Mariska Hargitay
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has been renewed for a 14th season, TVGuide.com has confirmed.
Cast member Ice-T shared the news on Twitter Wednesday. "SUPER EXCLUSIVE NEWS: SVU has officially been renewed for season #14. Tell a hater," he wrote.
Fall TV scorecard: Which shows are returning? Which aren't?
Although ratings have been ...
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Law & Order: SVU
Warren Leight joined Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as its showrunner just before star Christopher Meloni jumped ship. It was a particularly dismal time for NBC. Nobody would blame Leight if he wanted out of the long-running procedural after just one season. But it seems the opposite is true.
"I don't want it to be a victory lap," Leight tells TVGuide.com of a possible Season 14. "I want it to be 14 years down, seven to go, as opposed to 14 years down and it's been a good run."
The current season of SVU hasn't been its strongest, but it has perhaps been its most interesting. After the exits of Meloni and longtime showrunner Neal Baer, ratings have dropped (6.9 million/1.9 average versus last season's 8.8 million/2.7) and with little help from its lead-in, the struggling Rock Center with Brian Williams. But ratings don't tell the whole story.
"I get so tired of people saying that the show is down from Meloni," Leight says...
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Damages, Missing
When Kevin Bacon signed on last month to play a serial killer in the new Fox pilot from The Vampire Diaries producer Kevin Williamson, there was a catch: Bacon would only commit to star in 15 episodes a year. Eager to make Bacon sizzle in primetime, the network agreed.
Fox execs view the Bacon drama, should it go to series, as an opportunity to start airing more cable-like short-order TV series. ABC struck a similar deal this past year with Missing star Ashley Judd in order to accommodate her schedule. Only ten episodes of Missing were shot this year, and even in success, that number will never be more than 13.
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Neal Baer
A Gifted Man, which moves to its new 9 p.m. time slot on Friday, February 17, could use a bit of divine intervention. CBS still sees potential in the medical drama, which stars Patrick Wilson as a doctor haunted by the ghost of his ex-wife, but the show remains firmly on the bubble. Executive producer Neal Baer is no stranger to medical drama, both on screen and in real life. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Baer used to practice medicine between seasons as a writer on ER. Later, he made the transition to Law & Order: SVU, which he ran for 11 seasons. Now, as the creator of A Gifted Man, Baer has made several tweaks to the show in recent months, putting the focus on the show's medical setting (where Wilson's character is assisted by critics' fave Margo Martindale) and bringing in both Rachelle Lefevre as a love interest and ER alum Eriq La Salle as an old colleague. Baer answered our showrunner survey in the hopes that Man will be gifted with more viewers.
TV Guide Magazine: Friday night is usually date night. Why should I stay home and watch A Gifted Man instead?
Neal Baer: We're a cheaper date than
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Emily Deschanel, Katharine McPhee, Mark Harmon
Every week, editors Adam Bryant and Natalie Abrams satisfy your need for TV scoop. Please send all questions to mega_scoop@tvguide.com.
Can't wait for Bones to come back in April! Got any scoop until then? — Gina
ADAM: One of Brennan's books is being turned into a film, and wouldn't you like to know who Hollywood has chosen to play our blood-and-guts lovers? You will, when a murder on set brings Booth and Bones and their movie alter egos together. Booth's stand-in is an action star whose stunts aren't limited to filming. It seems his criminal history of drug use and assault are just attempts to make headlines on TMZ. The actress playing Brennan? Well, she's kind of a slut. No thanks, poetic license; we'll stick with the originals.
So Ivy won the role of Marilyn Monroe on Smash. But Katharine McPhee is in all those commercials! Safe to say that's not permanent casting? — Lucy
NATALIE: You're...
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Patrick Wilson and Margo Martindale
The future of CBS' A Gifted Man may still be up in the air, but executive producer Neal Baer hopes the show has packed its remaining episodes with enough punch to earn a second season.
Get more scoop on your favorite shows in our Winter TV preview
For starters, Friday's episode (8/7c, CBS) finds Dr. Michael Holt (Patrick Wilson) in the center of a hostage situation after he testifies that a young man charged with manslaughter and arson only committed the crimes because he was suffering from a brain tumor...
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Rachelle Lefevre and Patrick Wilson
When CBS' A Gifted Man returns in January, Patrick Wilson's Dr. Michael Holt will place his family jewels in the delicate gloved hands of the very sexy — and very married — Dr. Kate Sykora (Rachelle Lefevre). While not a sex scene, it...
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Diane Neal
Diane Neal is returning to the courtroom for an upcoming episode of CBS' A Gifted Man.
Neal's casting reunites her with showrunner Neal Baer, whom she worked with on Law & Order: SVU. "@DianeNeal Great to have you on A Gifted Man grilling Patrick Wilson on the stand," Baer tweeted on Friday.
CBS orders three more episodes of A Gifted Man
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Neal Baer
During his 11-year reign as Law & Order: SVU's executive producer, Neal Baer dissected the horrors of nearly every sex-crime scenario imaginable. But there's one story he never tackled. "We never explored on SVU what it's like for the child of a child molester to deal with what their parent has done," says Baer, who now executive produces CBS's A Gifted Man. "The legacy haunts the child of the molester as well as the molester's victim."
This storyline is touched on in Neal's new novel, Kill Switch (out December 13), a medical thriller he describes as "the best of SVU meets medicine." Neal jumped on the phone to give us a preview of what's inside the pages...
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Lana Parrilla, Jennifer Morrison
Once is not enough. Sometimes a second look, or a second episode, is necessary to convince a skeptic that a show is worth taking a risk on. So it is with ABC's dazzling but dauntingly precious Once Upon a Time (Sunday, 8/7c), which back when I was considering it for Fall Preview left me wondering: "Is this ambitiously whimsical fantasia the next Pushing Daisies cult fave or the next Eastwick insta-flop? (Either way, it will likely be an uphill climb to happily ever after.) It would be easier to love if it weren't so convoluted and campy."
But then ABC made another episode (the third, airing Nov. 6) available for review, and I started to find myself enchanted and beguiled, ready to curl up with more chapters of this fractured fairy tale. First, though, you have to digest the premise, and the overstuffed and often overripe pilot is a lot to swallow. We begin in a lavishly rendered fairy-tale land ...
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