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Hollywood-set comedy Party Down ran for two great seasons, with a cast including Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, Jane Lynch and more…

David Brent-isms. “The Gareth” (a haircut inversely as popular with the viewing public as “The Rachel”). Making us well up at the mere mention of Only You by Yazoo. Martin Freeman’s face.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s The Office gave us so much, not least its intermittently excellent Us remake and the many other sitcoms it inspired. Its hand-held single camera style and wryly observed mundanity became so seminal that for a period in 2009, it was technically illegal to launch a new Us sitcom that didn’t emulate them.

Thus arrived Modern Family and Parks And Recreation, two shows filmed in the mockumentary style for no discernible reason besides a love of The Office and its Us remake. (Parks And Rec grew out of NBC originally...

With "Dominion" premiering June 19th, Syfy recently hosted a conference call with star Chris Egan and exec producer/creator Vaun Wilmott, and we have the highlights for you here.

Settle in a bit because it's a long, wide-ranging discussion that touches upon the mythology of the TV show vs. the movie (2010's Legion) and how things have changed - Wilmott promises for the better - in this adaptation. He also describes the caste system in place in Vega society, what other worlds and supernatural beings we might see, and what the plan is for future seasons.

Egan elaborates on his character (soldier Alex Lannon) and his relationships with both the Archangel Michael and the upper class Claire Riesen. Of course the great Anthony Head's name comes up as well as how much like the angels we know from religion these guys really are.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Interview Louisa Mellor 20 Nov 2013 - 07:00

We chatted to the very affable Marcus Garvey about Broadchurch, Wolfblood, children's TV, and his love of Buffy The Vampire Slayer...

Marcus Garvey is a tall and funny man. The first part doesn't come across as much as the second on the phone (which is where I spent a very enjoyable half-hour chatting to him about his parts in Broadchurch and Wolfblood) but it is borne out by his roles. Policemen and comfortingly daft dads are Garvey's self-described speciality so far - hapless, affable types who can deliver a punchline and make you a brew.

I say we chatted about Broadchurch and Wolfblood, in which Garvey plays, respectively, Pete, the ineffectual Family Liaison Officer assigned to the Latimer family, and Daniel Smith, father to Maddy and Wolfblood in his own right. That we did, but it was via his childhood terror at Chocky, the...

With the BBC’s big announcement regarding Matt Smith’s imminent departure from the Tardis control room, in typical Whovian fashion, the blogosphere erupted with online petitions, Reddit threads & top 10 lists for the serious contenders to play the Oncoming Storm’s 12th incarnation. Some names I’ve heard friends, fellow bloggers and others in the Whovian family toss around, if they don’t include themselves (and they’d be fantastic too!), include David Oakes (The Borgias), Hugh Laurie (Fry & Laurie/House), Ben Whishaw (Skyfall), James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class), Eddie Izzard (The Riches/Ocean’s 11-13) Richard Madden (Game of Thrones; also Jenna Louise Coleman’s real life sweetie), Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead/Star Trek) & Chiwetel Ejiofor (Serenity/Children of Men).

Among all of these very strong contenders for the Doctor (Oakes & Whishaw being my two personal favorite choices) there are also some other popular, as well as not-so-popular,...

Feature Louisa Mellor Feb 12, 2013

The BBC is replacing Merlin in the schedules with Greek myth family adventure show, Atlantis, written by Misfits’ Howard Overman…

Picture the scene: it’s Saturday teatime at the end of September, the leaves are turning, there’s a wisp of bonfire smoke in the chill air and the shops are already stocked with Christmas decorations. Refreshments in hand, you wedge yourself onto the sofa next to your family/significant other/Japanese love pillow, and switch on BBC One. But there’s a problem: no Merlin.

No Merlin? No matter. The BBC has some brand new family teatime viewing in store for you (brand new, yet very, very old) in the form of historical fantasy, Atlantis. Taking over from the Arthurian legend’s time slot will be a new thirteen-part series which will delve even further back into the annals of myth to entertain us on those crisp autumn evenings.

Feature Louisa Mellor Feb 7, 2013

Of all the post-Avengers projects available to him, why did Joss Whedon choose an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing?

In September 2011, Joss Whedon was days from finishing principal photography on The Avengers and planning an anniversary trip to Italy with his producer wife, Kai Cole. As he tells it, Cole suggested they ditch the holiday and use the time to finally make the Much Ado About Nothing adaptation Whedon had been planning since he’d heard Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof as Beatrice and Benedick at one of the regular Shakespeare readings Whedon and Cole held at their California home.

With the means (Cole and Whedon’s Bellwether production company was set up for just such micro-budget projects), the location (the couple’s Santa Monica house, designed by Cole), the cast (plucked from his regular Whedonverse troupe), and the will (Whedon’s never...

The British fantasy series about the classic tale of Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table has made hearts swoon and captured the imaginations of fans across the globe. Merlin returns for its fifth season on September 29th across the Pond in the U.K. – and will hopefully air early next winter in the States. However, some of the juicy scoop and spoilers shared at last month’s Comic-Con event in San Diego were too good to keep to ourselves. Accordingly, here are some of the highlights that fans can anticipate from Merlin’s upcoming 5th season.

Time Jump

Executive producer Johnny Capps revealed that Season 5 opens three years after the events of the 4th season finale, which featured the long-awaited wedding of Arthur and Guinevere. He also explained that Season 5 will be a little bit more darker and sophisticated as they move towards the more classic Arthurian legend,...

The poetic irony of Shakespeare’s phrasing is not lost on Anthony Head. When the Bard wrote that “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” even he could not have known what was in store for the actor Head’s royal character as the fourth season of Merlin begins tomorrow at 10 p.m. Et/Pt on Syfy.

As the new season opens, Head’s character – King Uther – is a mere shadow of himself, mired in bleak despair after realizing that his illegitimate daughter Morgana has arisen to become his greatest enemy, using dark magic to besiege Camelot and its leaders.

The first of a two-part episode, “The Darkest Hour, Part 1” finds Morgana’s blinkered determination threatening not only Arthur’s future, but the very balance of the world. With her magic stronger than ever, the sorceress summons the mighty Callieach (pronounced “kay-lix”) to tear open the veil between the worlds.

The final issue of Dark Horse Comics' Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 was released in comics shops today. Series creator Joss Whedon spoke about the series and the upcoming Season 9 series in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. There are spoilers ahead, so if you have yet to read the series and want to remain in the dark on the plot points, I strongly suggest you exit now.

Again: spoilers ahead.

Still here? Well, you've been told. Anyway.

Whedon sounds like he feels like he got a little carried away with supernatural elements that were easily done in the comics medium that would have been a budgetary nightmare on television to the point that the story strayed a bit from the fact that Buffy Summers is, on some level, a human being that we should be able to relate to. I've pasted some of his quotes below, but do click over...

Former Buffy the Vampire Slayer castmate James Marsters is set to invade Syfy's Caprica

Actor James Marsters will make his debut as Barnabus Greely, an enigmatic and dangerous leader in the monotheist world on the upcoming Caprica episode, "Know Thy Enemy". Excited about his series' appearance, Marsters dropped by to chat about the experience. Here's what he had to say:

I was wondering, you know, I watched the clips, I haven't watched the whole episode yet but I watched the clip where you're mortifying yourself with barbed wire and stuff. What do you feel like you're playing such a, you know, devout religious character after playing so many kind of ant-religious characters throughout your career.

James Marsters: I love anybody who has convictions enough to make mistakes because only people who make mistakes get into enough trouble to be called drama, I think.

Right. Right.

James Marsters: So,...

James Marsters, who played the bleached blond vampire Spike on Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its spinoff "Angel," approves of the new breed of vampires that have taken over pop culture, especially the ones in Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" novels.

"I like them man. They got my niece to read," Marsters says on a conference call to promote his guest starring role on "Caprica." "She wasn't reading a lot, but she hit 'Twilight' and just ate them up and read them five, 10 times. Now she's on to other vampire romances. She reads like a novel a day now. So, go Stephenie Meyer."

And although he acknowledges that Meyer's vamps follow the successful formula that Anne Rice used, making the vampires less monstrous and more "ancient creatures with heart," he says that was the opposite of how "Buffy" creator Whedon approached the fantastical beings.

"He really wanted the...

If you watch a lot of television, particularly if you can't find your DVR remote, you're bound to see a lot of commercials, and in those commercials over a period of time, you're also likely to see some of the same actors rotate through different commercials for different products. (There was an interesting article on this phenomenon a few years ago on Slate, which I can't seem to find.) More often than not, you have no idea what that actor's name is, at least until you see him or her on a television show or up on the big screen, at which point you exclaim, "Hey! That's the guy from that commercial."

Today's Seriously Random List explores the always under-appreciated "guy from that commercial." It's not about famous actors who appeared in commercials before they were stars, or even current celebrities, like Sam Waterston, who are inextricably linked to a certain product.