Question: I have a laundry list of questions about summer viewing: Is Life on Mars going to have a second season, or was it a one-off? (I'm scared to death of the American remake — I'm expecting Starsky & Hutch.) I was disappointed to hear about the bad ratings of Brotherhood — it's too good to be ignored. If there is no second season, will we be left hanging, or does the first series come to some sort of resolution? I know it's early, but what is the likelihood of Vanished making it through the season? Is Fox willing to take a chance based on the success of 24 and Prison Break, or will this be another Firefly/Wonderfalls/Reunion? Finally, what is your reaction to Denis Leary getting an Emmy nomination for acting but not one for writing? As good as he is as Tommy Gavin, his and Peter Tolan's scripts are the heart of that series. How could the writing be ignored?
Answer: There is a second series of Life on Mars, but no word on when BBC America will present
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The hot trend of the new TV season can be summed up in three words: "To be continued…." Serialized thrillers, sudsy dramas and even comedies with cliff-hangers beg the question: How many of these complicated stories will we be willing to follow each week?
Fox enters the fall race early with Prison Break's sleek new companion piece, Vanished (Mondays at 9 pm/ET) — not to be confused, though it will be, with NBC's upcoming Kidnapped. This is what you'd get if Without a Trace somehow turned into a cartoonish conspiracy chase thriller.
The missing person is the lovely wife of a Georgia senator, who disappears durin
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Question: This past weekend I watched the pilot of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip because I saw it on Netflix and thought it would be cool to get a jump on the fall season. I loved it! Is this a new marketing strategy? Don't you think the ratings for the premiere will suffer if a lot of folks have already seen it on DVD? Thanks, love your column.
Answer: Be on the lookout for more aggressive moves to get new series sampled this fall: on the Internet, through DVDs and elsewhere (such as the Heroes pilot screening at Comic-Con). NBC is using Netflix to get Studio 60 and the serialized thriller Kidnapped in viewers' hands, and as far as the network is concerned, getting the buzz started early is worth any small downside in premiere-week ratings. Cutting through the clutter of the new fall season (Studio 60 goes up against the CSI: Miami premiere) is the biggest challenge many of these series face, and technology is now giving them the tools to try new methods ...
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Question: The question about Ugly Betty being sentenced to death on Fridays made me think of the Law & Order time switch. When it was on the same night but one hour earlier, its ratings dropped. Will moving it to the "death slot" kill it, or do you think senior citizen L&O will be able to survive? If/when one of the lesser-quality new shows gets canceled, would NBC move L&O back to the Wednesday time slot, like they did after pulling Heist?
Answer: Law & Order will survive, if not thrive, on Fridays, but its numbers will drop there as it faces formidable competition in CBS' Numb3rs. (Pun not intended.) For NBC, having a proven veteran like Law & Order anchoring its Friday schedule (alongside other proven franchises like Crossing Jordan and Las Vegas) will keep the network in business on the night. But if Kidnapped does turn out to be an instant dud like Heist (it deserves a far better fate), NBC won't think twice before moving Law & Order back to its old home against the equally tired
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Question: Is The Biggest Loser going to return? I thought I read a while ago that it was, but I haven't seen it advertised or read anything about it lately. Just curious.
Answer: NBC has been resting it for the summer, but it's on the fall schedule. It will air Wednesdays at 9 pm/ET (opposite Lost, among others), and will be the sole reality occupant of that time period, sandwiched between the comedy block of Twenty Good Years and 30 Rock and the new serialized thriller Kidnapped. ...
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Question: I know it's still summer, but have the networks announced tentative dates for their season premieres?
Answer: As of now, the only network not to announce premiere dates is CBS, which will likely launch most of its new and returning shows the weeks of Sept. 17 and 24.
Here's how the others shape up: The season kicks off early on Fox, with Prison Break and Vanished on Aug. 21; then the limited reality series Duets on Aug. 29; Justice and Bones on Aug. 30; House and Standoff on Sept. 5; the comedies 'Til Death and Happy Hour on Sept 7; Nanny 911 on Sept. 8; Cops and America's Most Wanted on Sept. 9; Fox's animated comedy lineup plus The War at Home on Sept. 10; and MADtv Sept. 16. (The O.C. won't return until after postseason baseball on Nov. 2.)
On ABC, 20/20 officially kicks off Sept. 8; Dancing with the Stars returns Sept. 12 and 13; Wife Swap premieres Sept. 18; Grey's Anatomy and Six Degrees on Sept. 21; Ugly Betty and Men in Trees on Sept. 22; Extreme Makeover: Home
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Jeremy Sisto, Nightmares & Dreamscapes
Jeremy Sisto is on a hunt in each of his two latest TV roles. In the Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King episode "The Fifth Quarter," (premiering tonight at 10 pm/ET on TNT), he's an ex-con laboring to stay clean while on a quest to uncover millions in buried bucks. And this fall he's in Kidnapped, an NBC drama about an abducted kid and the unorthodox, don't-involve-the-Feds tracker (Sisto) enlisted to find him. TVGuide.com chatted up the actor about tackling such nightmare scenarios.
TVGuide.com: In reviewing your résumé, I don't really see much that is inherently uninteresting. A lot of your projects seem to have an edg
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Question: Which fall pilots would you deem worthy of my time?
Answer: I finished watching the last of the pilots over the weekend and I have fantastic news: For the first time in recent memory, the good fall shows easily outnumber the bad ones — at least based on the pilots I saw. As Desperate Housewives taught us, the second and third episodes tell us much more about a show's creative bones than a season premiere. With that said, here are the fall offerings that have the most FauxVo potential.
* Vanished (Fox) and Kidnapped (NBC): Among the things these two thrillers share in common: They both&
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Question: I have some big TV issues for next fall, since I think every network has come up with good and interesting concepts for new shows. But I don't have the time or energy to keep track of every single program. For example, on Mondays I have Heroes against Vanished and Two and a Half Men, and later, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is in the same time slot as CSI: Miami. Tuesdays are even more confusing: Boston Legal, Smith and Law & Order: SVU are all at the same time. Wednesdays are not easy, since Kidnapped and
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Question: I have a comment on a topic that I've never seen you address, and I could be the only one who feels this way. With so many new shows in the fall, it's really hard sometimes to keep them all straight, and the names of the shows often make this more difficult. They're not very distinctive! Last season, there were three sci-fi shows premiering, and they all had one-word names: Invasion, Threshold and Surface. I could never keep straight which one was on which network, and even though I had read your reviews and knew that you endorsed one especially, I could never remember which one. For this coming fall I've counted eight new series with one-word titles, and none of them are very distinguishable (Vanished, Standoff, Justice, Smith, Jericho, Shark, Traveler, Kidnapped). Just a note to the networks: If I need a visual aid to remember which shows I want to check out, I'm not likely to watch — unless they become hits and the name is repeated enough to remind me. Not a very good ...
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