Film

• Martin Campbell to direct Nagasaki Deadline
• Uwe Boll loses lawsuit
• Ridley Scott to direct film based on Monopoly
• Pic of the new USS Enterprise

Theatre

• Who's going to be in the Old Vic's 24 hour plays

British TV

• Motive to make first TV comedy show shot on a mobile phone for MTV1
• Virgin to axe 2,200 jobs
• Live at the Apollo to fill Jonathan Ross's slot
• Ashley Highfield quits Project Kangaroo for Microsoft
• Tranter warns drama budgets have been cut back to breaking point
• Jeff Stelling to host Countdown

• HBO orders pilot based on fantasy book Game of Thrones
• The Ex-List still filming episodes for DVDs and international sales
• Breaking Bad's Mark Johnson working on legal drama for AMC
• Fox to take first look at Living With Abandon
• Casting on Nurse Jackie and Defying Gravity
• HBO readying 80s magazine comedy
• Dexter's Desmond Harrington to join Gossip Girl
• Kevin McKidd to join Grey's Anatomy as regular

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Read other posts about: Dexter, Gossip Girl

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Film

• Teaser for Angels and Demons
• SJP and Hugh Grant to star in a rom-com together
• Sam Mendes to direct adaptation of Preacher
• David Lindsay-Abaire to write Spider-Man 4?
  
• J Michael Straczynski updating Forbidden Planet

British TV/Radio

• Jonathan Ross suspended for 12 weeks, Radio 2 controller resigns
• BBC2 to air a Geoffrey Perkins tribute night

US TV

• Fox cancels King of the Hill
• American Dad gets a fifth season
• Emily Rose to star in Operating Instructions; Willie Garson joins White Collar
• Bradley Whitford to star in and produce Off Duty
• Jon Hamm to play love interest on 30 Rock?
• More episodes of Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill and 90210 ordered
• John Schneider to do three-episode arc on Dirty Sexy Money

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Read other posts about: 30 Rock, Gossip Girl

Doctor Who

• Rusty answers questions [video]

Film

• Don Cheadle to replace Terrence Howard on Iron Man 2
• Script to Wall Street sequel being worked on
• Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin to vie for Meryl Streep

Theatre

• Come Dancing extends its run

British TV

• Beeb working on iPlayer for Freeview

US TV

• Samantha Bee and Jason Jones writing a sitcom for themselves at CBS
• Starz greenlights Rob Thomas sitcom Party Down
• Production (temporarily?) stopped on Easy Money and Valentine
• Rights picked up to French-Canadian comedy Taxi 0-22
• Showtime picks up Matthew Perry's The End of Steve
• Two more episodes of Gossip Girl ordered

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Doctor Who

• An interview with a new companion [spoilers]

Film

• Seth Rogen to produce I'm With Cancer
• Max Payne clips
• Eric Bana to star in remake of Le Convoyeur
• The kids of Fame
• Rebecca Mader to be female lead in Men Who Stare at Goats

British TV

• ITV4 acquires Life
• Beeb to launch kids version of iPlayer…
• …and pilots comedy programmes for kids
• Michael Grade wants to end ITV's indie quota
• Chris Tarrant has a new gameshow
• More UKTV rebranding: now it's Blighty and Eden
• Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton reunite for Psychoville

• ABC remaking V
• …and its Wednesday night ratings keep falling
• Burn Notice and Psych get renewed
• 30 Rock Gossip Girl cameo cancelled

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Doctor Who

• Deeply implausible Patrick Stewart rumour clearly made up by fans to see if The Sun would publish it

Film

• Brandon Routh, Gil Bellows, Martin Donovan and Carrie-Anne Moss join Unthinkable
• Under Siege 3. In space. With aliens. Hmm.

British TV

• ITV acquires rights to new seasons of Pushing Daisies, Gossip Girl and Dexter
• BBC4 gets record ratings
• Wallace and Gromit: the exhibition
• RTL gets the green light to put in bid for ITV
• Mark Gatiss writes a ghost story for the Beeb
• QI daytime spin-off planned

• CBS orders pilot for domestic comedy Big D
• Kevin Bacon to exec Showtime series about John Wilkes Booth and his brothers
• Will and Grace spin-off back on
• A chat with Life on Mars exec producer Josh Appelbaum

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Read other posts about: Dexter, Gossip Girl, Life on Mars

Time for a third-episode verdict on The CW's Privileged, in which a geeky writer has to tutor filthy rich spoilt teenagers in return for unfeasibly vast amounts of partying and luxury, as well as near-unlimited amounts of boyfriend potential. It's a hard life, huh?

After a reasonably promising but flawed start, the show dropped off a notch, becoming more than a touch tedious, in fact. The usual mix-ups with the boss that the tutor has to fix, the antagonising squabbles with the eldest daughter, the fights with her own sister: it's already starting to become a formula. The geeky teacher is also too geeky to be plausible.

However, given that the geek tutor is supposed to be the heroine, it's a surprise to find that the elder, eviler daughter, Sage, and the protective relationship she has with her sister, Rose, is actually the most interesting aspect of the show. It's more multi-dimensional than just about any other facet of the programme, and the fact that Sage is a complete bitch, but will do anything for Rose, is smart, more emotionally intelligent than geek girl and doesn't become bestest pals with her inside the first two episodes does lift the show out of being a complete cartoon. In fact, if they focused less on geek girl and more on evil sister, it would probably be a more interesting, albeit darker programme.

All the same, if The CW was looking for a new Gossip Girl, they've come to the wrong place, since this clearly isn't as smart and the other relationships are flat and hollow in comparison with the more fully developed characters on the rival show. Diverting, but ultimately nothing too special.

Read other posts about: Gossip Girl

Getting people to watch your shiny new show (or returning old show) is always tricky. Billboards are among the main media you can use to get people to tune in, provided you create enough impact.

Here's a shiny collection of billboards (and a couple of magazine spreads and covers) for the current and returning shows in the US, as featured by The Hollywood Reporter, complete with rating. Where I've reviewed the show, I've included a link to the review

• Gossip Girl : A (first series review)
• Fringe : B (my review)
• Heroes: C+ (my review)
• Pushing Daisies : B (first series review)
• Entourage : C
• Chuck: A- (first series review)
• House : B+ (my review)
• 90210: B+
• Knight Rider: B (review tomorrow!)
• Privileged : C- (first episode review; third episode verdict on Monday)
• CSI: NY : C+
• America's Next Top Model : F+
• My Own Worst Enemy : B
• Dexter: A (my preview)
• Worst Week: B- (my review)
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles : A- (my review)
• Grey's Anatomy: B-
• Simpsons/Family Guy/King of the Hill: B
• Eleventh Hour: B- (UK series review)
• Desperate Housewives: B
• Californication: B (first series review)
• The Ex-List: B
• Lipstick Jungle: D+ (first series review)
• The Shield: A

Read other posts about: CSI, Dexter, Gossip Girl, Heroes, House

Doctor Who

• And River Song was… [spoilers for Christmas special]

Film

• Jude Law to play Dr Watson in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes
• Brett Ratner to direct new Conan the Barbarian?Robert Zemeckis to adapt Eoin Colfer's Airman
• Robert Zemeckis to adapt Eoin Colfer's Airman
• David Duchovny and Demi Moore to play product placement family The Joneses
• Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Jason Bateman to star in Couple Retreat
• Luke Wilson and Giovanni Ribisi to star in Internet porn historical Middle Men
• Four minutes of Simon Pegg's How To Lost Friends and Alienate People
• William Shatner responds to JJ Abrams [video]

Commercials

• Seinfeld and Gates ads pulled

British TV

• Rob Brydon's Arbie to make BBC4 comedy pilot about wealthy Russians
• Bill Bailey to leave Never Mind the Buzzcocks
• 200 complaints about EastEnders paedophile storyline

US TV

• SciFi's Warehouse 13 goes to series
• Wade Allain Marcus joins Gossip Girl
• Fox orders pilot of un-PC Save Us Then The Whales
• ABC has visions of the future with Flash Forward
• Shark's Sarah Carter joins Dirty Sexy Money

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Doctor Who

• Guess Who isn't in the specials after all [anti-spoiler?]

Awards

• The results of the Creative Emmys

Film

• Vin Diesel to return to XXX franchise?
• The Thing remake to be a prequel

Books

• Alexander McCall Smith to write serialised novel and podcast for Telegraph web site

Radio

• Kulvinder Ghir and The Bill's Seeta Indrani join Silver Street

Theatre

• Joanna Page to appear as Cinderella at the New Wimbledon Theatre
• Beat that, Jonathan Miller: Hamlet sells out in under three hours

British TV

• Welsh response to PSB review 'disappointing'
• Ofcom blames Sky for Picnic delay
• Secret Diary…'s ratings drop
• Bob Geldof launches UGC channel to bring about world peace
• BBC4's autumn-winter schedule

US TV

• Clip from CSI: Miami season premiere
• Nip/Tuck cast in salary negotiations…
• …while Rose McGowan replaces Katee Sackhoff for four-episode arc
• Shark creator to develop schizophrenic medical drama for Fox
• Casting: Wallace Shawn joins Gossip Girl, Robert Wisdom goes Supernatural
• Dollhouse shut down because it makes Eliza Dushku too unlikeable?
• Behind the scenes of The Cleveland Show
• The Ex List showrunner quits

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Read other posts about: CSI, Gossip Girl, Supernatural

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, The CW

Payback, as they say, is a bitch. Or a geek girl.

Last year's “as near as The CW can get to a hit” drama was the rather lovely Gossip Girl, which followed the trials and tribulations of very rich girls (and boys) in an Upper East Side New York private school. With nothing much else doing well in the ratings other than the usual suspects (America's Next Top Model, Smallville, Supernatural), The CW's bosses cast their nets wide for something in the same mould.

90210 was the first obvious, easy-to-build clone and had built-in nostalgia value to lift its viewing figures into the (relative) stratosphere. But given the exciting world of literature was the source of Gossip Girl, The CW also turned its attentions towards the book How To Teach Filthy Rich Girls to make sure it wasn't putting all its money on one horse.

Adapted as Privileged, it's a somewhat different show than either Gossip Girl or 90210. While those two shows look at the hardship of life as a rich teenager, Privileged is for those who never were in the popular cliques. It's for geek girls who love their books but wished they could be in those cliques.

Revenge will be theirs - complete with Spiderman quotes.

Continue reading "Review: Privileged 1x1"

Read other posts about: Gossip Girl