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ONE: Did anyone else find the judging round of last night’s Top Chef to be a bit of cop out? Sure, Cliff would have been eliminated reguardless of his Tami/David-influenced prank/ouster, and yes, the contestants had cooked better than they had all season, but surely one of those four could have done more. Elia could have not broken that chocolate heart. Marcel could have not had such a ridiculous haircut. I don’t know, Sam is still alive so I’m happy.

TWO: Tonight, either the real or fake Stephen Colbert will be appearing on The O’Reilly Factor AND culture warrior Bill O’Reilly will be appearing on The Colbert Report. Tune in and watch a cartoon character debate a human (but you won’t know which is which). [8:00pm FOX News Channel, 11:30pm Comedy Central]

THREE: According to the AP, CBS is annoyed they went to all this effort to attract more viewers than any other network and yet still can’t get people to talk about their programs at the water cooler. To fight this the network has decided to focus more on “BUZZ” (I’d have suggested “Zazz!”). Says the article:

CBS is annoyed by the lack of attention paid by the industry, critics and awards shows to series like “NCIS,” which has done particularly well since this past summer, and “Criminal Minds,” which was starting to beat ABC’s “Lost” head-to-head. CBS is airing a “Criminal Minds” episode directly after the Super Bowl to drum up more public interest.

That’s also true to a lesser extent for “Jericho,” the new serial about nuclear survivors that has done well despite some critics judging it the least likely fall series to succeed, said Nancy Tellem, CBS Paramount Network president.

“It is very, very frustrating to know you have hit shows and fantastic actors with story lines as challenging as any others and somehow we can’t break through,” Tellem said.

-David Bauder AP

Yes, who’d have thought that the the whims of the American populace might not coincide with critics? News flash: when Americans are grouped together, we start to get kind of stupid.To counter this, the network is planning for some buzzworthy fare for next fall, including “a musical about a low-rent casino owner, a series about a swinging couple set in the 1970s and a show about an exorcist,” says Nina Tassler, CBS entertainment president.

FOUR: Last night I finished watching the first season of the BBC series Spaced, which aired between 1999 and 2001, and is utterly fantastic. The series, which is notable to fans of “Shaun of the Dead” as the same people were involved, was the culmination of a decade’s worth of Generation X-influenced culture. The basic premise plays along the lines of Three’s Company but that’s where the similarities end. Spaced, instead, is a kinetic, hilarious, explosion of twenty-something laziness. The filmmaking (and the comedy) is as ADHD as its characters, but unlike The Family Guy and other such copycats, Spaced always has a purpose in its insanity. Spaced is the type of program you would expect a vintage Kevin Smith to make if he were more ambitious.

So maybe I should have held off on this post. Maybe I should have waited until mid-February when the second season of Extras, Ricky Gervais’ awesome follow-up to The Office, will come to a close after its six-episode run on HBO. There’s a problem, though. We live in the modern age, and once somethings out there, people are going to find a way to watch it. Extras season two finished its run on BBC 2 (whose site has full episodes that can be viewed for free) in the UK last Thursday. A year ago, Extras ran on HBO weeks, if not a full month, after it ended its BBC run. This year, they’re making us sit around and wait three months. Three months!? To keep reading click below…

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Burried somewhere beneath the long, grey mop of hair, the beard, and the protruding gut of Tommy Saxondale is Steve Coogan, the brilliant actor who created Alan Partridge for the BBC a decade ago. Over the past few years he’s been popping up sporadically throughout various American movies (and better British movies), but has found himself back on the BBC as the writer/star of a new series, Saxondale, which premieres tonight on BBC-America at 11:00pm.

This afternoon I checked out the first two episodes of the series. Loved it. Here, Coogan has created one of the more “American” British series in recent memory. Clearly the original Office seemed to have a lot of American influence (though maybe that’s just the universal nature of how offices work in the first place). Saxondale, on the other hand, seems to be more direct. Tommy is always seen wearing USA t-shirts, he drives a suped-up Mustang, watches Pimp My Ride and dates a woman who runs a head-shop at the mall. Perhaps what the show suggests is the notion of British people who have never been to America, completely embracing American culture, though this is coming from someone who has never been to Britain commenting on their views of America, so who the hell knows.

More directly, the series follows Tommy Saxondale, an aging ex-roadie currently making a living as an exterminator. He also is in possibly court-ordered group therapy to deal with his explosive rage. In the first episode, Tommy hires a teenager to help him with his extermination business, and ends up letting the kid live with he and his girlfriend Meg. What I love about Tommy is his simultaneous embrace of a counter-culture lifestyle, and yet complete rejection of that culture when some of his seedier side shows itself in public. He’s a man living by his own rules who, maybe deep down, wishes he were a little more mainstream.

Either way, its definitely worth checking out.

It seems like last week there there was so much television being watching by yours truly I barely had an opportunity to report back with my thoughts (and without thoughts, we really don’t have much of a website). So here are, more or less, my notes on a week’s worth of programming:

Friday Night Lights (Tuesdays 8pm NBC) - Inexplicably placed on a Tuesday, Friday Night Lights is being put into my regular rotation because its one of the few shows I’ve seen on network television that doesn’t shy away from the racial and economical issues affecting small cities in America. The pilot was a by-the-numbers local-boy-makes-good football story and yet the emphasis was never put on the game itself, but on the characters and how football is really the towns only shared experience. The shows realism seemed startling.

Help Me Help You (Tuesdays 9:30 ABC) - I liked seeing Tim Meadows as the rival therapist. Tim Meadows is the type of SNL alum who was so poorly used on the show it might have tainted an otherwise brilliant career. Otherwise, if it weren’t for the complete lack of comedies on television, I probably would quit watching this show. In classic Hollywood fashion, the series takes place in a New York City that reeks of Los Angeles (the LA subway may on one of the sets didn’t help).

The Nine (Wednesdays 10:00 ABC) - First and foremost, “Egan Foote” might be the greatest character name of the season. As for the character, well, we’ll just have to wait and see. As a whole, The Nine was both good and interesting, but like Studio 60… we won’t be able to get a real look at the show until the second or third week. What is interesting about the setup for The Nine (a group of people are held hostage in a bank for 52 hours, and throughout the shows run we’ll get to see what happened in there) is seeing if audiences will use the hostage-taking as a canvas in which to project their own personal tragedies. Perhaps the bigger question is wondering if people do happen to project themselves into the series, will they like what they see? The Nine asks viewers to dig a little deeper into their own psyche in order to start relating to the characters on screen. I’m curious to see if viewers will be willing to do that.

Freak Show (Wednesdays 10:30 Comedy Central) - The voice-talent alone is a force to be reckoned with. Frankly, I could listen to Jon Benjamin read XML manuals and find it hilarious, though the show still pales in comparison to The Venture Brothers, which might be the pinnacle of six years worth of Adult Swim programming. Aside from South Park, Comedy Central has never really had much authority in animation.

Peep Show (BBC, DVD) - I put down the TV remote for the DVD remote and checkout out the british series, Peep Show, which was recommended to me by a friend. It’s a fairly high concept show about two roommates who are a bit of an odd-couple (one’s a button down office worker, there other is a carefree musician). The twist is that the entire show is shot from the point-of-view of one of the characters. As in we, the audience, are constantly looking through someone’s eyes and are able to hear their thoughts. Its a cool-enough idea, and could certainly propel a series, but it also doesn’t hurt that the characters frequently make the worst decisions you could imagine. I’d basically equate the style of comedy to something of a British It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Definitely worth checking out.

Ugly Betty (Thursdays 8:00 ABC) - Nice to see “Dawn” from the British office show up here as the host of “Fashion TV.” That makes two network shows where she’s been spotted in a small role this season. LET’S MAKE IT THREE!

SNL (Saturdays 11:30 NBC) - The only redeeming parts of this episode were the “New York City Stories” shorts that were done with Fred Armisen and Amy Poehler. Specifically the first one where Armisen played Scorsese. That made me laugh.

South Park (Wednesdays 10:00 Comedy Central) - I don’t play “Worlds of Warcraft” but enjoyed this episode nonetheless. I’m curious how much support they had from Blizzard, as their logo was all over the episode.

Extras (Thursdays 9:00 BBC-2) - It’s not out in America yet (January), but let me be the first to tell you that the second season of Ricky Gervais’ Extras is leaps and bounds above the first (which is saying something since the first season was hardly shabby). This week’s episode featured Chris Martin from Coldplay pimping his new record “Coldplay’s Greatest Hits.” I know that doesn’t sound all that funny (”You’re gay because you like Coldplay”), but trust me… it is. There’s video available via the BBC.

I finally finished my roundabout viewings of the “Alan Partridge” BBC series. Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge was created in 1994 and was followed a few years later with two seasons of I’m Alan Partridge.  Steve Coogan plays the titular character, and does so brilliantly. KMKY, which sets into motion more or less all of Alan’s motivations in the later series, is basically a straight up talk-show in the vein of Larry Sanders (minus the behind the scenes antics). The key difference being Mr. Partridge’s ineptitude at just about every aspect of his job. What I find so surprising about all of these shows was how Coogan and his writing partners managed to tap into the whole “awkward” comedy genre about six or seven years before everyone else got in on the gag. Larry David is clearly a pioneer in this field, somewhat in Seinfeld but mostly in his later work. Sure, Seinfeld had its fair share of awkward moments, but as good as it was (and it was good. It’s strange, in a way, to watch a straight up sit-com that was just so relentlessly funny) Seinfeld was at its core joke-based. Obviously the current front-runner in awkwardness is The Office. Ricky Gervais has said Curb Your Enthusiasm greatly influenced his show, which isn’t much of a shock, but certainly helps fill out the family tree. Most of this can be traced back to Andy Kaufman, it seems, but what’s interesting is how long it took for that style of comedy to work its way from the stage to an actual series (and not the other way around).

The Daily Star is reporting that Ricky Gervais may be bringing back our beloved “The Office” for new episodes.

This is a horrible idea.  The show, as it stands right now, is PERFECT television.  It simply CAN NOT continue.  In fact, I’m going to say that if any new episodes are produced, I will deny their existence (right after I watch them).

I want to tell him to just stick with Extras but I suspect he’s “already seen everything…”

[via TV Squad]

Update 06.02.06 00:05
The Office is going to be launching in France under the name Le Bureau, and promises to be all “Frenched out.” The AP explains:

Gone are the quintessentially British allusions to endless pints of beer, replaced by talk of the occasional bottle of Champagne. Cheese is another new French tweak. In the original, the office prankster embeds his nemesis’ stapler in orange Jell-O; in “Le Bureau,” he hides a hunk of pungent fromage in his colleague’s desk drawer.

“Le Bureau” also downplays the original’s treatment of sexual harassment, which was a recurring theme.

The reason?

“In France, we don’t think of it as harassment, but rather something quite nice,” said Nicolas, who co-wrote the French adaptation.

I look forward to the part of the series where the camera just observes a completely empty office because everyone decided to just nap all day. [Zzzing!]