Television

AMC has released a teaser poster for the midseason return of The Walking Dead on February 12 with Sheriff Rick Grimes taking aim. After the rather Shane-centric first half of the season, will we see Rick getting back in the saddle? Unsurprisingly, AMC has also announced a longer season 3 -- 16 episodes as opposed to 12. The season will be split in two, and writers Nichole Beattie (Rubicon, John from Cincinnati) and Sang Kim (Crash, Hawthorne) are joining the staff.

Warner's search for a new superhero that can fill the ache left by the end of Smallville's run has landed on Green Arrow. The CW has ordered a pilot written and executive-produced by Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim (GREEN LANTERN) and Andrew Kreisberg Fringe).

Another gender clash in the comics world....so soon??? YES. The title and trailers for that Kevin Smith Secret Stash comic book store show we mentioned a while ago have been revealed and it's called COMIC BOOK MEN, a fact which saddened Jill Pantozzi -- she and other comics-wise females had auditioned for the show:

Ever heard of a UK import called "Misfits?" I've heard it described as "Heroes, but better." Actually, I'd say closer to a mash-up of Heroes, Smallville and the Nathan Barley/Snuffbox school of very dark British humor. And yes, it is better than Heroes. Especially Heroes after the first season.

With the growing ascendancy and popularity of the "nerd" archetype, especially as exemplified by the hugely popular THE BIG BANG THEORY, a bunch of television programs exploring and/or exploiting this personality type are on the drawing board. Some of them might be fun, but some of them are probably going to make nerd blood boil and dominate late night discussions at SF conventions for months to come. Herewith, a field guide.

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...

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: