TVSquad

Last week on The View, Sherri Shepherd showed off her new body, clad in a bathing suit, and now it seems there was more to her remake than just good health and looking better. Shepherd's Lifetime sitcom, Sherri, will premiere on October 5, and you just know it's her intention to score a big time success. Lifetime has had this in the works for months. This is the network's first fully-owned sitcom, so you gotta believe the net has a lot of faith in Sherri.

The show is based on Shepherd's stand-up, which is the same formula that worked for Roseanne, Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond), Tim Allen (Home Improvement) and a half-dozen other comics, and the exposure Sherri gets from The View won't hurt at all.

The same demographic that watches The View tunes in to Lifetime shows like Drop Dead Diva and Army Wives. Oh, and don't forget the Lifetime movies. Ladies love Lifetime.

Funnyman Graham Norton will be hosting a new reality pilot for Lifetime.

The new show will serve as a kind of popularity contest in which an audience of women vote off one woman at a time from a group of seven as they answer challenges and tackle different challenges. The Hollywood Reporter article doesn't go into much detail than that, so it's hard to say exactly what the hell the point of the show is supposed to be, other than showing women at their most judgmental and catty. Oh yeah, and the show was originally called Judgment Day, which probably isn't a good sign, either.

Norton will still appear in TV in the UK. The Graham Norton Show, his BBC2 series, hits BBC America on June 2. Previously, he hosted So Graham Norton, a Channel 4 series that was adapted into an American version which ran on Comedy Central for a short time.

Actor and comedian Matt Besser of Upright Citizens Brigade is producing a new broadband series for TBS.com, and he's looking for some pictures of sexy ladies to use in one of the episodes. Somebody writing on behalf of Besser, or perhaps Besser himself writing in the third person, has the details on his MySpace page. He's looking for "MySpace self portraits," those photos shot in just the right light and at just the right angle to make one appear far sexier than they do in real life. The pictures used will be part of a montage at the end of the episode.

Until Besser's new online series is launched, you should check out some of his prank work over on Prank.com, a site created by artist Joey Skaggs. The site was launched April 1, naturally.

A poll recently commissioned by the Oxygen Network --a channel continuously beaten out by the Hydrogen Network on the Periodic Table of Ratings -- revealed that women these days would much rather have a plasma screen television than a diamond necklace. The poll was meant to show how women are actually becoming more interested in tech gadgets these days. It also revealed that most women would rather have a new digital camera than a new pair of shoes. Apparently they didn't poll homeless women; I'm sure the results would have been different. Anyway, gentlemen, now you know what to get your lady for that next special occasion: a diamond-encrusted plasma television that dispenses shoes with a camera inside of them. That way you've covered all your bases.