BY TOM GLIATTO
GAME SHOW
If this new NBC game show suggests a cross between Deal or No Deal and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, that's because all three are the brainchildren of a Dutch conglomerate called Endemol. That sounds more like a medicated shampoo than a savvy creator of internationally marketable TV hits. But so what? Roll out the game shows, watch trade barriers topple!
Like Deal, the physical production is off-putting: blue, cold, industrial. Yet I found 1 vs. 100 (which airs at 9 p.m. ET its first night, Oct. 13) much more enjoyable. The rules are too complicated to explain beyond noting that it's a trivia challenge with a $1 million prize and, yes, it pits one player against 100 others. The game itself plays out cleanly enough, and there's an unexpected emotional surge as you watch one brave little human contestant stiffening and testing his or her resolve against the yells emitted from a mammoth bank of opposing cubicles. It feels like the stirring climax either of a Hollywood movie—say, Obi Wan before Star Wars' intergalactic parliament—or maybe a revolutionary tribunal.
ABC (Mondays, 9 p.m. ET)
REALITY
As a reality franchise, The Bachelor might be getting overripe. A damp ugliness is beginning to seep out. This time the eligible man has the cachet-licious name and title of Prince Lorenzo Borghese. He's aristocratically slim, but he grew up from the age of 5 in Connecticut, and as an adult he founded a company called Royal Treatment Pet Spa. That probably won't end up being chiseled into the ancient Borghese family crest in St. Peter's Basilica.
The premiere seemed more degenerate than romantic, with malcontent wannabe princesses peering down from a balcony as our boy Borghese, in the leafy garden below, flirted with several women. When some Italian beauties were ushered in as surprise rivals, the Americans looked as if they were ready to start clacking their tongues and letting loose some sort of primal sexual shriek.
Bravo (Wednesdays, 10 p.m. ET)
REALITY
Bravo's cooking competition is Project Runway in the kitchen. You have that same buzz of creative energy, but with the flash of knives instead of scissors. On the Oct. 18 opener (11 p.m. ET), the chefs are commanded to whip up something edible from frog legs, chicken livers and peanut butter. The next week, an ethical crisis erupts over a misappropriated crate of lychees. It's an amuse bouche—yum.
The comedian best known as Full House's Danny Tanner imagines his dream "100": "4-H club members, nerdy AV guys, loose college girls, a couple of Nobel Prize winners and some of the little people who wore the Ewok costumes." But nepotism is out, so no relatives, and "no Full House cast members."
Flavor of Love (VH1, Oct. 15, 10 p.m. ET) The clock's running out, ladies: It's the Season 2 finale of Flavor Flav's bizarre search for love.
Prison Break (FOX, Oct. 16, 8 p.m. ET) Is Michael finally going to get his mitts on DB Cooper's fortune? And are you finally gonna smile, Wentworth Miller?
2006 Black Movie Awards (TNT, Oct. 18, 10 p.m. ET) Tyler Perry hosts, with nominees including Oscar winner Halle Berry for X-Men: The Last Stand.
ER (NBC, Oct. 19, 10:01 p.m. ET) Forest Whitaker, currently winning raves as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, plays a stroke victim.
Casanova (PBS, check local listings) Conclusion to Masterpiece Theatre's flip, hip interpretation of the great lover (David Tennant).
Project Runway (Bravo, Oct. 18, 10 p.m. ET) Season 3—auf Wiedersehen!
Even if he stays behind the camera, producer-writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) is very much a star. The characters on his new NBC drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip have some unmistakable parallels to Sorkin's own life—from the drug drama to a love interest.
1. The show is set at network NBS, one letter off from West Wing's old home, NBC.
2. The guys running Studio 60's show-within-a-show, Matt Albie and Danny Tripp (played by Matthew Perry and West Wing alum Bradley Whitford), both have Sorkinesque backstories: Albie and Tripp had previously left the show, as Sorkin departed West Wing, and Tripp has had substance abuse issues, as did Sorkin.
3. One of Studio 60's main characters is a Christian comedian (Sarah Paulson) who released a religious album and dated Albie ... and West Wing's Kristin Chenoweth also put out a spiritual album and dated Sorkin.
4. That weird tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan in the second episode? Sorkin is a huge fan of the operetta writers.
Big Love: The Complete First Season This remarkable HBO series, renewed for a second season, achieves the goal that seems to be eluding ABC's Brothers & Sisters. It binds together the splintered strains of American life—piety, politics, money—into one thorny dramatic package. Bill Paxton is a businessman who happens to have three sunny wives and, farther out of town, a seedy, powerfully unscrupulous father-in-law (Harry Dean Stanton) with his own harem and schemes. It gets nasty. Extras: audio commentaries from the stars.
The Book of Daniel This NBC series (here, with a grand total of seven episodes) undeservedly flopped, even though it almost matches Big Love for its messy satiric energy. An Episcopal priest (Aidan Quinn) pops pills and gets pep talks from Jesus.
Connie Nielsen
The Gladiator star, 42, subs on NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for Mariska Hargitay, who was on maternity leave when this six-episode run was shot.
ON JOINING THE SHOW It was either do this or a little movie in Czechoslovakia. When I check into a hotel and put on the TV to take away the silence in the room, many times the only thing that doesn't depress me is Law & Order, because it's so well done.
ON TV'S FAST PACE Scary. They walk and talk very fast. I'm not exactly a walk-and-talk-fast person. I was scared I'd screw up a line when we've gone all the way down the corridor and have to go all the way back and do it over!
ON REDISCOVERING N.Y.C. I've lived here nine years, yet once I started shooting the show, I realized I didn't really know New York. I got to see every side of it. What a wonderful thing to see street vendors in Harlem and how people live in Queens and Brooklyn.
ON HANDLING A GUN I'm the big bad girl! I've done it before in [movies]. I was with the NYPD at the shooting range—the guys were happily impressed with my skills.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
