From NBC:

NBC.com announced the “Undercovers: Get A Room Private Screening” romantic online sweepstakes to promote the debut of the new drama Undercovers today. The sweepstakes will reward five lucky winners with an all-expense-paid romantic adventure for two to New York City for a luxurious stay at the posh London Hotel, dinner at the Gordan Ramsay restaurant and includes a private in-room advance screening of the series for each couple.

The “Undercovers — Get A Room Private Screening” online sweepstakes will give fans the chance to win their own personal premiere experience in New York City.  The winner will receive an all-expense-paid trip for two including round-trip transportation, a romantic dinner for two at the Gordan Ramsay restaurant, a pampered hotel stay at the posh London hotel complete with spa services and other amenities, and a chance to get under the covers while watching Undercovers in a private in-room screening.

Viewers can enter the sweepstakes here.

Undercovers, from J.J. Abrams and starring Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, premieres Sept. 22 on NBC.

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Credit: Frank Ockenfels/NBC

Categories: Drama, Fall Preview 2010, TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: Boris Kodjoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, J.J. Abrams, NBC.com, sweepstakes, Undercovers

Grammy Award-winner Sarah McLachlan performs her new single “Forgiveness” in the Life Unexpected crossover episode with One Tree Hill, which is currently filming in Vancouver. The episode will air October 12 at 9pm ET on The CW. Also singing in the episode will be One Tree Hill series star Bethany Joy Galeotti (Haley) and recurring guest star Kate Voegele (Mia), along with Ben Lee and Rain Perry (singer/songwriter of the Life Unexpected theme song).

The crossover episode of Life Unexpected brings One Tree Hill characters Haley and Mia to a music festival, sponsored by a Portland radio station and hosted by Ryan (Kerr Smith).  At the concert, Haley and Cate (Shiri Appleby) meet and discover that they have incredibly similar pasts.  It turns out that both women were somewhat nerdy, overachieving teenagers who got pregnant in high school by athletes named Nate (or Nathan). And when a secret of Cate’s gets outed, Cate turns to Haley for advice.

Categories: Drama, Fall Preview 2010, TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: Ben Lee, Bethany Joy Galeotti, CW, Kate Voegele, Kerr Smith, Life Unexpected, One Tree Hill, Rain Perry, Sarah McLachlan, Shiri Appleby

AMC is getting us excited (and creeped out) with this trailer for its new series The Walking Dead, from producer/writer/director Frank Darabont and based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book about a zombie apocalypse. The series debuts, fittingly, on Halloween at 10pm as part of AMC’s Fearfest horror marathon. The premiere is 90 minutes; subsequent episodes will be an hour long.

Categories: Action, Drama, Fall Preview 2010, Horror, TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: AMC, Andrew Lincoln, Frank Darabont, The Walking Dead, trailer, Video, zombie

Belushi and O'Connell in "The Defenders"

Jim Belushi and Jerry O’Connell, stars of CBS’ new drama The Defenders, will be hosting CBS Fall Preview, a special airing Sept. 6 at 8:30pm ET/PT on, naturally, CBS. The program will also be available On Demand to customers of AT&T U-Verse, Bright House, Comcast, Frontier Communications, Time Warner Cable and Verizon FiOS TV.

The program includes sneak peeks of five new additions to the CBS primetime schedule — Hawaii Five-0 (premieres Sept. 20); The Defenders (Sept. 23); Blue Bloods (Sept. 24); $#*! My Dad Says (Sept. 23); and Mike & Molly (Sept. 20).

And you can rest assured that, according to CBS, Belushi and O’Connell will introduce the video previews with a “fun mix of banter during what appears to be a wardrobe fitting for their Vegas lawyer characters, surrounded by bold suits and pinky rings galore.” Just as long as there’s no wardrobe malfunction.

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© 2010 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. Credit: Robert Voets

Categories: Comedy, Drama, Fall Preview 2010, TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: $#*! My Dad Says, Blue Bloods, CBS, fall preview, Hawaii Five-0, Jeff Pfeiffer, Jerry O'Connell, Jim Belushi, Mike & Molly, On Demand, The Defenders

by Karl J. Paloucek

He was the top cop on the Islands. Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett was a virtual one-man force, taking on international espionage, drug kingpins, organized crime, counterfeiting … and murder — especially murder. With his signature “Book ‘em, Danno — murder one!” he closed dozens of gripping cases and helped the series become respected as one of the templates for the modern police drama.

As CBS returns to the scene of the Hawaiian crime series with its 21st-century update, “Hawaii Five-0,” Spike honors the original with a weeklong presentation of the entire 1968 first season of the Emmy-winning series. Starting Monday, Aug. 30, the network will broadcast McGarrett and Danno’s exploits from 9am-6pm ET/PT, until the Season 1 finale Friday, Sept. 3.

And in the unlikely case you’ve forgotten one of the coolest themesongs in television history …

Categories: Drama, Fall Preview 2010, TV News & Program Updates by kpaloucek
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Tags: CBS, Hawaii Five-O, Spike TV

by Karl J. Paloucek

Chyler Leigh isn’t content just to be on one of TV’s most-acclaimed shows, Grey’s Anatomy. In her offseason this year, she took on the lead in Lifetime’s reimagining of David Ebershoff’s bestseller, The 19th Wife, giving her the chance to explore a much different world than the halls of Seattle Grace Mercy West hospital, and in particular, life inside a polygamous sect.

The story surrounds the murder of one of the husbands in the small town where Queenie (Leigh) lives with her husband, a number of polygamous families and the local prophet for whom Queenie’s husband works as a law enforcement officer. When one of the wives of the slain man is accused of the crime, Queenie suspects that the woman has been framed, and with the help of longtime friend Jordan (Matt Czuchry, The Good Wife) begins an investigation that leads Queenie to question her own perceptions about the community in which she’s lived.

“It’s an interesting situation for her, being in a community of polygamists — she is monogamous with her husband, and her husband is a cop who works for the prophet in the town, essentially,” Leigh explains. “The prophet and her husband, Hiram, have somehow worked [Read more →]

Categories: Drama, Fall Preview 2010, Movies by kpaloucek
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Tags: 19th Wife, Chyler Leigh, Lifetime

By Elaine Bergstrom

Zac Efron (left) and Christian McKay

The film Me and Orson Welles, as well as the book on which it is based, looks at the controversial 1937 production of Julius Caesar at the famed Mercury Theatre in New York City. Caesar was the first stage play at the Mercury and secured Orson Welles’ reputation as a director. It also took place less than three months after the dilapidated theater was purchased. As a result, along with rehearsals, the company had to work on restoring the theater. [Read more →]

Categories: Drama, Movies, VOD by RabbitEars
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Tags: Christian McKay, Elaine Bergstrom, Me and Orson Welles, Orson Welles, Zac Efron

By Stacey Harrison

When discussing her role as executive producer on her new show, Laura Linney could just as easily be talking about the character she plays.

“What it basically allows me to do, in a nutshell, is that I don’t have to keep my mouth shut if I have an opinion about something,” says the three-time Academy Award-nominated actress about The Big C, which premieres tonight on Showtime.

She plays Cathy Jamison, a high-strung Minneapolis history teacher who learns she has terminal cancer, and about a year to live. She sets about making the time she has left count, forsaking the rigors and indignities of chemotherapy while partaking in every indulgence life has to offer — and telling people what she really thinks. More importantly, she’s finally trying to be honest with herself about who she really is. Amid all this, she must deal with her man-child husband (Oliver Platt), who views her more as a stifling mother figure, a bratty teenage son (Gabriel Basso), who has learned through years of misguided upbringing not to respect her, and an anarchistic vagabond brother (John Benjamin Hickey), who disdains her bourgeois ways. None of them knows about her diagnosis, because she simply isn’t ready to face the fallout.

Oh, and it’s a comedy. [Read more →]

Categories: Drama, Fall Preview 2010 by sharrison76
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Tags: Laura Linney, Oliver Platt, Showtime, Stacey Harrison, The Big C

by Karl J. Paloucek

Arguably the most neatly scripted series on television returns to TV this month. And if there’s anything you can say about Season 4 of Mad Men, it’s that anything could happen. That was the takeaway from Season 3’s end and it’s what we hear loud and clear from series costars John Slattery (who plays Roger Sterling), Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell) and Jared Harris (Lane Pryce).

Last season’s finale was effectively a tabula rasa: Rather than become drones for McCann Erickson, Don, Roger and Bert conspire with Lane to start a new agency — stealing away with Sterling Cooper’s best accounts, talent and resources in a weekend raid. And in the wake of Betty’s discovering Don’s concealed identity, she’s seeking a divorce.

“I think he did an amazingly courageous thing in climbing up the ladder and pulling it up behind him,” Slattery says of series creator Matthew Weiner. “I think it’s a hugely frightening thing, too, for him, to blow up [Read more →]

Categories: Drama, Interview, TV News & Program Updates by kpaloucek
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Tags: AMC, Jared Harris, John Slattery, Mad Men, Vincent Kartheiser

By Stacey Harrison

Do we need another take on the La Femme Nikita story, which started out as a 1990 French film, was remade for American audiences in 1993 as Point of No Return, and then was the subject of a long-running series on the USA Network? Absolutely not. But if we must have one, this Maggie Q-led version — in which Nikita has gone rogue and is setting out to destroy the top-secret government organization that turned her into an assassin — is easy enough to accommodate.

The action and plot won’t wow anyone who lapped up Alias or Buffy, but Maggie Q shines in her first shot at a lead role, enough so that she  — and a really nifty plot twist at the end — will help set Nikita apart from the bevy of other tough-girl shows that have come and gone over the years. Even in the obligatory scenes when she’s kicking butt while clad only in the skimpiest of bikinis, she’s able to maintain a bit of dignity. It’s a good thing, too, because she has to compensate for the miscast Shane West, who looks like a low-rent Leonardo DiCaprio playing Nikita’s former lover-turned-adversary. His tragic attempt at a beard completes the picture of a kid trying to wear big-boy clothes and play with the grown-ups.

Lyndsy Fonseca (Kick-Ass) is another reason to watch, as she plays a woman who looks to be the government’s latest Nikita, having been picked up from an attempted robbery and enrolled into the assassination academy. She seems to have a bit of trouble with her line delivery at times, but not to the point where it brings things to a screeching halt. The pilot excels at setting up the show’s main themes and conflicts, as well it should, seeing as this story has been told several times already. Time will tell if this becomes the definitive Nikita. Its chances for renewal do have history in their corner, seeing as all previous series that have been shown at Comic-Con’s Preview Night (Fringe, V, Human Target, The Vampire Diaries) are still on the air.

You can weigh in yourself Thursdays at 9pm on The CW beginning Sept. 9.

Categories: Drama, Fall Preview 2010 by sharrison76
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Tags: Comic-Con, Comic-Con 2010, Lyndsy Fonseca, Maggie Q, Nikita, Shane West, Stacey Harrison, The CW