No need to bother reading as many television blogs as I do. Here’s the news you should know:
- The Guardian reported that American television shows like Desperate Housewives, Friends, and The Late Show with David Letterman are doing more to win over the minds of Saudi youth than $500-million worth of American propaganda.
- NBC’s pilot Wonder Woman has found its hero and villain—Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) and Elizabeth Hurley (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery), respectively.
- Aaron Sorkin—a screenwriter who just won an Oscar for The Social Network and whom I admire for creating The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip—is returning to the small screen with an HBO drama about a cable news show.
- Before we get too sweet on HBO, though, bear in mind that the network passed on the comedy series Tilda, about a powerful Hollywood blogger. Why they would pass up the chance to work with Diane Keaton and Ellen Page is beyond me. (But let’s not forget, they also passed on Mad Men.)
- Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has joined Lost‘s Michael Emerson in J.J. Abrams’s CBS pilot Person of Interest, a drama about an ex-spy who fights crime vigilante-style.
- Emerson’s close friend and Lost costar Terry O’Quinn has joined the cast of ABC’s good-versus-evil pilot Hallelujah, created by Marc Cherry of Desperate Housewives fame.
- Ronald D. Moore’s NBC pilot The 17th Precinct is now a full-fledged Battlestar Galactica reunion, with Jamie Bamber, James Callis, and Tricia Helfer. The cast also includes Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), Stockard Channing (The West Wing), Matt Long (Mad Men), and Eamonn Walker (Kings).
- Speaking of Kings (which I loved), its young lead Christopher Egan will portray Edgar Allen himself in ABC’s pilot Poe.
- AMC is developing a Reconstruction-era drama called Hell on Wheels about a former Confederate soldier who heads to the West to help build the first Transcontinental Railroad—oh, and to seek vengeance. The series stars Anson Mount as the protagonist and rapper Common as a freed slave he meets along the way.
- Salma Hayek and ABC are developing an eight-hour miniseries based on Wicked—the Gregory Maguire novel, mind you, not the musical it spawned.
- Julianne Moore will play folksy Sarah Palin in HBO’s Game Change, a TV movie based on the John Heilemann & Mark Halperin book of the same name, which chronicled the 2010 election. Will her portrayal of Palin hold a candle to her former 30 Rock costar Tina Fey’s?
- HBO is developing a drama about Nazi-battling magicians and con men entitled Hobgoblin. That premise may strike you as strange, but James Hibbard at EW uncovered a reference to a real-life Nazi-battling magician. All right, HBO, you have my attention. Now, would you mind casting Diane Keaton and Ellen Page?