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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Matt Frewer, Eureka
Within the strange, genius-populated little Northwestern town at the heart of Sci Fi Channel's Eureka (Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET) resides Jim Taggart, the off-center "dogcatcher" who specializes in the critters, creepies and crawlies born of the burg's bizarre scientific experiments. TVGuide.com spoke with Matt Frewer (aka Max Headroom for my fellow children of the '80s) about his stay in Eureka and the series' "aggressive multiplatform media initiative." (He has no idea what I just said.)
TVGuide.com: It's always a pleasure — if not a little bit clumsy — to interview another person named Matt.Matt Frewer: Oh, well, just pretend I'm wearing a name
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Question: I've always been curious as to why networks never air traditional 30-minute sitcoms (Friends, Will & Grace, Two and a Half Men, etc) between the hours of 10 and 11 pm?
Answer: The networks don't do anything without a ton of research, and I'm sure experience and testing (and a few failed experiments in continuing comedy blocks into the last hour of prime time) have shown that comedy works better in the earlier hours, and given the state of TV comedy nowadays, there are diminishing returns the more you air and the later you go. The networks also tend to get darker, more serious and more adult as the night goes on, which also works against comedy. In some time periods where there's a dominant drama, it would be interesting to see one of the Big Three (Fox and CW don't program in that hour) step up with some comedic counterprogramming, if not an actual sitcom. Northern Exposure, for instance, did quite well in that hour for several seasons. (That's why I'm curious about ABC's
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The tucked-away town of Eureka may not be on a map, but you can't miss it. Just turn left at the second wormhole.
What's strange is commonplace in Eureka (Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET on Sci Fi, premiering July 18), a divertingly original but awfully precious comic fantasy that brings science fiction back to Earth. The setting: a quirky Northern Exposure-like burg in the Pacific Northwest where every basement seems to be hatching a mind-blowing (and potentially cosmos-shaking) experiment, courtesy of a local population of obsessed geniuses.
Many of the classified secrets behind the town's origins are revealed in this week's two-hour pilot, in which U.S. Marshal Jack Carter (gangly, goofily charming Colin Ferguson) stumbles into Eureka just as a secret project goes awry and beg
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Rob Morrow, Numbers
On the hit CBS drama Numbers (Fridays at 10 pm/ET), Rob Morrow plays Don Eppes, an FBI agent who is constantly picking his math-genius brother's brain in order to solve cases. Well, when TVGuide.com spent a few minutes picking the actor's brain for a change, the down-to-earth Morrow happily chatted about Numbers' Emmy chances, his golf game and all that math jargon.
TVGuide.com: Numbers always seems very intense, with a lot of locations and running around.
Rob Morrow: Definitely, and I like that. We set the bar. I don't think the show was intended to be that, but we just got into the action side of it and dec
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Rob Morrow and Michelle Nolden, Numbers
Let's suppose the total number of viewers itching to see FBI agent Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) on CBS' Numbers (Fridays at 10 pm/ET) hook up with someone for longer than five minutes is greater than the sum of fans who believe TV math has never been sexier and you arrive at... frankly, we don't have the foggiest, but clearly it has something to do with solid ratings for CBS. Averaging 11.5 million viewers this season, Numbers is attracting more people than shows like Crossing Jordan and
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Kene Holliday and Victor French, Carter Country
Question: Do you remember a show with, I think, the guy from Highway to Heaven and a black actor that was sort of a comedy version of In the Heat of the Night? It's driving me nuts.
Answer: Yes.
Aaaah, you didn't really think I was gonna stop at being a wiseacre and answer your question with one word, did you? You'll never so easily curb my urge to babble, Joon.
Funny you use the word "nuts," since the show in question, ABC's Carter Country, bore the name of former peanut farmer Jimmy Carter, who was president at the time it debuted in September 1977. As you say, it bore a strong resemblance to In the Heat of the Night, which 10 years later would be a hit TV series itself.
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No one dies in the pilot episode of the mid-season charmer Love Monkey (premieres Tuesday, Jan. 17 at 10 pm/ET), and that has me worried. Can CBS and its audience embrace an hourlong show that dares to exist outside the world of the crime-drama procedural? (Didn't work so well for the sci-fi Threshold.)
But maybe Love Monkey will turn out to be CBS' next Northern Exposure. Granted, the music scene in New York City is a far cry from Cicely, Alaska, but this amiable comedy-drama shares the attributes of quirky humor, great banter from cool characters and a passion for living life on one's own terms. It's sexy, funny, hip and heartfelt.
The funky title, adapted from Kyle Smith's nov
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Question: Is there a snowball's chance we'd ever be graced with a Janine Turner guest shot on Numbers? I'd love a nod to Rob Morrow's Northern Exposure past, and it'd be great to see them on screen together again.
Answer: Let's ask exec producer Cheryl Heuton: "We've already had several actors on Numbers who have appeared in other series with Rob, including Scott Cohen and Michelle Nolden, both from Street Time. While there are no immediate plans for Janine Turner to appear, there's every possibility that the right role will come up and that she will be available to play it."
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Question: I just wanted to write you a brief thank-you note. I've come to respect your opinions about television during the last few years, and I've seen you rave about the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series, as well as Veronica Mars. So within the last two months, I picked up the DVD sets containing the first seasons of each show, completely blind, and solely based on the positive buzz both these shows have attracted. I was blown away by how amazing these shows are. It really takes the sting out of losing Alias in the spring. It just goes to prove that when one door closes, another one opens. Incidentally, that might be something helpful to pass along to your readers: Don't be afraid to try new television shows. Always strive to sample what might interest you. If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be watching and loving Veronica Mars and the new Battlestar Galactica this Christmas, I'd have scoffed. Don't you agree that it pays off to constantly try to sample new shows?
Answer: I'd
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