On TV, it's the summer of the wife.
Barely had Desperate Housewives wrapped its third season than a sudden blitz began: USA Network's comic The Starter Wife (Thursdays, 9 pm/ET), ABC's insipid reality show Ex-Wives Club (Mondays, 9 pm/ET) and a fifth and final season of BBC America's campy Footballers Wive$ (starts Wednesday, 8 pm/ET).
Since Lifetime couldn't possibly sit this wave out, along comes Army Wives (premieres June 3 at 10 pm/ET), a sudsy home-front drama about military families set against a current backdrop of war and wrenching deployments. It fits this network's brand like a dress
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CBS has ordered seven half-hour episodes of its first animated series in 13 years, a U.S. take on the popular British series Creature Comforts, from the animation studio that did Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Says CBS Entertainment prez Nina Tassler, "We look forward to developing an American version that captures the same unique sensibilities" — and doesn't star Rena Sofer.
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In the good old days — say, a month ago — Nightline (weekdays at 11:35 pm/ET, ABC) spending a week in war-torn Iraq would have been something truly special. But Ted Koppel is gone, and with him goes a tradition allowing for context and perspective.
Instead, in the first week of a jumbled Nightline makeover, three correspondents/anchors jousted for airtime most nights. In the process, Terry Moran’s first-person stories — highlighted by a ride-along on a dangerous night patrol with U.S. and Iraqi troops — were just part of a very mixed bag.
The new Nightline isn’t terrible, but it no longer seems as essential because it feels so much less distinctive. In look and tone, especially when ill-chosen coanchor Martin Bashir revs up his strident tabloid engine, this Nightline lite resembles an uneasy cross of (yawn) the evening news and (yuck) a 20/20-style newsmagazine. Given its multitop
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