line and decided the fault lays squarely at the feet of the network itself.

Jericho was one of the few new dramas that finished out the season. Heavy duty serials like The Nine, Vanished and Kidnapped were all cut short before reaching their finale. I, myself, was a fan of Jericho, but even I knew it's chances of renewal were slim. Personally, I feel that if the show had revealed some of it's secrets a little earlier, more viewers may have stuck around.

We're about a week away from the upfronts, the annual back-patting festivals the broadcast networks hold to introduce their new fall schedules. TV Squad will be ready, providing you, the loyal reader, with coverage of who's in, who's out, and what's new on the five broadcast networks (yes, I'm counting the CW as a full broadcast network, even though it's looking like it'll air mostly reality shows next year).

So, it seems to be a good time to look back at our coverage of last year's upfronts, to see what was considered news, which shows became hits, which shows never aired, and which pilots looked promising but mostly ended up causing each network piles of money, bad press, and misery.

Click on the network name to see to our coverage of that network's 2006 upfront:

That's one of the revelations in this Forbes mag piece about Jeff Zucker and NBC. It says that not only is it possible that NBC will cancel Law and Order (the first one, CI and SVU are pretty safe), Zucker and Kevin Reilly are thinking seriously about making The Office a one hour show.

Hmmm...a one hour Office? I don't know. Will that be too much of a good thing? Bigger isn't necessarily better.

Zucker also discloses that when NBC gives its upfront (on May 14), there will be 5 new shows announced: three dramas, one comedy, and one reality show. I've never been good at math, so I'll leave it to you to decipher what that means about which current shows will and won't return.

[via TV Tattle]

Christian Slater is coming back to weekly television.

The actor has signed to star in a new NBC drama called Dirty Little Secrets. He'll play an investigative reporter who tackles the stories that "get swept under the carpet." The show will be produced by Arymyan Bernstein, one of the producers of the acclaimed Clive Owen film Children of Men.

It's good to hear that NBC isn't abandoning scripted shows after canceling so many this season (Kidnapped, Andy Barker, P.I., The Black Donnellys, probably Studio 60, Raines, etc). This new show has an interesting premise. Anything but another reality show or game show, eh?

Here are the new TV DVDs, in stores tomorrow.

• Are You Afraid of the Dark? - Season 3
• Columbo - Mystery Movie Collection 1989
• The Drew Carey Show - Season 1
• Ed, Edd, 'n Eddy - Season 2
• Flipper - Season 1
• Ironside - Season 1
• Kidnapped - Complete Series
• Morel Orel - Vol. 1
• NCIS - Season 3
• The Odd Couple - Season 1
• Planet Earth - The Complete Collection
• WKRP in Cincinnati - Season 1

Besides announcing the renewal of four shows, NBC Entertainment Kevin Reilly spent his executive session talking about "tent posts" and spewing sports analogies. But all of it said that he was pretty optimistic about the future of his network.

He definitely thinks being patient with shows is imperative, especially when you're working from behind as his network is. "Vision is a word that gets thrown around a lot but is in short supply," he spoke of shows like The Office, that started out slow and built audience. "When you got it, grab it." Among his new "vision" shows are 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, and Studio 60.

(Part 2 of 5) Leave it to the networks to take a good idea and copy it so many times, it runs the format into the ground. Remember what happened after the success of Seinfeld and Friends? We got show after show of groups of friends hanging out together, most of which were mediocre at best. The same thing happened this past fall; due to the success of 24, Lost, and Prison Break, viewers were greeted with a slew of serialized shows, supposedly playing out a single plot over a season or seasons. The shows were of every type, from comedies (Big Day) to tense kidnapping dramas (Kidnapped, Vanished).

Out of all the serialized shows that premired in 2006, only two -- Jericho and Heroes -- can be thought of as successful shows. What did the networks and the producers of these shows do wrong? I can think of a few reasons, which I'll list after the jump.

Lost Remote has a bunch of year end lists from the folks at Nielsen covering TV, movies, music, and books. The one I found really interesting is the top time-shifted shows of the year. It seems that this is really not a list that you would want to show up on. NBC places Studio 60 (#1), Friday Night Lights (#5), 30 Rock (#5), and Kidnapped (#9), all of which are having well publicized struggles with ratings.

ABC's lone entry on the list is The Nine (#7), and we all know how that turned out. Surprisingly, the CW ties NBC as the most time-shifted network with Gilmore Girls (#3), Next Top Model (#4), Supernatural (#7), One Tree Hill (#9), and Smallville (#9) making the list. The only top time-shifted show that has been able to translate that into ratings success is Heroes (#2).

If nothing else, I think this adds to the case that the current ratings system is broken. For so many low rated shows to show up on this list, something is getting lost in the numbers.

... Two Programming Blunders.

It's been an interesting year for network TV, especially since the new fall season began. The set of pilots that the networks presented to audiences were at the same time the highest-quality and hardest-to-follow in years. That's why, in mid-season, we're now seeing that most of those pilots have either quickly disappeared or are hanging on for dear life.

Of course, this is all the networks' fault. The short-sightedness they used when programming their schedules this year has been mind-boggling, causing more viewers to scurry to other sources -- cable, YouTube, BitTorrent -- for their entertainment. Here are two of their dumbest moves:

...fiiiiiiiiiiiive canceled shooooooooows!

1. The Nine (ABC): Yeah, the network can say it's "on hiatus" and that "the remaining episodes will be shown in 2007," but we all know what it means. And the reason I picked this as #1 is because this show had more buzz and positive reviews than any other show before the season started. I think more critics picked it as a the "best" than any other show. Then the show kept losing viewers, even though it was on after Lost, so ABC pulled it from the schedule. That's really unfortunate. It was a good show, though I think that after the pilot viewers were expecting a different type of show than the straight drama with a twist that we got. Hopefully Tim Daly will have better luck with his new show next year.