24 Trailer

After a terrible sixth season, 24 returns with a seventh series that looks a lot better. Not sure how we are meant to believe that Tony Almedia, back from the dead, is the bad guy, lets hope they pull it off. Here's a look at the new season which premieres in the US on January 13th and presumably will air on SKY One from January 19th.

Schedule Stuff

SKY One will premiere the Battlestar Galactica movie Razor on Wednesday December 5th. The two hour special precedes a final run of 20 episodes set for next year.....The second series of Brotherhood opens up on FX on Sunday January 6th......If you missed out on Richard Jeni, the late great comedian who took his own life earlier in the year, ITV4 screen one of his HBO specials at 1.15am on Saturday November 3rd off the back of a showing of Chris Rock:Bigger and Blacker. I saw Jeni live and he remains one of the best stand-ups I ever seen.....Good news for ITV, and they need some, ABC have picked up Pushing Daisies for a full season. The Barry Sonnenfeld produced fantasy series that has Anna Friel among the cast, has been one of the hits of the new US season. Destined for ITV1, the network will now have to figure out where to schedule it, a worrying thought given their track record for killing top US shows stone dead.......FOX have picked up Back To You for a full season, the Kelsey Grammar/Patricia Heaton sitcom is suffering from mediocre reviews and rating, but Channel 4 will at least get a mighty set of 24 shows.

The first cancellation is.......

Viva Laughlin. The CBS series, picked up in the UK by Living, has been axed after just two episodes. Hugh Jackman produced the show which was an adaptation of the BBC series Blackpool. Lloyd Owen and Madchen Amick were among the stars. CBS will replace the show with a CSI repeat. There's a surprise.

Bits and pieces

The final episode of the Sopranos airs next Sunday on E4 at 10.30pm......The comedy The Big Bang Theory has been picked up for a full season, good news for Channel 4 who bought the show.....meanwhile ITV will be worried about the Bionic Women on NBCwhich is losing audience numbers week on week and might not be around much longer.....Andrea Roth from Rescue Me will appear on Lost next season, it returns to SKY One in February.....The same network will give us the new 2 hour Battlestar Galactica movie as a Christmas present.....Jon Stewart has signed up for 2 more seasons on the Daily Show which airs here on More4. His contract runs until 2010, the same time David Letterman is on the Late Show until, prompting speculation that Stewart may replace him at CBS......

Lots of Sci-fi stuff

Bravo are set to premiere ABC's Masters of Science Fiction series, a week on Thursday at 10pm with repeats on Saturday and Sunday. Sam Waterston, Terry O' Quinn, Malcolm McDowell, Anne Heche, John Hurt, Brian Dennehy and James Cromwell are among the stars, Mark Rydell and Michael Tolkin and Jonathan Frakes among the directors.

If you've not managed to catch Kyle XY on Trouble yet, don't panic, its coming to BBC2 next year.

E4 will premiere the short-lived sitcom The Class from next Saturday at 6pm. The show from the creators of Friends was killed after one season on CBS.

Mad Men and Army Wives

BBC4 will screen the hit US comedy Mad Men next year. The 13-part series is set in the 1960s at an advertising agency in New York with executives figuring out how to sell tobacco and alcohol to the public. Its written by Matthew Weiner, a veteren of the Sopranos. Its been picked up for a second season already.

Living have picked up Army Wives starring, among others, Catherine Bell and Kim Delaney. This US Drama from Lifetime is about the wives of soldiers serving in war. Its based on the non-fiction book Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage by Tanya Biank.

In other news ABC Family have renewed Kyle XY for a third season of ten episodes. This is in addition to the nine episodes being produced for next Spring in the US to backend the 13 currently being shown by Trouble in the UK.

The good, the bad and the ugly

While I was away I was lucky enough to see a bunch of the new shows. The two I liked were Dirty Sexy Money on ABC which stars Peter Krause as a lawyer trying to keep a Kennedyesque family out of trouble and Cane on CBS which has Jimmy Smits as the head of a Cuban family in Miami. However I am not sure either of them are going to make it. While good there are not great...yet. DSM will be on Channel 4 next year with Cane on ITV1. That network also have the much raved about Pushing Daisies which I am yet to see.
All the rest was pretty disappointing, Bionic Woman (ITV2) is boring and Michelle Ryan out-acted by everybody else on screen, Life starring Damien Lewis is lifeless. Lewis is a great actor in a lousy show. Back To You(c4) starring Kelsey Grammar looks like show from back in the eighties. Reaper (C4) is very funny but how on earth they can keep it going for a whole season remains to be seen. Journeyman (SKY One) is a rehashed Quantum Leap. Lets hope there's better stuff on the horizon.