On Thursday's season finale of 30 Rock, Liz Lemon revealed what she thinks is a dream summer vacation: 12 weeks of community service on a chain gang. She gets to be outside, wear comfortable clothes, garden, and learn Spanish! But we know that Tina Fey has higher standards. To that end, we've come up with a handy list of activities for her to do on her hiatus (besides having her second child):
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Noah Wyle will be back on TNT this winter in the latest high-adventure installment of the successful Librarian franchise, The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice. Other returning cast members Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin join newcomers Bruce Davison (X-Men, Knight Rider) and Stana Katic (Heroes) in a new conspiracy that leads Wyle to New Orleans to protect the Judas Chalice from falling into the hands of notorious vampire Prince Vlad Dracul. The first installment in the series became the No. 1-ranked movie on ad-supported cable in 2004, and the sequel placed among the top five cable movie telecasts of 2006. Production began in New Orleans earlier this week, but no firm premiere date has been set. — Adam Bryant
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Perhaps possibly coming not so much soon, but maybe eventually, to a TV screen near you:• Emmy winner Jane Curtin is Jayma Mays' secretary in the ABC comedy pilot Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office.• Angus MacFadyen (Saw III) is Marisa Tomei's editor and former flame in CBS' The Rich Inner Life of Penelope Cloud. OK, shorter titles, pilot people.• Lex Medlin (Happy Hour? Bueller?) is Ricki Lake's hubby in ABC's The Middle.• Jonathan Chase (Veronica Mars' Josh) and Kyle Bornheimer (Blades of Glory) have boarded the CW's Dash 4 Cash.• Dana Ivey (Oz) is on hand for The Return of Jezebel James (Fox).• NBC's Area 52 is now titled Area 57, in a crafty if not blatant bid to suck up to ketchup enthusiasts.All the above is courtesy of Variety and the Reporter, but never, ever from News of the World.
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Reports of the death of the TV sitcom were, thankfully, premature. New critical hits like My Name Is Earl, Everybody Hates Chris and the steadily improving The Office have set a high bar for the new and returning comedies that entered the fray this month. Just getting Scrubs back on the air after an inexcusable fall hiatus is reason enough to celebrate, while some of the newbies hope to fill the romantic-comedy void left by Sex and the City and Friends. Here’s my quick take on the mid-season comedy crop. (I dismissed NBC’s generic buddy romp Four Kings in an earlier column.)
ScrubsTuesdays, 9 pm/ET, NBCHeard it before? Thankfully, yes. The antics are as fresh as ever now that this endearingly irreverent medical comedy has returned — finally — with back-to-back episodes of bawdy slapstick and barbed verbal w
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As part of its mid-season shake-up, ABC has announced that Season 2 of Dancing with the Stars will premiere Thursday, Jan. 5 at 8 pm/ET with a two-hour special, then air 90-minute installments starting the following week. (Take that, Earl!) Dancing's half-hour results show airs Fridays at 8, starting Jan. 6. Also on the new schedule: Hope & Faith moves to Fridays at 8:30, to make room for the new drama In Justice, debuting Jan. 6, and the dysfunctional-family comedy Crumbs, starring Fred Savage, Jane Curtin and William Devane, bows Thursday, Jan. 12 at 9:30.
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