SUNDAY, MAY 25
THE TUDORS
9 P.M. | SHOWTIME
One more week to go in season 2: Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer), one of history's beguiling losers, is sentenced to death.
MONDAY, MAY 26
GREEK
8 P.M. | ABC FAMILY
Sorority princess Casey (Spencer Grammer) thinks she may have found a frat boy worth pledging her heart to.
AMERICAN GLADIATORS
8 P.M. | NBC
A SWAT officer, a tree climber and a business consultant strap on helmets and enter the arena.
TUESDAY, MAY 27
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
8 P.M. | FOX
The lie-detecting game returns, with host Mark L. Walberg (left) shocked by the players' shabby morals.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28
MEN IN TREES
10 P.M. | ABC
In a fresh episode, adorable Marin (Anne Heche, right, with Timothy Webber) tends to a bunch of puppies while trying to finish her book.
THURSDAY, MAY 29
LOST
9 P.M. | ABC
Two-hour finale to another season of weird wonders, chief among them a kind of mental time-travel that induces madness. Thank you, Daniel Faraday!
E!, May 26, 10 p.m ET | [
Denise Richards: It's ComplicatedE!, May 26, 10 p.m ET |
Living Lohan
E!, May 26, 10:30 p.m ET |
REALITY
Here are two new back-to-back vanity reality productions—would you call the genre vanality?—that are revealing in decisively different ways. Denise Richards' It's Complicated is, well, dumber than an avocado. After her notorious divorce, she gives us a version of her personal life that feels almost panicky in its determination to create an aura of cheerfully messy domesticity. It's hard to imagine, otherwise, why the show wastes so much footage documenting her pet pigs.
After being skewered by Tracey Ullman's cruel but brilliant impersonation, Dina Lohan, the center of Living Lohan, comes off better—just not very likable. We see a grim middle-aged woman styled like a cougar and caught up in the business of monitoring daughter Lindsay's headline eruptions while promoting daughter Ali's singing career. Dina makes her life raising stars look as inviting as taking in laundry. Yet somehow this at least feels honest.
A&E, May 26, 9 p.m. ET |
DRAMA
An alien microbe arrives on Earth and instantly wipes out a Utah town—strangely, the blood of its victims is reduced to red dust. Government scientists (including Benjamin Bratt and Ricky Schroder) discover two survivors, a colicky baby and a man sick with ulcers, and remove them to an underground facility. But the microbe is as adaptable as it is lethal. This two-night version of Michael Crichton's novel isn't bad, but it's bloated by crosscutting subplots that drag in a lot of conspiratorial, high-level baggage. Like the microbe, it ought to be a lean, mean killing machine.
• What will you be watching next season? Tom Gliatto picks the most intriguing newly announced network series
NBC Christian Slater (below) plays a family man who realizes his personality is split—he's also a cold-blooded spy guy—on My Own Worst Enemy. Who can't identify with that? The great Molly Shannon is Selma Blair's mom in the sitcom Kath & Kim.
ABC Life on Mars takes a detective and throws him back in time to the '70s. (Suggested cameo: Jimmy Carter!) Ashton Kutcher is one of the producers for Opportunity Knocks (below), a reality game show that sets up shop on a family's lawn.
CBS Unfussily ravishing Elizabeth Reaser (Grey's Anatomy) goes on a romantic quest on The Ex List (below). Rufus Sewell, a Brit of the sexy-brooder school, is a scientist-crimefighter on Eleventh Hour.
FOX A new puzzle from J.J. Abrams (Lost), Fringe (below) has Joshua Jackson and others trying to fathom a freaky chain of events. Do Not Disturb (working title), a sitcom about a hotel, stars the very funny Niecy Nash.
CW The home to Gossip Girl seems to have found its groove: fantasies about overindulged teens. 90210 (right), a revamp of Beverly Hills, 90210, is conceptually ridiculous (the original only went off the air in 2000!) but inspired. Surviving the Filthy Rich is about two Hiltonian sisters and their tutor.
Season 4 of Animal Planet's hit series starts June 6 with no Flower—but a new narrator: the acclaimed actress, 64.
WHY SHE HASN'T WATCHED FLOWER'S DEATH I'd get very upset. I can't be sobbing while being the voice of God in the Kalahari.
HER OWN CRITTERS We have mutts: Bishop, Louie and Fionnuala. Louie is a boxer-mastiff mix. Dan [Gilham, her cinematographer partner] says sleeping next to him is like sleeping with a safe.
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