TVSquad

If you ever want to get a good idea about how a TV series comes into being, see the movie The TV Set, which stars David Duchovny as a schlumpy writer whose autobiographical series gets picked up by a network. One of the most telling scenes is where Duchovny presents an over-the-top ham that he thinks is so bad that he knows the network will reject him in favor of the more subtle actor he wants to play the lead. Unfortunately, the ham makes the network execs laugh and the subtle guy comes off as weird. Guess who the network picked to star in the show?

The reason why I mention this is that is but one of many reasons why even starring roles in television series get severely miscast. The most widely-cited case this year was Michelle Ryan on Bionic Woman; she was so busy trying to squelch her British accent that she came off as charmless and boring. But there have been other casting boners during the 2007-08 season, such as the otherwise-great Parker Posey choking on Amy Sherman-Palladino's words in Jezebel James. Also remember that not a lot of people liked the appearance of Britney Spears on How I Met Your Mother. And, heck, the Law & Order family must have a casting mistake in there somewhere, after all, they did unleash the horrible Elizabeth Rhöm on an unsuspecting public.

What are your choices for the season's most severe miscasting? Let me know in the comments.

Judd Apatow, who will forever be a hero to many TV viewers who loved the too short-lived NBC series Freaks and Geeks, is saying goodbye to television. But not before one final shot with the soon-to-be-released feature film The TV Set.

The movie stars David Duchovny as a series creator who butts heads with various studio executives (including Sigourney Weaver) who just don't get what he's trying to do with his TV show. And, yes, it's a version of what Apatow and The TV Set director Jake Kasdan went through when they worked on Freaks and Geeks.

No, the former X-Files star isn't broke and having a yard sale, The TV Set is a new film starring David Duchovny as a TV writer. It follows the ups and downs of a writer in Hollywood, from pilot pitch to filming. The movie also stars Sigourney Weaver, Justine Bateman, and Ioan Gruffudd.

This is the type of movie I'm definitely going to see, because I'm a writer and have an interest in how Hollywood works, but I can also nod in agreement when the article says "Yup, it's the kind of inside Hollywood dark comedy that Middle America loves." Heh.