TVSquad

I'm starting to run out of headlines, but here's a little more pilot casting news, via the Hollywood Reporter:

Dean Cain and Tamala Jones will both star in the CBS drama pilot Protect and Serve. Dean plays a veteran cop in this drama about street officers in Los Angeles.

Polly Walker (Rome) has joined the untitled CBS drama pilot from Cynthia Cidre. The series will focus on two powerful and feuding Latin American families: the Duques and the Samuels. Walker plays the head of the Samuel family

Oliver Platt, last seen in the Showtime series Huff, will star in the ABC comedy pilot The Thick of It, about workers for a low-level congressman. The show is executive produced by Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz and based on the British comedy of the same name.

Chris Lowell (Veronica Mars) will join previously cast Tim Daly and Taye Diggs in the two-hour Grey's Anatomy episode meant to serve as a springboard to a possible Grey's Anatomy spinoff.

Steve Howey of Reba has been cast in The Beast, about a womanizing veterinarian who hates animals. Tucker Cawley, a writer and executive producer for Everybody Loves Raymond, will also write and executive produce the comedy pilot for FOX. The series is based on the British comedy Beast.

I mentioned the other day that Harold Perrineau had joined the CBS pilot Demons. They've now cast the main character, Gus, and the winner is Ron Eldard. If you were paying attention, you might have seen him in the short-lived Men Behaving Badly or Blind Justice. Otherwise, think of him as the paramedic with issues that was dating Carol early in the ER run. It's not the best piece of casting I've ever seen. Eldard has never proven that he can be the dramatic lead for a show, but stranger things have happened.

Meanwhile, over at CBS, Hugh Jackman (Wolverine!) is producing something called Viva Laughlin. Lloyd Owen (Miss Potter) will star as a family man trying to open a casino in Laughlin, NV. Word is that Jackman will appear in the pilot and may have a recurring role on the series. Given just that bit of knowledge, I'm intrigued by the possibilities.

Eric Balfour, who plays CTU analyst Milo Pressman on 24, is slated to star in a new CBS cop drama, Protect and Serve, set in suburban Los Angeles, according to the web site Zap2it.

Balfour's character Milo was seen in CTU offices early in season one of 24, but then he disappeared for several years. He resurfaced this season not only in CTU, but as Chloe O'Brian's ex-boyfriend and constant irritant to another Chloe ex, Morris, also a CTU employee.

Aside from appearances on 24, I know Balfour best for his role on Six Feet Under where played troubled teen Gabe Dimas for a dozen episodes.

Las Vegas is an odd show. It doesn't really get much press, but just kind of chugs along doing well enough to keep NBC happy. It's one that I've watched for a long time. Apparently someone likes the cut of creator Gary Scott Thompson's jib though. He now has two new shows in the works.

Over at CBS he has a script commitment for Protect and Serve. It is a police drama that Thompson descibes as having "a procedural edge to it." That sounds like it is right up CBS' alley.

Meanwhile, NBC has also given a script commitment to an untitled drama about a New York cop that makes for Hawaii after losing his family on 9/11. It's suggested that this one will have a Magnum P.I. feel to it. Let's hope it's more Magnum P.I. than Hawaii.