Lorraine Bracco by Craig Blankenhorn/HBO
Being a mobster's shrink seems to have been quite the panacea for Lorraine Bracco, who memorably played Tony Soprano's put-upon psychotherapist on the HBO hit. Not only has she just finished shooting a Lifetime pilot called Long Island Confidential (in which she plays the mom of a homicide detective), but TV Guide is told she'll show up in a recurring role in Lipstick Jungle, NBC midseason series based on Candace Bushnell's follow-up to Sex and the City. Bracco will portray the duplicitous nemesis of the movie studio chief played by series star Brooke Shields. Looks like she might have learned a lesson or two from her former patient. — Ileane Rudolph
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Question: I'm a faithful reader of yours, and I'm hoping that you might share what you've heard about the possibility of Lifetime's Side Order of Life returning for a second season. It didn't seem to get much attention after its premiere, but I found it to be a charming little show for Sunday evenings to help me ease back into the work week. I particularly enjoyed Diana-Maria Riva's performance as Vivy. It was great to see a strong yet vulnerable woman fighting a devastating disease with such grace and aplomb, not to mention being treated as sexy and desirable without being skeletal-thin! There was enough resolution in the finale that I can accept it as the series ending, but I would enjoy checking in to see how these characters have proceeded with their lives. Any word on its fate?
Answer: No word yet. Lifetime is currently in development mode, shooting two pilots (one with Lorraine Bracco and one with Beau Bridges and Anne Archer), and I'm told that once they're completed, the
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Molly Shannon by John Sciulli/WireImage.com
Saturday Night Live alumna Molly Shannon is set to star as Kath in Kath & Kim, NBC's pilot adapted from an Australian comedy. The role of the daughter has yet to be cast, says the Reporter.... Sopranos shrink Lorraine Bracco has joined the Lifetime pilot Long Island Confidential, playing mom to a female detective (Alison Elliott).... Law & Order: SVU star Ice-T's real-life (and astoundingly proportioned) wife, Coco, will play the widow of a dead wrestler in an upcoming episode of the Peacock procedural, says the New York Daily News.
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Katherine Heigl and Kevin Dillon by John Shearer/WireImage.com
And some people worried that getting Ryan Seacrest to host this year’s Emmy telecast was going to be the producers’ worst idea. That’s before we got a look at the set, an unwieldy and unappealing theater-in-the-round setup that looked more suitable for the new American Gladiators revival than for an awards show. The nominees, half of whom saw only the backs of the various presenters and performers, had a deer-in-the-headlights look every time Seacrest approached them or the cameras awkwardly cut to them. They appeared to be sitting in penalty boxes, not deluxe auditorium seats.Honestly, though, we poor schnooks at home were the ones suffering the penalty here: as in, confronted with one of the worst Emmy telecasts I can remember. As Emmy years go, I’m actually at peace with the majority of the winners, given who was and wasn’t nominated (and we’ve been over that frustrating ground plenty of times since the July nominations). Learning who won was a lot m...
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Kyle Chandler in Friday Night Lights by Van Redin/NBC Photo
Remember how Charlie Brown used to end up on his back every time he went to kick the football after Lucy pulled it away? Well, that was me, in the pre-dawn of Thursday morning at the TV Academy building in North Hollywood, as the first Emmy category (for best drama series) was read aloud. Amid a gaggle of impatient media crews and anxious publicists, I once again felt sucker-punched by the cluelessly inexplicable whims of the Emmy nomination process. (Go here for a list of nominees.)The football analogy applies because, once again, the Emmy system dropped the ball, failing to acknowledge NBC’s critically worshiped freshman underdog Friday Night Lights, instead finding room for ABC’s cartoonishly lurid freak show Boston Legal (on the basis, so I hear, of a rare detour into quality with a post-Katrina episode). A chagrined Academy source tells me that Friday Night Lights came close, but speculated that it may have flown too far under the radar in a way overcrowded field. Hea...
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Melissa Anderson, 10.5: Apocalypse
If you thought NBC's 10.5 pushed the envelope when it came to heaping natural disaster upon natural disaster, you ain't seen nothin' yet. The new 10.5: Apocalypse (May 21 and 23 at 9 pm/ET) picks up immediately after the harrowing events of the original and continues the devastation, threatening to split the North American continent right down the middle if super-seismologist Kim Delaney and her team of FEMA heroes can't find a way to glue God's green earth back together. Playing first lady to "President" Beau Bridges in the sequel is Melissa Anderson, who has come a long way — 25 years, in fact — from her Little House on the Prairie days.
TVGuide.com:
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