August 2009

Years back, my tweenage daughter and I would watch the original Beverly Hills, 90210 together, and I would tell my daughter, “Behave like that nice girl Donna or brainy Andrea and not that little tart Valerie.” And though I laughed until I cried when I watched the first episode of the new season of Skins, I cannot imagine watching it with my children. Indeed, I can barely imagine how it can be edited for American television. That’s because Skins — the series that launched the career of Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel — is sexually charged, irreverent and sometimes profane. […]

How many times have you watched a home-renovation show and, when the time came for the big reveal, wished that the owners were greeted by gaudy hideousness instead of the lush room they’d been expecting? Well, it had to happen eventually, and real-life home renovators Neil Davies and Jay Purvis are the guys who are bringing the concept to life in Fine Living‘s new series The Fix, premiering in a sneak preview April 1, but beginning in its regular time slot April 7. It’s a simple premise. Davies and Purvis meet the homeowners and interview them about the vision for […]

Even the most diehard posters on Brian Boitano’s fan site seemed surprised to find out that, come August 23, their favorite ice man will heat up the kitchen in Food Network’s newest series, What Would Brian Boitano Make? Which doesn’t surprise Boitano a bit. “I don’t really share that side of me,” the 1988 Olympic gold medalist sighs. “Whenever I do TV shows and publicity, it’s always about the show that I’m in, who I am skating with, what I am doing; it never gets around to, ‘What do you do in your off time?’” What Boitano does in his […]

Watching AMC’s Mad Men, it’s tempting to feel sorry for Elisabeth Moss. As a star on one of television’s sexiest shows, her character, the quietly ambitious Peggy Olson, often appears in some of the frumpiest outfits seen on TV since Father Knows Best went off the air. But as Season 3 of the Emmy award-winning series is about to unfold, we caught up with Moss and got a chance to talk with her about this dowdy but secretive character, life on the set of Mad Men and Season 3 — and found that she’s more than happy with her lot, […]

By Emily Mitchell Back in 2004, Bill Rancic won the first season of The Apprentice and was working for Donald Trump, while Giuliana DePandi was busy reporting the latest celebrity news on E!. They met at a red carpet event and began dating. In 2007, they married in Italy. Now, this entrepreneur from Chicago and his pop culture queen working in L.A. are making their marriage work cross-country with the world watching. Their new reality show, Giuliana & Bill, airs Wednesdays on Style beginning August 5. When I caught up with them, we talked about the reality show kiss of […]

Joan Rivers has been in showbiz for nearly 50 years, so when she says her latest project is the show she’s always wanted to do, it’s worth taking notice. How’d You Get So Rich?, which airs Wednesdays beginning Aug. 5 on TV Land, allows the 76-year-old diva to unleash her inner voyeur and examine the lifestyles of the über-well-off, going into detail as to how they got that way. It’s the latest turn in what’s been a stellar year for Rivers, coming off her victory in a nasty duel with poker star Annie Duke in The Celebrity Apprentice. And only […]

David Hayter didn’t get to where he is in show business by backing off from a challenge. Nearly 10 years ago, the actor-turned-screenwriter first pitched Watchmen to a producer and said that he wanted to direct. Never mind that he had never directed before, or that Watchmen was long called unfilmable, even by much of its die-hard audience and its creator, who refused to have his name associated with any possible screen adaptation. The subversive superhero epic takes place in an alternate version of 1985, in which Richard Nixon is still president and masked crime-fighters had been an integrated part […]

She’s been on the comeback trail for a while now, starting with her appearances in Showtime’s The L Word, but it’s been some time since we’ve seen her take the lead. This month, screen veteran Cybill Shepherd takes the point in Mrs. Washington Goes to Smith, a Hallmark Channel original movie. In the film, Shepherd plays Alice Washington, an empty nester whose husband has run off with a younger woman. In search of a rebirth, she enrolls in courses at Smith College, where she ends up rooming with a free-spirited music major. Although the dorm mates awkwardly fall in love […]