Television

By Todd Allen Looks like the reality television is getting into Geek.  "Fandom Rising" is an attempt by the creators of Jersey Shore to do a reality show on nerd topics. Seeking: 8 strangers for a...

This is going to sound silly, but up until 1978, the BBC didn't put a high priority on keeping archives of their old TV series. As a result, a _lot_ of TV shows from the dawn of British television through the mid-1970s have been erased and gone missing. Roughly speaking, about 40% of the first six seasons of Doctor Who have gone missing. It's so bad, only 6 of the 21 storylines with second Doctor Patrick Troughton have all their episodes in possession of the BBC.

Among the lists of Twitter-base comedies, roast spin-offs and other hapless men in a hostile world of supermarkets and doorknob comedies,Comedy Central announced one deal based on a webcomic, namely CYANIDE AND HAPPINESS, the generally amusing stick-figure theater comic by Kris Wilson, Rob DenBleyker, Matt Melvin and Dave McElfatrick, all of whom will exec produce. The show is described as "a half-hour animated show featuring the twisted humor of a world populated by glorified stick figures." The CYANIDE crew has already been producing shorts and an iPhone app, so this is just anther step in their world conquest.

Fairy tales are hot again -- with multiple movie versions of Snow White coming out next year and two competing fairy tale set shows on TV this fall -- NBC's Grimm and ABC's Once Upon a Time -- the universality of these iconic tales is once again proved. After all, fairy tales are a fun way for kids to learn all about abandonment and death, as Bruno Bettelheim once pointed out. In all this celebration of the collective unconscious, however, it has been noticed that maybe Once Upon a Time was perhaps sleeping in the same brain as Bill Willingham's FABLES -- both deal with fairy tale characters dealing with the modern world and -- smoking gun? -- FABLES was even once in development at ABC.

Jon Bernthal, who plays the hunky and aggro bad boy/survivor Shane on The Walking Dead shows that the brokeback pose can actually work with guys! In fact, this seems to be Bernthal's favorite way to pose!

Continuing the quest for a follow-up to Smallville, Booster Gold is the latest DC superhero to get a TV development deal, this time at the SyFy channel, under Greg Berlanti's production banner. The script is being written by Andrew Kreisberg, formerly of Fringe. Booster Gold appeared on the final season of Smallville, so he isn't a complete TV virgin.

We've never found much amusing in THE BIG BANG THEORY, the nerd comedy for our times, but we are distinctly in the minority on this, as it's one of the signature sitcoms of the day (and the #1 show in Canada!) However, in recent years its girl-fearing cast of hardcore geeks has been joined by all kinds of women -- not just the hot chick across the hall but smart women like Blossom and...now, actual girlfriends. John Doyle at the Globe and Mail sees this as clear shark jumping territory:

One of the major -- if not THE major -- reasons that Disney purchased Marvel two years ago for $4 billion was that the House of Ideas supplied a ready-made audience of material aimed at boys under 18 -- the one quadrant Disney has always had the toughest time reaching. Disney does princesses and Pooh great, but they had to create a whole cable network that could be specifically branded for boys -- Disney XD, which already airs various Marvel cartoons. So this look at just how Disney has used the Marvel universe by Mike Gold is quite interesting as he points out that Marvel TV shows in development at Disney include the Hulk, AKA Jessica Jones (ALIAS), Cloak and Dagger, and a possible Miley Cyrus vehicle based on Mockingbird:

A recent interview with TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 and Dexter scripter Melissa Rosenberg got an update on her development of the Marvel comic Alias as as TV show called AKA Jessica Jones -- and yes Luke Cage will be included:

Robert Kirkman proved just how strong his will and courage are yesterday when he survived an appearance on The View -- not just any appearance, but one where the hostesses were all in their Halloween costumes, including Sherri Shepherd dressed as Frankenstein's Flava and Elisabeth Hasselbeck as...a pregnant wicker basket full of maple candy? What was that. Proving that he has the poise for the big time, Kirkman not only did not burst into screams -- or laughter -- but patiently answered all the biddies' nosy questions about where zombies come from, how they live, what they eat (rugula, maybe?), and whether the zombies are seeing anyone right now and if not how are they going to settle down?

We made it people. Finally, a comic book person has made The View. Robert Kirkman will appear on today's Halloween-themed edition of the popular coffee-klatsch chat fest.

Another day another comics in Hollywood deal! But this one's all in the family, as it's been announced that Warner Bros. TV is developing MEMOIR by Ben McCool and Nikki Cook, as announced in Publishers Marketplace. The deal was negotiated by Angela Cheng Caplan at the Cheng Caplan Company. McCool writes: