In the US: Tuesdays, 10pm, FX
In the UK: Starts next month on Five USA

Miss Walker: Texas Ranger? Then have I got the show for you.

Actually, that's kind of unfair. That comparison might have you thinking Justified isn't any good, when actually it's very, very good. I mean, it's based on an Elmore Leonard story so how bad do you think it could be?

In something of a break from FX's traditional dark, manly shows about manly men doing manly things, Justified is a light, manly show in which manly men do manly things. In this case, Timothy Olyphant plays a US Marshall working in Miami who really quite likes shooting the bad guys he's chasing - and as a result gets shipped back to his home town in Kentucky.

There, he's faced with catching up with his backstory, which apparently involves lots and lots of women. Which is no surprise, given it's the charismatic Timothy Olyphant playing our hero Raylan Givens.

Here's a promo for you.

• Sixth series and Christmas special confirmed
• There almost certainly will be a Tom Baker Big Finish play
• From the new series press launch, a video interview with Matt Smith…
• …and a video interview with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, including a clip from the first episode

• Final Destination 5 a go
• Jamie Foxx joins Bruce Willis on Kane and Lynch
• Trailer for Predators
• New trailer for Kick-Ass
• Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher join Ivan Reitman's Friends with Benefits
• Film rights to Andy McNab's Nick Stone series acquired
• Tim Burton doing 3D stop-motion Addams Family movie

British TV

• Lucy Gaskell joins Casualty
• Adam Crozier to earn at least £1m a year at ITV [subscription required]
• Justified acquired by Five USA
• Wii and iPhone now responsible for 4% of iPlayer views each
• John Pilger to make Afghanistan documentary for ITV1 [subscription required]

Canadian TV

• Lots of money spent on US shows

US TV

• Beau Bridges to co-star in The Rockford Files
• Skeet Urich gets a pilot
• Ashley Tisdale to star in Hellcats
• Human Target's ratings hold up
• BSG's Michael Trucco to recur on Castle
• A returning True Blood character [spoilers]

Come episode two, it's all change. Now we're a comedy with a hint of drama. Given the cast includes a number of people best known for their lighter touch (Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Monica Potter, Dax Shepard), that shouldn't have been a surprise, although one could have argued that sticking the comedy in the first episode as well would have been a good idea.

The second episode was actually a lot better than the first episode. The first tried to simply say that parenting is hard. Look everyone, parenting is hard. But we knew that and showing us a bunch of people we can't really relate to having trouble parenting isn't going to make the message any deeper.

Episode two, however, managed to give us more relatable characters involved in situations that we could at least empathise with: working mum finds stay-at-home dad has closer relationship with kid than she does and feels threatened by the hot stay-at-home mums who he's friends with; single mum finds it hard to date and get a job after years out of the workforce; and guy finds he has a young kid he never knew about and doesn't know how to be a father.

Episode three continued more in that vein, although it started to veer dangerously close to clunky drama at times. Working mum (former swimming champion) finds she's not involved in teaching her daughter to swim and tries to help out; single mum has dating issues; new dad has to look after his son for a few hours and doesn't know what to do. Some of these were a little painful, with working mum's attempts to teach her child woefully bad, as though someone had simply said "Hey, how do dads cock up when trying to help their kids? Let's give all that to her. It'll be the same, right?" But on the whole the episode wasn't bad.

Running as the main plot strand throughout the episodes is Krause's/Potter's discovery that their son has Asperger's Syndrome. For mainstream US TV, which has something of a bad record of portraying autism and autistic spectrum disorders, this has actually been surprisingly well handled and accurate. It's a little odd – so much so that the couple's teenage daughter points it out in episode three – that in San Francisco of all places, a child with Asperger's wasn't spotted until he was six or seven and there aren't many places except private schools that have the expertise to deal with it, but hey, it's TV. The American pathological model of ASD – OMG there's something wrong with our child, he's broken – is also jarring to UK eyes.

But here's the problem with the show. Everything we see is pretty much from a male point of view and reflects mainly male concerns about parenting. None of the female characters have female friends that they talk to, and when they have a problem, they talk to one of the male characters about it. When a male character has a problem, he talks to a male character about it. As a result, the women are simply more problems or sources of problems for the male characters to deal with rather than vice versa or characters in their own rights.

So the show feels emotionally unsatisfying because of this lack of character interaction and development. Although it has some interesting aspects to it, it doesn't really speak to things as well as it should do. I'm enjoying it to some extent because of the cast, particularly Erika Christensen and Monica Potter (even though yet again she has very little to do) and the comedy when it works. But it feels like it's not quite firing on all cylinders yet.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob's prediction: It'll last a season, but this is NBC so who knows what'll happen after that.

Now we have a Dr Pepper ad featuring the character of Dr Spaceman (played by Chris Parnell, who also voices Cyril on Archer) from 30 Rock that's promoting both the show and Dr Pepper. That's just confusing.

[via]

• Steven Moffat offers Steven Spielberg the chance to direct an episode
• Karen Gillan reveals more about her character, as well as her inability to do anagrams [spoilers]

Films

• Peter Mullan to star in The Lion Inside
• Glee/Heroes' Jayma Mays to star in The Smurfs…
  
• …with Hank Azaria playing Gargamel
• Spooks' David Oyelowo to play Martin Luther King
• Amanda Seyfried to star in McG's The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League
• Trailer for Jason Statham's The Mechanic
• Trailer for The Romantics
• Reese Witherspoon signs up for blog-based The Pioneer Woman
• A Tron: Legacy set visit or two (with pics) [spoilers]

British TV

• Five to go HD on Sky
• Five won't help FlashForward if it's cancelled

• CTV acquires The Borgias

US TV

• Larry Charles creating Steve Jobs satire
• Pilot casting
• Brotherhood's Jason Clarke to star in Shawn Ryan's Ride-Along
• 24's Howard Gordon to adapt Israeli format Prisoners of War
• Justified FX's second biggest debut ever
• Daylight savings time continues to cause ratings drop
• Robert Wisdom to appear in Burn Notice [spoilers]
• James Marsters joins the Hawaii Five-O pilot
• Jane Espenson to write for Game of Thrones

• Sigourney Weaver joins Vamps
• Rose McGowan joins Conan

British TV

• Virgin to offer HD for free [subscription required]

US TV

• White Collar's Natalie Morales joins Parks and Recreation
• Goran Visnjic to star with Katee Sackhoff in pilot, Dougray Scott and Molly Parker to star in another pilot + more casting
• Tom Selleck to get a pilot?
• The Pacific starts with 3.1m viewers
• Trailer for David Simon's Treme
• Chuck gets all-time lowest ratings
• Ashley Scott joins NCIS

• Behind the scenes of the new series [spoilers]
• An interview with Karen Gillan

Film

• Orlando Bloom and Jonathan Rhys Meyers join Albert Nobbs
• Paul Bettany and Rufus Sewell join The Tourist

• Trailer for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

British TV

• BBC to launch second Freeview HD service because Five can't?
• BBC shouldn't have bid on Harper's Island [subscribers only]
• Sci Fi HD coming to Virgin
• ITV1 HD also coming to Sky

US TV

• SyFy working on Three Inches, Alphas and another BSG spin-off
• Mia Maestro to star in Cutthroat + more pilot casting
• Actor leaving True Blood for The Good Wife?

• Judy Greer, Robert Forster and Beau Bridges join George Clooney on The Descendants

Radio

• Just under 8,000 complaints about 6Music closure

British TV

• ITV to launch ITV1 HD on Virgin
• Skins gets two more series and another new cast
• BBC1 to make four-night siege drama
• Sky to launch Hallmark Channel HD
• Kevin Bishop Show returning?

Canadian TV

• MovieTime goes HD

US TV

• Casting on Lights Out and Hung, plus a departure on White Collar [spoilers]
• Colm Feore to star on The Borgias
• Sarah Shahi's Facing Kate gets a series order
• BSG's James Callis to join Eureka
• Mary Steenburgen to star in Southern Mom, Xander Berkeley joins Nikita + more casting
• Summer Glau joins The Cape
• Annabeth Gish joins FlashForward
• Paul Schneider leaving Parks & Recreation as a regular
• Guy Pearce, Evan Rachel Wood and Melissa Leo join Kate Winslet on Mildred Pierce
• Julie Roberts to guest on Glee?

• Wii game a go

Film

• Hugo Weaving to play the Red Skull in Captain America?
• Trailer for Shrek Forever After
• Sam Worthington to play Dan Dare?
• Leonardo Da Vinci – action hero?
• Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman to star in Change Up

Radio

• What the Beeb plans to do after closing 6Music and the Asian Network

British TV

• Sky looking for 13-part dramas [subscription required]

US TV

• Firefly/Dollhouse's Alan Tudyk to co-star on Rockford Files
• Pilot casting, including Malcolm McDowell in Franklin & Bash
• John Voight signs up for Fox's Midland
• Katherine Heigl to be released from Grey's Anatomy
• Michael Madsen to guest on 24
• Grace Park and Moon Bloodgood to guest on Human Target
• Nurse Jackie season two trailer

• Gary Oldman, Malin Akerman, Harvey Keitel and Milo Ventimiglia to star in Criminal Empires for Dummys (sic)
• Guy Ritchie working on King Arthur film

British TV

• Lenora Crichlow cast in BBC3 comedy Dappers
• Ashes to Ashes series three press pack
• Living acquires Drop Dead Diva [subscription required]
• 196 of the 890 programmes put out by S4C are rated as having zero viewers

US TV

• 24's Elisha Cuthbert joins Happy Endings
• Pilot casting, including The Wire's Sonja Sohn on Body of Evidence
• Amy Acker to guest on Human Target

It's a world gone mad, I tell you. Mattel are releasing Ken and Barbie dolls based on Mad Men's Don Draper, Betty Draper, Roger Sterling and Joan Holloway.

The dolls come with period accessories like hats, overcoats, pearls and padded undergarments, but no cigarettes, ashtrays, martini glasses or cocktail shakers…

The pairing of Barbie and “Mad Men” is more interesting than the typical licensing agreement because of their shared history. Barbie was introduced in March 1959, and the first episode of “Mad Men” is set in March 1960.

“ ‘Mad Men’ represents so beautifully the universe that created Barbie,” said Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, because the series is about the selling of the American consumer society.

The personification of Betty Draper as Barbie is particularly resonant, Mr. Thompson said, because she represents “the wife who lives in her dream house whose soul is eaten away.”

“I have this fantasy of an 8-year-old getting a set” of the dolls, he added, “and saying: ‘Mom, can Chelsea come over? We want to play “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.” I’m going to be the organization man, and she’s going to be the soulless drone.’ ”

What games do you reckon are actually going to be played?

Film

• John Krasinski to star in Something Borrowed
• Viggo Mortensen replaces Christoph Waltz as Sigmund Freud on Cronenberg's The Talking Cure
• Kevin Macdonald to direct Murder Mystery

British TV

• Blue Murder cancelled
• George Gently back for two episodes
• Pics from Sherlock

US TV

• Judy Greer joins Tax Men, Jerry O'Connell joins Defenders, Jason Biggs join True Love and Madchen Amick joins Pleading Guilty
• Jimmy Smits gets another legal drama
• Keri Russell to join Will Arnett in Wilde Kingdom?
• Precious's Gabourey Sidibe joins The Big C
• Spartacus halts production of second season
• Trauma returns with low ratings
• SyFy to update Little Red Riding Hood
• Numb3rs' Navi Rawat to guest on Castle
• 24 may only have two days to live
• Pics of John Barrowman in Desperate Housewives

• An interview with Matt Smith
• Bus with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan to tour the UK

Film

• Liam Hemsworth joins Arabian Nights
• Proper trailer for Tron: Legacy
• The Book of Genesis: 3D
• Trailer for American: The Bill Hicks Story

Theatre

• Laurence Fishburne's Riff Raff coming to the Arcola Theatre

British TV

• Bravo acquires Spartacus: Blood and Sand
• Film4 HD and E4 HD to launch only on Virgin [subscription required]
• Men outnumber women two to one on TV
• True Blood gets 206k
• Benidorm back for fourth series – one ep possibly live

Canadian TV

• Canadian viewers prefer really bad sitcoms to drama

US TV

• Brittany Snow and 24's Sarah Wynter join pilots
• Lennie James joins Hung + more
• Nick Nolte to join Lucky?
• Heroes' Sendhil Ramamurthy joins Covert Affairs
• Jean Smart joins Hawaii Five-O, Tom Cavanagh joins Edgar Floats
• Numb3rs' Rob Morrow joins The Whole Truth
• Coby Bell joins Burn Notice as a regular [spoilers]
• Brothers and Sisters gets a fifth season [spoilers for Lost]
• American Idol's Katherine McPhee turns down Trauma in favour of Community

• David Tennant to do Karate Kids narration
• Billie Piper and David Tennant to star in Love On The Murder Mile

Awards

• The results of the Oscars
• The results of the Razzies – surprising overlap with Oscars

Film

• Midnight Run 2 will happen
• New Iron Man 2 trailer  

• Sleepless in Seattle: the musical

US TV

• Scott Foley joins True Blue, plus other pilot casting
• Kathy Bates to star in Kindreds?
• Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar to star in Franklin & Bash
• Worst Week's Kyle Bornheimer joins CBS pilot
• Fringe gets a third season
• The Office, Community and 30 Rock all get another season each
• NBC to pick up 24 if Fox doesn't?
• House re-runs to include extra footage