MONDAY, JAN. 14
KYLE XY
8 P.M. | ABC FAMILY
First of 10 new episodes. Kyle (Matt Dallas), the belly-button-less mystery boy, returns home and tells his adoptive family the truth about himself.
MEDIUM
10 P.M. | NBC
Allison (Patricia Arquette) is having frightening psychic dreams about her teen daughter. Cold-eyed Anjelica Huston plays a private investigator.
PRISON BREAK
8 P.M. | FOX
Back for five episodes. Michael (Wentworth Miller) sweats out solitary confinement in Panama, completely unaware of the writers' strike.
TUESDAY, JAN. 15
AMERICAN IDOL
8 P.M. | FOX
The plucky little singing contest that America took to its heart starts season 7 with auditions in Philadelphia.
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 16
RENO 911!
10:30 P.M. | COMEDY CENTRAL
Some solid laughs, many involving a baby for sale, as the incompetent cops return. Christina Applegate has a cameo.
SUPERNANNY
9 P.M. | ABC
A family so overwhelmed with their five kids' activities, they don't have time to move to their new house. Help them, Jo Frost!
THURSDAY, JAN. 17
UGLY BETTY
8 P.M. | ABC
Smells like fashionista spirit: Betty (America Ferrera, with Freddy Rodriguez) gets all loopy after she tries a perfume created by the late Fey Sommers.
FOX, Jan. 13, 8 p.m. ET |
SCI FI
Reduced in scope to an hour-long series, the Terminator franchise is more like The Nonstarter. Lena Headey (Queen Gorgo in 300) is Sarah Connor, on the run as she tries to shield her teenage son John (Thomas Dekker) from cyborg assassins dispatched from the future. These killers know, as does Sarah, that John is the only human with the messianic potential to stop a doomsday computer that will put machines in tyrannical world control. One might argue that the laptop, cellphone and iTunes have already managed that revolt without bloodshed, but never mind. Sarah and John keep dodging danger and death, but the movies' sense of frenzied apocalyptic fantasy is missing. Everyone just seems late for soccer practice.
NBC, Thursdays, 9 p.m. ET |
REALITY
Donald Trump's entrepreneurial reality show has gone the Surreal Life route: The roster of contestants includes model Carol Alt, actor Stephen Baldwin—do you realize the four Baldwin brothers are all now on TV?—gymnast Nadia Comaneci (who initially looked as if she'd have been happier hiding under a mat), rocker Gene Simmons and former Apprentice star Omarosa. For some reason I had been looking forward to Omarosa's return, but in the first episode I couldn't stand her irrational aggressiveness. Nostalgia must have clouded my mind. The show lacks the lean, mean drive of the old, non-star version: When you've got Gene Simmons selling hot dogs, the stakes just don't seem very high.
PBS, check local listings |
DRAMA
Masterpiece Theatre has undergone a makeover—a quick Dustbustering of musty corners—as it starts a new season with fresh adaptations of Jane Austen's six novels. The series has dropped Theatre from its title (it's officially Masterpiece now) and lost that opening shot of richly bound classic books. And the new host is X-Files star Gillian Anderson, filmed without fuss in front of a crimson backdrop that matches her hair. The first production, Persuasion, isn't as subtle as the delicate 1995 version, but as heroine Anne Elliot—who can't get over her regret at having rejected Captain Wentworth (Rupert Penry-Jones)—Sally Hawkins has a look of long-endured sorrow that's very moving. It ends happily—that hasn't changed.
CBS, Jan. 13, 15 and 16, 9 p.m. ET |
DRAMA
A six-hour prequel to Lonesome Dove, Comanche Moon is a staid but dignified Old West ramble: Buffalo Hump and his tribe are on the warpath, rangers are on their trail, and time's epic sweep carries them all along as if they were saddled up on a giant invisible horsie. The best performances are from Linda Cardellini, Melanie Lynskey and Elizabeth Banks as noble townswomen waiting for them menfolk to come to their senses. The weirdest are Val Kilmer as a Yankee captain with a distractingly voluminous mustache and Rachel Griffiths as his sexually voracious wife. Both seem to be having camp fun, but the experience is like watching Johnny Depp play Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara.
On A&E's spooky new series, Buell, 25, and his collegiate ghost-hunting club lend a hand to the haunted
As a child, Ryan Buell says, he was haunted by an apparition. But "what was really scary," he recalls, "was that I couldn't talk to anyone about it." So as a Penn State sophomore in 2001, he founded the Paranormal Research Society, a group of student investigators who, with psychics and counselors, set out to help people dealing with supernatural issues. Now A&E is chronicling their cases on camera. "One episode is about the demonic and the next is about a girl who's seeing dead people in Vegas," says Buell. And after 2.5 million watched the premiere, he's experiencing another phenomenon: "I've been getting hit on left and right," he says with a laugh. "People say, 'You're so sexy.' And I'm like, doing what? Standing in a dark room talking about demons? It's cool...and kinda weird!"
ER's Nurse Taggart goes where the buffalo roam in Comanche Moon.
ON LARRY McMURTRY I think he's a genius. Lonesome Dove is one of my favorite novels. I read Comanche Moon two or three times—and it's not a short book!
ON FRONTIER COUTURE Those costumes were heavy and the shoes were uncomfortable, but there were wild bunnies hopping around. It was a wonderful time.
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!
