James Blunt by Stephen Lovekin/WireImage.com
Next week, James "You're Beautiful" Blunt will tape a Las Vegas guest appearance during which he'll sing his single, "Same Mistake," at a funeral. The episode will air early in the new year but probably still too late to shoot the ditty up the charts.... The Black Donnellys' Michael Rispoli and Prison Break alum Romy Rosemont have been cast in The Oaks, Fox's semi-spooky, semi-comedy pilot about three families occupying the same house in different eras. Alas, Rosemont's hiring means the luminous Gina McKee (Hugh Grant's wheelchair-using buddy in Notting Hill) has been canned. — Ben Katner
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Angie Harmon in Women's Murder Club by Danny Feld/ABC
My loyalties are so divided on Friday nights. I want ABC’s so-so new crime drama Women’s Murder Club to do well enough to bring some much-needed eyeballs to the charming romantic comedy Men in Trees, which finally returns from a cruel nearly eight-month hiatus. With James Patterson’s name as a selling point for Murder Club (though he’s not writing this series any more than he appears to be penning half of the books that go out with co-writers’ names on his ubiquitous book jackets), the show certainly has a shot at commercial success, even on a night that’s widely considered a graveyard. Remember: This same night, and this same time period (9 pm/ET), is where the original CSI launched to even less fanfare, and the rest is TV history.But I also don’t want anything to take audience away from Murder Club’s competition, most notably NBC’s ever-fragile Friday Night Lights, which offers another superb episode this week. Even if like many observe...
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Moonlight courtesy Monty Brinton/CBS
Numbers was Friday night's top-rated program with 9.16 million total viewers, a 20 percent plunge from its year-ago season premiere. In a close second was Las Vegas, whose two-hour opener averaged 9.12 mil (just a Tom Selleck mustache hair off last year's). Like Numbers, Ghost Whisperer (8.65 mil) was down — 14 percent — from last fall's premiere. CBS' new 9 o'clock Friday series, Moonlight, was sampled by 8.63 mil, demonstrating solid retention out of J.Love yet coming up well short of underappreciated time-slot predecessor Close to Home's most recent opener (in both total viewers and key demos). Can't blame it on a lack of online advertising.Fox's K-Ville "encore" was watched by 2.6 mil, better than the numbers Nashville was putting up.Saturday's "controversial" Heroes rebroadcast drew about 3.6 mil, I hear, but the actual tally of unique, nonduplicated viewers (to be added to last Monday's audience) isn't expected until Tuesday.
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Question: Any scoop on Las Vegas?
Answer: Producers are giving James Lesure a pretty nifty Christmas gift this year: A Christmas Carol-inspired episode built around Mike Cannon!
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Camille Guaty, Josh Duhamel, Molly Sims and James Lesure by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage.com
If Tom Selleck is Las Vegas' "new James Caan," then who is being called upon to fill Nikki Cox's... (hmm, I best not complete that thought). TVGuide.com has learned that Camille Guaty, familiar to TV fans from her runs on Prison Break (as Maricruz No. 1) and The Nine, is joining the NBC drama this season as Piper Nielsen, a "feisty new casino host." Hey, as long as they save some "feist" for Sam, I'm down with that.
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The Singing Bee's Joey Fatone with The Honey Bees by Trae Patton/NBC Photo
He dropped names as diverse as Norman Lear, Uri Geller, Isaiah Washington and Jerry Seinfeld. He teased an all-celebrity version of The Apprentice (with a half-joking promise to extend an invitation to Rosie O’Donnell). In describing his vision for NBC's immediate and long-term future, the network’s boyish new co-chair Ben Silverman showed his affinity for both packaging and programming TV in an enthusiastic debut performance in front of the nation’s TV critics on Monday morning.Though he took the stage alongside the relatively subdued co-chair Marc Graboff, whose expertise is on the business side, this was Silverman’s show all the way, and he wasted no time in announcing some surprising programming deals and a few aggressive scheduling changes, including turning Monday into an all-fantasy night and shifting Friday Night Lights an hour earlier on Fridays, so it’s now cozily hammocked between the strong franchises of a relocated Deal or No Deal and Las Vegas,...
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Jerry Seinfeld by Chris Haston/NBC Photo
A flurry of announcements from the Peacock regarding the upcoming season of television (in addition to Isaiah going Bionic, that is):• TV icon Norman Lear is producing an hourlong dramedy about a widowed mother who reenters the workforce and is thus pitted against her late husband's Wall Street adversaries.• Jerry Seinfeld will play himself on the Oct. 4 second-season opener of 30 Rock. Quips Tina Fey, "Finally, my parents have an excuse to watch the show." Love. Her.• My Name Is Earl and The Office will launch their new seasons on Sept. 27 with hourlong episodes.• The new series Chuck has been relocated to Mondays at 8, while Friday Night Lights has been moved up an hour to Fridays at 9. Leading out of FNL is Las Vegas, which returns Sept. 28 with a two-hour episode.• The Apprentice is returning with a "celebrity version" in which famous(ish) faces vie for the Donald's favor and in turn raise bucks for charity. Trump says this incarnation "will bring our wo...
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Not everyone’s happy to go hi-def. “I don’t know why anybody really wants to see people in hi-def,” Private Practice star Kate Walsh tells TV Guide at a June 28 party for skincare maven Kate Somerville in L.A. “Do we need to see people’s pores and their sweat?” Molly Sims says shooting Season 5 of Las Vegas in high-definition has taken her makeup routine to a whole new level. “They airbrush because you see every kind of makeup,” she explains. “Touch-ups are during lunch. Like 20 times.” Such a regimen, she says, can take a toll. “Put it to you this way: I now wash my face twice a day.” And when it comes to close-ups, Walsh had a word of advice, “You pray for a good lighting person.” — Reporting by Bekah Wright
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Tom Selleck, Jesse Stone: Sea Change
Tom Selleck still has that compelling Magnum charm, even as the somewhat dissipated Jesse Stone. Tonight in Jesse Stone: Sea Change (9 pm/ET, on CBS), the fourth in a series of TV-movies based on Robert B. Parker's best-sellers, boredom leads small-town police chief Jesse to reopen an unsolved 1992 bank robbery and murder. Selleck spoke to us about the Jesse movies, as well as his past and future projects, including his move to Las Vegas.
TV Guide: Jesse Stone. He drinks too much, he can't let go of his ex, he's overqualified for his job....Tom Selleck: I was very attracted to [Jesse] — he's so flawed, and yet a guy that I rooted for. I love playing him. We
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Question: Was anyone from Las Vegas at NBC's upfront?
Answer: Nope, but that didn't prevent me from getting a little scoopbit for you guys: A Peacock source told me that when the show returns in September, it'll boast a snazzy new opening title sequence.
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