In Which We Weep for the Future of Television

So, I’ve been scouring all the entertainment news the last couple of days looking for some good update fodder. And you know what? All the entertainment news this week is crap. Seriously. Unadulterated rubbish.

NBC announced plans for their summer schedule and it’s almost all reality dreck. More American Gladiators. The Baby Borrowers. Celebrity Circus. Nashville Stars. America’s Got Talent. Thanks, but I’ll pass. Oh, and apparently Paris Hilton is appearing on My Name Is Earl. It’s not enough that she contaminated Veronica Mars with her presence, now she’s got to get her bad acting all over our Earl, too?

And then I read that Adam Carolla says he’s going to be hosting the upcoming American version of Top Gear. (That sound you hear right now is Mikaela wailing and gnashing her teeth.) Cheese and crackers, have the suits at NBC ever watched Top Gear? The whole appeal of the show is that the that hosts are so lovable and hilarious that you can’t help but adore them, even if you don’t care a fig about the cars they wax poetic over. Adam Carolla? Neither lovable nor hilarious. See my previous rant on the Americanization of perfectly good foreign TV series for more invective.

But perhaps the most depressing news of all is that E! has greenlighted a reality show focusing on Lindsay Lohan’s mother. Because that’s exactly what the post-rehab starlet needs to ease her down the road to recovery: a reality TV crew following around her train wreck of a family. Sometimes I weep for the human race.

If anyone needs me I’ll be huddled in the corner watching the Doctor Who series four cinema trailer on a loop.

TOP GEAR: Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends

Plan now to stop at the grocery store for popcorn on the way home, because tonight’s episode of Top Gear simply screams out for entertainment-related foodstuffs. The boys are going to build amphibious vehicles and attempt to cross the English Channel. The best part? Episode descriptions state that the team is trying to build amphibious vehicles once again. They’ve tried this lunacy once before and are giving it another go. That right there is Top Gear in a nutshell. Can’t wait to curl up with a bowl of popcorn, a drink with a bendy straw, and “Flight of the Valkyries,” which there is a very good chance they’ll use. Can the Top Gear crew accomplish what Napoleon could not? Wouldn’t bet against them.

TORCHWOOD: Have You Met Miss Jones?

While BBC America’s Torchwood has improved this season, I hope we’re not setting ourselves up for disappointment with high expectations for this weekend’s episode, “Reset”. You see, Martha Jones, the most recent traveling companion on Doctor Who, will be showing up for a visit, and she is sixteen kinds of fabulous. In fact, I wonder if she’ll solve the mystery in the first 15 minutes and spend the rest of the episode swapping Doctor stories with Captain Jack, because she is exactly that much more together than the Torchwood crew. In fairness, she’s gotten the chance to be that much more together than everyone on the planet. And apparently, the Doctor has paid off one of the 8 billion favors he owes her by getting her a great job that brings her in contact with Torchwood. Where I expect her to wipe the floor with all of our bumbling alien hunters and build a new Hub before the first commercial break.

Of course, if the Torchwoodians get their incompetence all over her, all bets are off and I start spraying the whole kit and caboodle with pterodactyl-attracting barbecue sauce.

ABC and NBC Squabble Over SCRUBS

NBC execs were reportedly irked yesterday when The Hollywood Reporter claimed that Scrubs was moving to rival ABC.

“NBC has a license agreement with ABC Studios, which includes a right of first negotiation and first refusal to extend the series term beyond this season,” said NBC Entertainment/Universal Media Studios co-chair Marc Graboff. “We’re living under the terms of this license agreement, and we expect ABC Studios to do the same.”

The fate of the show has been hanging in the balance since the writers strike ended. Scrubs produced 12 episodes before the strike; seven have already aired, and five more are in the can. But this was meant to be Scrubs‘ final season, and fans have been wondering whether NBC would bring the show back for a proper send-off. NBC has reportedly floated several scenarios to producers, including ordering one final episode or producing the remaining episodes direct to DVD. But before committing to a big series finale, NBC would want assurances that Scrubs won’t come back for another season on ABC.

ABC president of entertainment Steve McPherson developed Scrubs during his tenure at the studio (back when when it was called Touchstone Television) and he has been vocal about his intent to pick up the comedy if NBC drops it. In fact, ABC Studios and NBC have rarely seen eye-to-eye on Scrubs, and the studio has complained in the past that the series never got its due from NBC, which repeatedly shifted the modestly-rated show around its schedule–a whopping 17 times between Tuesday and Thursday (and once, on Wednesday) slots during its seven seasons on the air, according to Variety. For the past two seasons, NBC has waited until the eleventh hour to pick it up.

Seems like an awful lot of trouble over a show that’s widely accepted to be on its last legs. All the fans are really asking for at this point is a chance to say goodbye and a respectful send-off. Is that too much to ask?

Low-rated QUARTERLIFE Shuffled to Bravo

So much for that experiment. After premiering to NBC’s lowest 10 p.m. ratings in seventeen years, the supposedly groundbreaking internet-to-primetime series quarterlife has been pulled from NBC’s schedule. It will reportedly finish its run on NBC Universal’s Bravo cable network.

“It never should have been a network show,” said co-creator Marshall Herskovitz at a Harvard Business School conference Wednesday. “It’s too specific … from the first three minutes, I knew it wasn’t right.” That’s certainly a different tune than the one he was singing back in November, when he and NBC Entertainment co-chair Ben Silverman described the deal as a “revolutionary step” in the creation of television entertainment.

On Thursday, Herskovitz attempted to clarify his statement. “We’re deeply grateful for NBC’s efforts to make quarterlife a success on network television,” he said. “However, I’ve always had concerns about whether quarterlife was the kind of show that could pull in the big numbers necessary to succeed on a major broadcast network. … We live in a media world today where many shows are considered successful on cable networks with audiences that are a fraction of those on the Big Four. I’m confident that quarterlife will find the right home on television as well.”

According to Silverman, the quarterlife experiment was “so worth the try” despite its disappointing performance. “The Web site traffic went up a huge amount and we continue to try new things and new models,” he said. “It’s very inexpensive but we hoped for higher ratings.”

A Sneak Peak at the DOLLHOUSE Characters

TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello has reportedly gotten his hands on a list of the principal characters in Joss Whedon’s upcoming series, Dollhouse. We already know about the show’s lead–Echo, a member of a top-secret program, who can be programmed with different personalities, abilities and memories depending on her mission–to be played by Buffy alum Eliza Dushku. Now take a look at the folks rounding out the cast of characters:

ADELLE DEWITT- The 40ish iceberg who runs the Dollhouse where the human Etch-a-Sketches reside.
PAUL BALLARD – The 30something G-man who is slated to become an offbeat love interest for Dushku’s “impressionable” Echo.
BOYD LANGTON – Echo’s handler and father figure.
TOPHER BRINK – The technogeek who enjoys his job as a Doll programmer maybe a little too much.
SIERRA – The knockout Doll who is as close to a friend as Echo has.
VICTOR – The distractingly handsome Doll who is called upon to play everyone from Errol Flynn to Robert DeNiro.
NOVEMBER – The Tracy Turnblad of the Dolls.
DR. CLAIRE SANDERS – The beautiful older woman with whom Topher is smitten.

UPDATE: Forget Ausiello, Spoiler TV has the actual descriptions being used for the casting process:

DOLLHOUSE,
TV Pilot / TV Series – 1 Hour for FOX.
CAST, Eliza Dushku;
EXEC PROD, Joss Whedon;
PROD, Elizabeth Craft, Sarah Fain;
DIR/WRTR, Joss Whedon.
Contract: SAG.
Shoot Dates: Spring, 2008 (in Los Angeles, CA).

Adelle DeWitt
40 something, any ethnicity, beautiful, sophisticated, cold as an alp. Runs the Dollhouse with an efficiency that is both ruthless and protective. Would die before she showed anyone how lonely she is. Series Regular;

Paul Smith
30s, any ethnicity, good-looks hardened by a cynical distaste for most of humanity. An FBI field agent, he’s been chasing the urban myth of the “Dollhouse” long enough to have lost any shot at promotion. Becomes obsessed with, and twisted romantic foil for, Echo. Series Regular;

Boyd Langton
Late 40s-60, any ethnicity, gruff, about to make the descent from ‘good-looking’ to ‘fatherly’. An ex-cop, Boyd is Echo’s ‘handler’ – her guard/bodyguard. Hates himself for taking this job, bu he’d lay down his life to protect the people he feels he’s exploiting. Series Regular;

Topher Brink
20’s, any ethnicity, genius programmer who’s articulate, nerdily attractive and blithely amoral. He’s responsible for imprinting the dolls – and making sure they stay unaware of anything. Is fascinated by the science and kind of digging the illegality. Fun to be around, but might not be remotely trustworthy. Series Regular;

Sierra
20’s, Asian or any ethnicity – certainly not Caucasian. Strikingly beautiful. A Doll like Echo, she has every personality in the world but her own. Is not as self-aware as Echo, but is instinctively drawn to her as a friend. Series Regular;

Victor
20’s, any ethnicity, handsome and fit. A Doll, and the other closest thing to a friend Echo has. Childlike when he’s inactive, and everything from Errol Flynn to (young) DeNiro when he’s active. Series Regular;

November
20’s, any ethnicity, beautiful and heavy. Another Doll, a hopeful child in the house and everyone else you need her to be outside. A comforting, radiant presence, who tends to get fewer of the criminal gigs and more of the personal ones. Recurring;

Dr. Claire Saunders
30-60, attractive, smart and a little sad. Looks after the physical well-being of the dolls. Has an acid wit that she usually reserves for Topher, who may only be kidding about being smitten with her. (Or he may not). Recurring.

Foreign Imports Drive Pilot Season

With this year’s pilot season truncated by the writers strike, networks seem to be relying increasingly on foreign imports to pad their schedules.

Canadian imports Flashpoint and The Listener recently were handed series orders by CBS and NBC, respectively. David E. Kelley is doing a remake of the BBC series Life on Mars for ABC that has some of us at TV Bacon very concerned. And NBC is planning remakes of both the British Father Ted and the Australian Kath & Kim.

Yesterday, CBS picked up two more pilots based on foreign imports. NY-LON is a remake of a six-episode U.K. series that aired in 2004, about a man and a woman who attempt a long-distance romance between New York and London after a chance meeting. The Office‘s Rashida Jones starred in the original, but it’s unknown if the actress, currently appearing in Fox’s mid-season comedy Unhitched, will reprise her role. Mythological X, from Veronica Mars scribe Diane Ruggiero, revolves around a woman who begins revisiting all of her old boyfriends after a psychic tells her that she has already dated the man she is destined to married.

And today Fox greenlighted two pilots based on British series: Outnumbered, about parents struggling to raise three intelligent children, and the dreaded McG-produced remake of the Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright hit Spaced. Another Fox comedy based on a British import, Don’t Bring Frank, has reportedly begun casting, although it has yet to receive a pilot pickup.

Since I can think of all of one whole successful American remake (NBC’s The Office) and a whole string of spectacular failures (Viva Laughlin, The IT Crowd, and Coupling, just to name a few of the most recent), one must wonder why, exactly, the networks continue to cling to remakes. On its face, I suppose it must seem like an easy out–take a proven formula and refit it with a fresh American cast and writing staff. Simple as pie, right?

Not so much. Because it takes more than just a great premise to make a show work. Just like it takes more than just a great actor or a great writer. It takes a mysterious, magic formula that combines all of these things, along with a hearty does of that undefinable quality known as chemistry, to hit the butter zone.

Okay, so it worked with The Office. But only because they just happened to bring together one of the best writing staffs in television with one of the best comedy ensembles in television. And even then it took them almost a full season to hit their stride. It wasn’t until they stopped following in the footsteps of the British original and started to develop their own unique voice for the series that it really came into its own.

If anything, I’d venture to say that it’s actually much harder to turn a remake into a success, because you have to fight an uphill battle to move out of the shadow of the original, especially if you’re remaking a show like Spaced or Life on Mars that’s widely available in the U.S. To borrow a phrase from another series to spawn a limp remake, it has to be better, stronger, faster.

Otherwise, why should I watch a watered-down American copy when I can enjoy the real thing in all its glory? Which is exactly the question I suspect audiences will be asking themselves this fall.

When One Door Closes, a DOLLHOUSE Opens

Ousted Women’s Murder Club creators Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft have become the first two staff writers to join Joss Whedon’s highly anticipated new series, Dollhouse, according to TV Barn’s Aaron Barnhart. The two former Angel scribes had no sooner gotten back from cleaning out their CBS offices when they received an email from their former boss: “I’m really sorry—and is it too soon to ask you to work on Dollhouse?”

Dollhouse, which has a seven-episode order from Fox, is scheduled to go into production in six weeks.

Squee! It’s…

Squee! It’s Nicholas Brendon, y’all!

On tonight’s rerun of Criminal Minds, that is. I’m going to go think about how much I wish Kitchen Confidential had made it and how much I miss Buffy now–see you tonight on CBS.

Squee! It’s…

Squee! It’s Aasif Mandvi on Jericho tonight! While he tends to pop up on crime shows from CSI to The Sopranos to the various Law and Orders, you might best remember him either from the notable Sex and the City episode where Miranda’s mother dies or as the best correspondent The Daily Show has had since “Even Steph(v)ens” was put out to pasture.