SUNDAY, JUNE 1
MTV MOVIE AWARDS
8 P.M. | MTV
That charming gazelle Anne Hathaway (Get Smart) is a presenter for this year's event, hosted by Mike Myers. Also on hand: Lindsay Lohan.
MILLION DOLLAR PASSWORD
8 P.M. | CBS
Regis Philbin hosts a new version of the famous old game show (it debuted in 1961). Celebrity players will include Rosie O'Donnell].
MONDAY, JUNE 2
THE MOLE
10 P.M. | ABC
Return of the reality challenge with everyone desperate to figure out who's sabotaging the game.
LEGALLY BLONDE THE MUSICAL: THE SEARCH FOR ELLE WOODS
10 P.M. | MTV
Self-defeatingly long title!
FRIDAY, JUNE 6
POLAR BEARS
8 P.M. | NICKELODEON
In an ecologically sensitive TV movie, the Naked Brothers Band goes green and champions endangered wildlife. Oh, and performs some of its songs.
SATURDAY, JUNE 7
SYBIL
8 P.M. | CBS
Tammy Blanchard in Sally Field's big role, a woman with 16 personalities. Jessica Lange is her therapist.
NEW SERIES!
CBS, June 5, 10 p.m. ET |
DRAMA
It's the height of the Bicentennial summer, and Tom and Trina Decker (Grant Show, with a porn star's mustache, and Lana Parrilla) throw a party at their home outside Chicago. There's dancing on the pool deck out back and, down in what might be the rec room, an orgy. In a bedroom upstairs Trina explains her open marriage to a new neighbor, Susan (Molly Parker), and offers her a quaalude. "It'll take the edge off," she tells Susan. Thanks, Welcome Wagon lady!
Edge, one must say, is something this series does not lack. Swingtown, at least in its opening hour, is a smoothly executed, coolly nonjudgmental soap opera about middle-class married life in an era of sexual experimentation. This isn't a new subject—movies like The Ice Storm already explored it with more bite—but I can't think of another network series so successful in getting the looks and sounds of an era just right. Anyone who grew up in the decade will have a strange, nostalgic pang when they see that kitchen with avocado accents.
NBC, June 5, 10 p.m. ET
HORROR
This 13-episode anthology series, which promises episodes directed by the likes of Darren Lynn Bousman (Saws II, III and IV), launches with The Sacrifice. A dumb if atmospheric tale of strange, willowy blonde sisters with a monstrous secret, it's like a vampire movie starring the Olsens. Tune in instead for the June 19 episode: A nice family guy swaps souls with a serial killer—whose specialty is murdering families. It's nasty and clever.
NEW SERIES!
USA, June 1, 10 p.m. ET |
DRAMA
Playing a U.S. marshal whose job is to keep people in the Witness Protection Program squirreled away from criminals, Mary McCormack (The West Wing) looks authentically hardened, stressed and sleep-deprived. As would you if you were Mary Shannon: Any given day brings corpses, overwrought families and her own annoyingly twittering mother (Lesley Ann Warren). The show is a solid, unadorned piece of work—I like that the marshal hasn't been made softer or more sympathetic by being saddled with neuroses. Special note to Cristián de la Fuente fans: He can be found here, only not doing the samba, as McCormack's boyfriend.
FX, June 3, 10 p.m. ET
REALITY
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) returns with the third season of 30 Days, a show that takes people far from their comfort zones for four weeks and, in the end, finds them a little more appreciative of common humanity.
In the premiere Spurlock himself shovels coal in the depths of a West Virginia mine. (One of his coworkers jokes that the job requires a strong back and a weak mind; the graver concern is whether the lungs will go.) Of the first few episodes, the third is the best: A guy who loves to hunt—he has a happy memory of deer that kept eating even after being shot clean through—is sent to live with a PETA campaign coordinator in Los Angeles. He doesn't really enjoy dressing up as a chicken and protesting outside a fast-food restaurant, but he gradually modulates some of his views. A lot can happen in a month.
• As Noah Mayer on As the World Turns, the 25-year-old actor (who's straight) recently exchanged daytime TV's first gay kiss with costar Van Hansis, boosting ratings and sparking debate.
WHAT'S BEEN THE REACTION? I'm sure there are haters, but I've only experienced the warmest support from the fans. I get letters from people who feel this character has really helped them.
WERE YOU NERVOUS ABOUT THE ROLE? There was a casting call that went out, and we all knew it was for a gay character. I had no reservations whatsoever—it's pretty cool. Every actor wants to break new ground.
DO YOU HANG OUT WITH VAN HANSIS? We're good friends. We even have similar taste in music, the indie rock scene. He has a [daytime] Emmy nomination, and I'm psyched for him.
HEY, WAS THAT YOU IN A BIT PART ON GOSSIP GIRL? I got to hit on Serena [Blake Lively], so that was nice.
• The excitable 50-year-old judge from FOX's hit So You Think You Can Dance kicks up for the new season
ON HER WHOOPING ENTHUSIASM If I don't scream, people are so upset. If somebody gets to be on the hot-tamale train [one of her catchphrases of praise], they go berserk. But you know, brother, I never know what I'm going to say. Some of the stuff, it just flies right out of my mouth.
ON THE SUCCESS OF DANCE SHOWS I don't think you could have dreamed this five years ago—dancing just wasn't on TV. If people asked me what I did, I'd say, "Ballroom dancer," and they'd say, "What bar do you work at?" Now I could be welcome at the White House.
ON (FINALLY) PUTTING HER FEET UP I have told my manager I want Labor Day weekend and the three days before that off. I'm renting a house with old friends on Lake Tahoe. Just going to chill out.
James Van Praagh is the kind of guy who thinks nothing of it when Heath Ledger shows up in the middle of his morning routine. "I was shaving and all of a sudden I see his face in the back of my mirror," says Van Praagh, in his Laguna Beach, Calif., home. "A thought comes from him immediately: 'I f----- up.' Then he thought about his daughter. Then he was gone." Van Praagh believes Ledger, who died a few weeks earlier, then went on to visit Michelle Williams and their daughter Matilda in Brooklyn. "I want to talk to Michelle and do a reading to help her," Van Praagh says.
Of course, Van Praagh doesn't usually make house calls. Instead the self-described "ambassador of the spirit world" is more of a mass medium, which is why he is rivaled only by a few, like John Edward, as one of America's best-known conduits to the hereafter. Van Praagh, 49, prefers to do his stuff via television; he's co-executive producer of CBS's Ghost Whisperer and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live. Then there are his books—seven so far—including current bestseller Ghosts Among Us. "If I did do private readings?" Van Praagh says. "Boy, could I charge a lot!"
Occasionally Van Praagh does sit with celebrities, like Eva Longoria Parker, Ted Danson and Cher—who through Van Praagh once got Sonny's guidance when picking shoes for the Oscars. Whisperer star Jennifer Love Hewitt recently had Van Praagh rid her home of the ghost of an obsessed fan. "Through James I was able to talk to my grandmother," the actress says. "Death is something people are really afraid and unsure of. When somebody can shed a good or hopeful light on it, like James can, why wouldn't you be intrigued?" Joan Rivers spoke to her husband, Edgar, who died in 1987, through Van Praagh. "I think James really does have the gift," she says.
Van Praagh's many debunkers suggest his entire career is built on illusion. "Magical thinking is powerful," says Michael Shermer, editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine and author of Why People Believe Weird Things. "We would like to believe that this is not all there is and that our loved ones are close by, and maybe even in the room, but that doesn't make it true."
Van Praagh takes naysayers in stride. "I invite skeptics, because this is all about open minds and hearts," he says. "It is not my job to force this down people's throats. Everybody has a right to believe what they believe."
Van Praagh, however, believes that the typical ghost is the soul of a person who died but for whatever reason—obsessions, unfinished business—just can't let go of terra firma. The ghosts, he says, can take the form of shimmering lights or the person and tend to hang out in bars, churches and homes, and yes, they go to their funerals. "At his funeral, my father commented that his teeth looked so much better," says Van Praagh, who is single and grew up in Queens. First thing you should know about ghosts: They're nothing like they're portrayed on his show. "My latest book was in part to educate readers about what ghosts are and if they haunt people like on Ghost Whisperer," he says. "The answer is no. They aren't really violent. That part of the show is very Hollywood."
Van Praagh says he first noticed his ability to connect with the otherworldly when he was a boy—while at Mass he'd watch the ghosts of little children play in the pews of the church. As a teenager, Van Praagh says he lost his gift. "I shut down sometime around puberty," he says.
It wasn't until years later that he realized what he was capable of: After moving to Los Angeles in the '80s to pursue a career as a sitcom writer, he saw the spirit of a coworker's grandmother at the next desk. "After that day, I saw that I had come here to demonstrate to the world that there was no such thing as death and no limitation to consciousness," says Van Praagh. "Your loved ones will always come and get you."
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!
