An archive of articles about US television programmes and production.
As mentioned previously, Babylon 5 creator J Michael Straczynski is reuniting with former cast members to create some made-for-DVD B5 movies. More details are now emerging about who the main characters are, what the effects are going to be like and the shooting and release schedules. There’s a press release, too.
Justice, which I kind of liked but which I admit has been going downhill a bit since the first episode, has now been pulled from the Fox schedules indefinitely. Another one bites the dust, huh?
As well as US networks, this is all kind of disappointing for British networks since a number of their big acquisitions have already been cancelled. It might also be very disappointing for anyone who’s had to wade through my reviews over the last few months and had their hopes pinned on some of these shows appearing.
Here are the winners, though. UK viewers will see these trumpeted onto their screens from January next year for complete (and so far open-ended) seasons. Don’t forget, mid-season shows Raines and The Black Donnellys are still to air, so no one knows what’s going to happen to them yet.
ITV1/ITV2/ITV3/ITV4
Jericho (good to very good)
Friday Night Lights (okay to good)
Channel 4/E4/More4
Studio 60 (good)
Ugly Betty (very good)
Brothers and Sisters (absolute arse)
The Class (good to very good)
Five/Five US
Shark (below average to average)
SciFi Channel
Heroes (very good)
Living
Men in Trees (average to good)
FX
Brotherhood (good to very good. Already airing)
Dexter (outstanding)
There are a few stragglers whose fate is ostensibly still to be decided: Standoff (Fox/Sky One), Six Degrees (ABC/ITV), The Nine (ABC/Five) and Vanished (Fox/Five). But they’re all pretty likely to be hitting a dustbin/trashcan some time soon. Also Friday Night Lights’ fate is a little bit up the in air, but the smart money is on it getting a full season.
Not sure if US readers have noticed or not, but Amazon’s Unbox video downloads service is now offering you the chance to rent episodes of sci-fi series. Compared to iTunes, it’s pretty rubbish, given you can only watch the episodes for seven days before they self-destruct, but I’d thought I’d point it out anyway. Shows available include Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, Firefly, Babylon 5 and Doctor Who. Technical requirements are similar to the equally rubbish Five VoD service.
There are some interesting choices for Doctor Who, with old school stories such as The Aztecs, The Seeds of Death and The Mind Robber mixing it up with later stories (none of the new Who stories available). It’s worth noting that $1.99 will only get you an episode of Doctor Who, not a complete story, so you’ll have to pay $8 or so to rent all of The Curse of Fenric, for instance. You’d be mad to, but the option’s there.
Smith may have gone from US TV screens, but it lives on online. CBS is going to sell all seven completed episodes via iTunes, AOL and Amazon.com and show them free for a month on its Innertube service. All of those are US only. Sorry.
UPDATE: Ooh, ooh! Innertube works in the UK for once! UK viewers can watch all those Smith episodes right now. Or they can wait till ITV airs them. I also forgot to mention that there are copious production notes on the CBS site that explain what would have happened in the subsequent episodes that didn’t get filmed.
UPDATE 2: Actually, only episode 4 is viewable in the UK. Maybe the earlier ones are, too, but 5 and 6 aren’t. Bugger.
The multi-talented David Duchovny (I’ll leave you to decide what those talents are, since opinions vary) is working on not one, but two shows for US network Showtime. The first, in which he’ll star, sounds a bit Red Shoe Diaries-ish and features a sex- and drug-addicted novelist trying to raise his son. The second, which he’s writing, will be a comedy set in a yoga studio.
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