TVSquad

Part James Bond, part Jason Bourne, all Jeffrey Donovan. That's the recipe for the coolest spy on TV today, Michael Westen on Burn Notice. Meeting Jeffrey Donovan recently, I was impressed with not only his charm, good looks and dedication to his craft, but also his determination to shoulder the responsibility and reward of his very own primetime series.

Nobody's handed anything to Jeffrey Donovan. He's been at it for a while, doing notable turns in CSI: Miami and Monk, playing recurring characters in The Pretender and Touching Evil, and practically stealing Hitch from Kevin James and Will Smith by playing a nasty S.O.B.

Like his alter ego, Jeffrey Donovan is a very cool customer. He never lets you see him sweat, even when he's got ever right to in the glare of the spotlight, the heat of the Miami sun, and the hardball questions of the media roundtable he was facing. Okay, we weren't all throwing hardballs, but as this Q&A shows, Jeffrey D. can handle himself in any and all situations.

Just in time for tonight's second season premiere of Burn Notice comes this little piece of news from the studios at NBC.

Two guys on the staff of Late Night with Conan O'Brien are so ticked off at the ads for the USA show (USA is part of the NBC Universal family) that appear in the building that they decided to deface them. The insults range from dialogue bubbles that say "It 'Burns' when I pee" and "Thanks for the 'Notice' " to this entry on the Late Night blog where the staffers complain about the ads and explain their actions. It is kinda funny how many of these ads NBC puts in their own building.

Of course, the blog entry isn't all bad and acts as a nudge-nudge wink-wink push for the show. Despite the graffiti, the Late Night guys do say that the show is "awesome," "smart," and "funny," and they even want to make sure you watch the show tonight. (And I'd like to repeat that too - watch Burn Notice tonight at 10 on USA!)

Bravo's top-rated and highly acclaimed reality food show, Top Chef, has big plans for the fifth season. Like real estate, it's all about location, location, location and Top Chef has chosen a most unique place, somewhere you might not guess in a game of 20 questions. I'm not going to reveal the place until after the jump, because there may be some of you out there that want to be surprised.

Just to recap, Top Chef has already spent seasons in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago. They've also had special episodes and finales in Napa Valley, Las Vegas, Hawaii and Aspen and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Traveling to interesting and even exotic locales is part of the fun, giving the contestants a chance to incorporate the regional foods and the style of that part of the world.

Okay, if the suspense is getting to you -- I know it is -- go to the jump and see where season five of Top Chef is going to be...

On my recent visit to the set of Burn Notice, I had the pleasure of meeting the cast, including the irrepressible Bruce Campbell, the plucky Gabrielle Anwar, and the fascinating star of the show, Jeffrey Donovan. They were all wonderful and I was thrilled to participate in a round-table interview with them. However, when I had the chance to shake the hand of Sharon Gless, the Emmy-winning actress who starred in Cagney & Lacey, The Trials of Rosie O'Neill and played amazing characters on Queer as Folk and Nip/Tuck, I have to confess -- I gushed. I couldn't help it. She's Sharon Gless!

I discovered that as brilliant as she is a performer, Sharon Gless is also a class act with the media. She talked about another Cagney & Lacey, Tyne Daly, acting, playing villains, Kim Cattrall and much more. Read on and you'll see -- as I did -- why you'd gush to if you were face-to-face with Sharon Gless.

Miami in June is hot. Very hot. On the set of Burn Notice, however, everything is cool. In fact, when I arrive at the Coconut Grove studios where the USA spy drama is shot, I find myself smack dab in the middle of a full-fledged film studio.

The old convention center, where I remember going to an indoor flea market in the late 1970s, has been completely transformed. There are trailers, production offices, standing sets, all geared up and working to bring Burn Notice back for season two.

On USA's spy-action-comedy series Burn Notice, there are great actors all around. Recently, I had the chance to spend a day on the set of Burn Notice (more on that next week!), and share in round-table interviews with the stars of the show.

Here's one of those wonderful actors, the irreverent and brilliant Bruce Campbell. As Sam, Jeffrey's old friend -- and sometime nemesis -- from the spy wars, Campbell is having a ball filming in South Florida and stealing scenes like nobody's business. Oh, and he smells good, just like Old Spice.

Q: What is the character of Sam about?

Bruce Campbell: He's about 50. No, he's like the other characters in the show, damaged goods, which is why I like him.

(S07E06) "We need someone to check in this cup," Simon about Paula's cup after she wandered around aimlessly singing "lalala" before hugging a contestant and telling him he's through to Hollywood.

It looks like Idol may have listened to me; I always knew I had that kind of pull. What made last night's episode such an improvement on the season thus far was continued tonight. We spent a lot less time on pointless back stories and a lot more time on the singing. In all honesty, I bet these changes really are in response to the feedback and reviews the show's been getting this year so far. After all, the footage is already shot, so how hard would it be to do some last minute editing before it goes to air.

Is Hollywood finally waking up and smelling the census report? Add to the growing list of shows centered around Latino families CBS' Los Duques. Starring Jimmy Smits, who also serves as the program's executive producer, the show focuses on the Duques, a powerful South Florida family of rum merchants. In typical telenovela fashion, the family's ailing patriarch leaves control of the company to an outsider, Smits' character Alex Vega.

Smits' production company El Sendero has two additional projects set up at FX and ABC. The FX program, The Inside, focuses on a former Special Forces operative who gives up his identity to infiltrate a drug cartel. The ABC project is an epic miniseries about immigration told through several interconnected storylines. The miniseries will be written and directed by Gregory Nava, who directed Smits in the feature film My Family/Mi Familia.

Ana Claudia Talancon has been cast as the lead in Whitney, a new comedy for HBO about a group of sexy women in Miami who take advantage of men by making each men think they're the only ones in the women's lives. The pilot was written by Lisa Schrager and will film in Miami. Ana Claudia Talancon was last seen in theaters in Richard Linklater's film Fast Food Nation.

There's not much information on this new series, so all I can say is I hope it doesn't fall into the newish cliche of smart, sexy women manipulating stupid men. I'm not saying women can't be smart and sexy, and I'm definitely not saying men can't be stupid, I'm saying that mix has been done before. I want to know what Whitney will bring to the table that hasn't been done before.

(S01E12) What an absolutely spectacular show. It's going to be a shame if Michael C. Hall doesn't get the Golden Globe because he certainly deserves it. It's funny because at the beginning of the season I said I was going to have a hard time picturing him as anything other than part of the Six Feet Under ensemble. Now that season one of Dexter has come and gone, I can't imagine how Hall ever played the role of David Fisher for five seasons because this is the show I associate him with. He owns this role.

Prince has agreed to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show in February. This is actually a safe choice after Janet's breasts in 2004 and the Rolling Stones' bleeped-out performance earlier this year. The old Prince might've been a problem for censors, but the new Prince is squeaky clean. He's a Jehovah's Witness who refuses to perform any of his kinkier material (the song "Cream" comes to mind).

The Super Bowl is Sunday, February 4th in Miami. Once again, it will air on CBS.

(S01E11) Oh. My. God. This may very well have been a perfect hour of television. Could this show possibly be any better? Frankly, I have no idea how I'm going to spend my Sunday nights after next week's season finale. Maybe I'll take up crocheting? Or try watching Brothers and Sisters? Nah... Sally Field freaks me out. Doesn't matter really. Nothing else will compare to Dexter. For those that have doubted Showtime and this show still hasn't sold you on the quality of the network? Man, maybe you should be the one taking up crocheting.

(S01E10) Wow... I am just so in awe of this show. It does everything that good TV is supposed to do. I'm not quite sure how to talk through all of this, but let's get one thing out there: Malcolm-Jamal Warner gained a ton of weight. As much as I enjoyed seeing him guest star as Dexter's lawyer buddy, every time he was in a scene I couldn't stop picturing him tap-dancing in the opening sequence of The Cosby Show. That guy is forever Theo Huxtable.

Moving on, let's talk about blood.

Those of you who saw Borat last weekend probably also saw the incredibly hilarious trailer for the Reno 911! movie, called Reno 911: Miami. In the film, the team goes to Miami for a law enforcement convention and then ends up taking over for the Miami PD. From Dangle's short shorts to Wiegel's trash-talking on the beach... you're gonna love it. Plus, the whole cast of MTV's The State makes an appearance. The trailer is now up exclusively on Australian Yahoo! and it plays kinda crappy on a Mac (where's the love, y'all?).

I'm getting conflicting reports about when it will be released: Wikipedia says it's February 23rd, but Whitney at USA Today says it's not until May 10. Unfortunately, the Reno 911! fan site hasn't been updated in a year so it was no help. If you know a release date, put it in the comments!

*Update: Thanks, Whitney! The movie comes out in the states on February 23rd.

(S01E06) Dexter did it again. Wowed me. Amazed me. Edge of my seat for the whole hour. Thank god Showtime already gave it a second season. Smart move.

Well it had to happen, because thus far things have been going way too smoothly for Dexter. The sh*t has finally hit the fan. Following Dexter's abrupt decision to also kill the smuggler's wife in last week's episode, we find out that the Ice Truck Killer is even more resourceful than we could have ever imagined.

Summoned to his own crime scene, Dexter is shocked to walk into the run-down trailer to find the body of the wife that he dumped in the ocean just hours earlier. That means the ITK had to dive down over a hundred feet to recover the corpse. Now there are certain levels of screwin' with people. Me? I'm a big fan of putting plastic wrap on the toilet seat. But this? This takes dedication.