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Weekly TV Wrap Up – August 6th, 2009

Bruce Simmons — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:26:21 +0000

Today’s Weekly TV Wrap Up has some news about the Syfy channel picking up a show called Alphas, news on Chuck air dates, plus renewal news on In Plain Sight and other USA shows.

I’m also chatting about some Ghost Whisperer bits, Futurama voice casting news and some news about Medium on CBS. I’ve also found some casting news on Game Of Thrones.

Syfy Picks Up Alphas

Syfy has picked up a 90-minute action-adventure pilot called Alphas.

Alphas is about a team of ordinary citizens who possess hyper-developed neurological abilities. Each person has a slightly special feature about them, but as a team, they combine to have extra-special skills. It’s to be written by Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand), Michael Karnow and BermanBraun Television.

For whatever reason, NBC and ABC passed on Alphas while Syfy, having the opportunity, jumped on this superhero genre show.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

In Plain Sight

USA renewed In Plain Sight for its third season. Along with this show, they’re also looking to renew Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

It’s been noted that with these 2 shows, plus Burn Notice and Royal Pains, the network picked up all the shows that were slated for renewal. In the industry that’s a pretty rare event, especially for a cable network!

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Medium

This new season of Medium, starring Patricia Arquette, will be paying tribute to Night of the Living Dead.

The tribute episode, which airs the night before Halloween, will have Arquette inserted into footage of the George Romero classic.

On a light note, keep in mind that Medium has moved to CBS after NBC didn’t renew the show.

In a joking fashion, executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron said that CBS has already aired more promos than NBC did in all 5 years the show aired on that network.

Other things coming up for Medium include storylines about how Allison’s brain tumor affects her abilities. Her oldest child Ariel will rebel while the youngest, Marie, (Marie is played by twins!) will come into her own.

Of course, now that Medium shares a network with Ghost Whisperer, fans keep wondering about a cross-over. So far, no one is saying yes, but it’s noted that if the right quality script were to cross everyone’s desk, well, who knows.

Sources: TV Guide, Sci Fi Wire

Speaking of Ghost Whisperer

The new season of Ghost Whisperer will start with the birth of Melinda’s baby, and then will jump 5 years into the future.

The reason for this is that her child will have abilities a wee bit beyond Melinda’s and they can’t have an infant talking to ghosts!

CBS will be starting up a web series based on Ghost Whisperer, which will play parallel to the show.

Source: Comic-Con Panel

Thrones Casting News

Jennifer Ehle has been cast for Thrones, HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy book, Game of Thrones. She’ll be playing Catelyn Stark, Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) wife.

Source: THR

Futurama Voices To Stay

It was reported earlier that Comedy Central was looking to recast some of the voice power behind the Futurama characters.

No need to fret folks: The original cast of John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Maurice LaMarche and Tress MacNeille have all signed on the dotted line with 20th Century Fox TV to reprise their roles.

Thank god. The show would not have been the same without them.

Source: Variety

Chuck Air Dates

Despite announcements at Comic-Con, Chuck is not coming back any sooner than next spring.

NBC’s primetime president Angela Bromstad, said that Chuck’s reported early airing dates have been a bit optimistic and that the season 3 run of 13 episodes will start in March.

On an odd yet good note, NBC may extend the episode orders to let the show run into summer season. They haven’t decided yet, but if they did that it would give NBC and Chuck some great exposure since summer is the weak time of year for most networks and programming.

It would be daring, but I think it would be a good move.

Source: TV Guide

TV Ratings From Last Week

On the network side of things,

Nielsen rated shows from the Top Twenty amongst all viewers for the week ending July 26, 2009 includes the usual fare of shows, all repeats. As you can see, CBS really dominated the scripted drama world – as usual.

Of the top 20 shows, here’s how the scripted dramas did. Note: They are all repeats.

3: NCIS (CBS) – 9.7 million viewers.
4: The Mentalist (CBS) – 9.6
7: CSI: Miami (CBS) – 8.5
11: CSI (CBS) – 7.8
12: Law And Order: SVU (NBC) – 7.5
15: CSI: NY (CBS) – 7.3
17: Criminal Minds (CBS) – 6.5

On the cable side of things, out of the top 10 rated shows:

1: The Closer (TNT) – 7.5 million viewers.
2: Burn Notice (USA) – 6.6
3: Royal Pains (USA) – 6.4
8: NCIS (USA) – 4.2
9: Law & Order: CI (USA) – 4.2

Source: TV By The Numbers

There it is for the week that was. Screen Rant readers’ comments are always welcome.

Weekly TV Wrap Up – June 11, 2009

Bruce Simmons — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:42:46 +0000

Today in Screen Rant’s weekly TV Wrap Up, we have some great casting news for 24, we’ll be talking about David Carradine’s appearance in Fox’s new show Mental and we also have some Heroes casting news, the possibility that My Name Is Earl may be getting new legs, some news on Ghost Whisperer, The Sarah Connor Chronicles coming to DVD and a bit about Futurama’s, err, future.

We’ll wrap it up with ratings from last week. This week in the ratings section, I thought I’d try something new and toss in some cable viewer numbers.

24 Gets More Cast Members

I’ve previously reported that Freddie Prinze Jr. had joined 24 and now Fox has added more cast members to the popular action series.

The actress I’m most excited about seeing come on board is Katee Sackhoff. Sackhoff played the tough-luck viper pilot Kara Thrace / Starbuck on Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica and did a believably depressing characterization of Kara Thrace.

Sackhoff will be playing expert CTU data analyst Dana Walsh and I can’t wait to see what she brings to 24.

Also on board are Mykelti Williamson (Forest Gump) as the man in charge of CTU, Brian Hastings. John Boyd will play CTU analyst Arlo Glass, Chris Diamantopoulos and Jennifer Westfeldt (Grey’s Anatomy) is an ambitious journalist with ties to the situation as it unfolds.

The Emmy Award-winning drama starring Kiefer Sutherland returns for its next day with a two-night, four-hour premiere beginning Sunday, Jan. 17th, 2010 (9:00-11:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.

I can’t wait.

Source: FOX

Fox Will Still Air Their David Carradine Episode

Despite the sadness surrounding the events of recent time with David Carradine passing on, Fox is still planning to air the episode of their new show, Mental in which Carradine appears.

Mental is Fox’s newest House-like medical drama.

Carradine will play a famous professor, author and philosopher named Gideon Graham. Graham lapses into a non-responsive catatonic state after he gets struck by lightning.

It will be an odd and sad episode indeed. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I am sure that with recent events, the episode will probably net higher than expected viewer numbers.

Source: The Washington Post

Heroes

Earlier this month, a fellow Screen Rant scribe wrote about Robert Knepper and Madeline Zima joining the cast of Heroes. We can now add a few more names to that list.

Ray Park (who played Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode 1 and is in the new upcoming G.I. Joe movie) and Deanne Bray have also signed on the dotted line to appear in multiple episodes.

The word is that Park will be playing the role of a knife thrower while Bray will be the deaf love interest of one of the main characters.

Speaking of Heroes, NBC announced on June 4th the release of The Heroes Comic Reader for the iPhone.

The NBC press release states:

“Fans can pick up where the on-air story leaves off with original graphic novels that extend and deepen stories and characters.”

If that’s your thing, then this is a neat add-on for franchise for fans.

Source: NBC, Entertainment Weekly

Click to continue ‘Weekly TV Wrap Up – June 11th 2009′