By Kellie Abrahamson and Erin Thursby
A couple weeks back we outlined all of the new and returning shows network television is unveiling this winter and spring to tide us over until the writers get a fair deal and come back to work. It wasn’t pretty. Reality TV is taking over the major networks and that leaves fans of scripted television with few options. Luckily for those of us with cable, there are some shows premiering in the next few weeks on networks like FX, USA and HBO that will give us some solace during this truly difficult time in television history.
Fans of The CW, whose mid-season shows range from “guilty pleasure” (One Tree Hill) to “gouge my eyes out” (just about everything else), should set their sights on ABC Family for some relief this spring. The New Year started off with a bang for the network when their highest rated original series, Kyle XY, kicked off the second half of its second season last Monday. The sci-fi teen drama about a mysterious boy with strange abilities is a blend of Smallville and Dark Angel and will likely please fans of either series.
While I’ve never actually been able to sit through an episode myself, Wildfire, the story of a young girl and her rise to horse racing stardom, is a fan favorite and will be returning on January 21st for its fourth season.
Finally, Greek, a comedy series about a group of college kids navigating through the Greek system in hopes of leaving behind their high school “geek” rep, is returning for a second season on March 24th. Despite the glaring resemblance to Revenge of the Nerds, the series is pretty soapy but also really funny, with likable characters and interesting romantic entanglements.
Golden Globe winning series Man Men was a huge hit with critics when it premiered last year and AMC is hoping for the same reaction for their latest foray into original programming, Breaking Bad. The series stars Malcolm in the Middle dad Bryan Cranston as a high school chemistry teacher who, upon discovering he has a terminal illness, loses it and turns to a life of crime to support his family. The series begins on January 20th and looks like it will be another hit for AMC.
America’s favorite incompetent cops hit the streets of Reno yet again last week for the fifth season of Reno 911!. The hysterical series will thankfully have a complete 13 episode season so at least there won’t be a shortage of laughs for the next few weeks. Also look for the return of Futurama as they air new episodes (for the first time in more than two years) each night at 9 pm.
For shows that are lurid and over-the-top, FX can’t be beat. Just when you think a show can’t go any further or be any weirder, it does go further and it keeps getting weirder.
The guilty pleasure of Dirt will be returning for its second season in March. Because of the writer’s strike they only filmed half the season, but half is better than none, unless you ask the Parents Television Council, which has called the program “yet another distasteful offering from FX.” The series, if you didn’t know already, follows Lucy Spiller, (Courtney Cox) the editor of DirtNow, an exploitive Hollywood tabloid.
The Riches will also be back for a second season. This amoral drama somehow has great heart and humor to it. Eddie Izzard, Minnie Driver and the rest of the cast tell the story of this family of grifters who steal the suburban lives and identities of a wealthy dead couple.
The current season of Nip/Tuck is set in Hollywood instead of Miami. This season of Nip/Tuck is coming to an end, with only 5 episodes left on the docket. The lurid drama (which actually seems pretty funny to me) features a plastic surgery practice and the hot doctors who run it. They’ve featured everything from dwarf lovers and serial killers to mobsters in need of a new face and transsexual weirdness.
Cop corruption will continue with a full season of The Shield sometime in the spring, although a date hasn’t yet been set.
Although reality shows aren’t the thing at FX, they’ve got a full season (six episodes) of the Morgan Spurlock reality show 30 Days, wherein for a full month a person or group immerses themselves in a life outside their experience (ie. a rich dude working for minimum wage or a redneck boarder patrol guy living with illegal immigrants).
HBO has either nearly completely run out of scripts for most of its original programming or is holding out on us until summer. This means new episodes of Entourage, Big Love and Flight of the Conchords are not in our mid-season futures. Still, the premium channel does have a couple of new shows to keep us subscribing (for now). The fifth and final season of critically-acclaimed, award-winning drama The Wire began on January 6th and looks to be the best season yet.
If the ten final episodes of The Wire aren’t enough, a brand new Mark Wahlberg-produced series called In Treatment is at least worth a look before you make that call to your cable provider. In it, a psychotherapist (Gabriel Byrne) has weekly sessions with his patients and each night we get to be flies on the wall. The series will air five nights a week beginning January 28th and looks like it will be pretty good.
The Sci Fi Channel is a treasure trove of strange (sometimes terrible) original programming. Two of their shows, Stargate Atlantis and Flash Gordon, began airing all new episodes on January 11th. The much beloved series Battlestar Galactica began its fourth and final season in late November and will be airing the remaining episodes shot before the writer’s strike April 4th. It’s uncertain if fans will get a chance to see the series conclude since only half of the scripts were shot before production was halted. Still, ten episodes of the best space opera on the air are better than none, right?
Like HBO, Showtime is almost out of scripts but has some remaining episodes worth sticking around for. The L Word started back up again on January 6th and the complete 13-episode fifth season will air over the course of the next couple of months. Beloved by critics and fans alike, The L Word is well worth tuning into and sticking around for.
On March 30th, the royally excellent series The Tudors comes back to the small screen for season two. The show’s debut last spring was Showtime’s highest rated season premiere in three years and there’s no doubt that the new episodes will bring viewers back for more.
The folks at TBS brought back their grocery store comedy 10 Items or Less last week for an 8-episode second season. This is another show I have yet to sit down and actually watch all the way through, but since there’s not much else on these days, I’ll definitely be giving it a look. The network is also airing new episodes of Tyler Perry's House of Payne, a sitcom based on the comedy stylings of creator/producer Tyler Perry.
USA’s wacky detectives got back to solving crimes on January 11th when both Monk and Psych returned with the back halves of their sixth and second seasons respectively. Both shows are brilliantly quirky and hilarious and are certainly worth watching if you enjoy a decent mystery and great writing. Sadly, only four new episodes remain so get them while the getting’s good.
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