Tuned In+Uncategorized | August 6, 2011

FX at TCA: More Louie, Wilfred, Philly. Less Pants.

By James Poniewozik
The Rescue Me Panel, including Tolan (second from left), still with pants. / FX
FX 2011 SUMMER TCA: L-R: Cast member/co-creator/executive producer/writer Denis Leary, co-creator/executive producer/writer/director Peter Tolan and cast members Steven Pasquale and Callie Thorne answer questions from television critics during the RESCUE ME session Saturday, Aug. 6 at the 2011 Summer TCA at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. Cr: Frank Micelotta/FX

Saturday is my last day at TCA TV critics’ press tour in LA (my colleagues will have to soldier on without me for ABC’s final presentation), and the network of the day was FX, which updated us as to what’s going on in the worlds of tortured male antiheroes and raunchy comedy. Some of the highlights:

* In the last year, FX was the bearer of bad news in canceling first-season shows like Lights Out and critical favorite Terriers. Today, FX president John Landgraf got to play good cop, with plenty of happy news for fans of existing FX shows. Happiest for TV land, Louie is getting picked up for a third season–great news, but not surprising given that (1) the show’s ratings are dramatically up, (2) it’s getting awards nominations and insane critical love and (3) it costs about as much as five seconds of CGI dragon on Game of Thrones.

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Tuned In+Tuned In | June 23, 2011

TV Tonight: Wilfred: Man's Best Frenemy

By James Poniewozik

Full disclosure: I am a sucker for the man-befriends-nonhuman-creature genre of sitcoms. So when I first caught wind of Wilfred, an adaption of an Australian comedy about a man who sees his neighbor’s dog as a six-foot guy in a dog costume, my tail began wagging involuntarily. Maybe this would fill the Greg the Bunny-sized [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | August 4, 2010

TCA Roundup: Special FX

By James Poniewozik

The Television Critics Association press tour usually has the assembled journalists peppering network executives with difficult, sometimes even hostile questions. But then there are networks like FX, which airs a roster of critical darlings. President John Landgraf took the stage yesterday and was greeted with questions about how much the network was going to add [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | July 20, 2010

Damages Moves to DirecTV, New Official Savior of Television

By James Poniewozik

I believe we can start thinking of satellite provider DirecTV as the Lourdes of television, the last hope for praised but low-rated TV shows and their fans. A couple years ago, it rescued Friday Night Lights by working out a cost-sharing deal with NBC in exchange for first-run rights. Now it’s adopting the award-winning legal [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | January 26, 2010

The Morning After: Assess the Damages

By James Poniewozik

Damages, as you know if you have followed the show in either of its first two seasons, is a show about trust issues. And it’s a show with which I have trust issues myself. (Minor/vague spoilers after the jump.)

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | December 15, 2009

Getting a Little More Justified

By James Poniewozik

Busy working on things-that-are-not-this-blog. While I’m otherwise occupied, enjoy this new FX clip for Justified (formerly Lawman), premiering in March. It’s a trailer, rather than the cool extended scene we saw last fall (which is no longer available for embedding), but I’m excited anyway. Cowboy hats, Walton Goggins and rockets!

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Tuned In+December 1, 2009

FX's Former Lawman Gets Justified

By James Poniewozik

FX announced its midseason schedule today. On tap: Archer, Damages and Nip/Tuck (doesn’t it feel like Nip/Tuck is always returning?) in January; a new Louis C.K. comedy, Louie, in the spring; and in March, the much-anticipated (by me, anyway) Timothy Olyphant drama, once called Lawman, which will now be titled Justified. Looking forward to the [...]

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Tuned In+October 29, 2009

TV Tonight: League of Not-Exactly-Gentlemen

By James Poniewozik

The League might have been a lot better if there were a lot less of it. Watching the first two episodes of this raunchy FX sitcom, about 30-something guys in a fantasy-football league, I got to thinking that the premise would have made a perfect webisode series. Online series have not been around long enough to [...]

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Tuned In+October 1, 2009

P.I.s and TKOs for FX

By James Poniewozik

With Jay Leno on five nights a week, somebody has to make dramas at 10 p.m., and increasingly that somebody is FX. Having already ordered the promising-looking Lawman for next year, the network adds to is stable of largely testosteron-ey dramas with two more drama orders for 2010. Terriers stars Donal Logue (pictured) as an [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | September 18, 2009

Archer's Secret (Agent) Debut

By James Poniewozik

It’s not often that I get a PR pitch from a network asking me not to write about a new show it’s debuting. But last week FX wrote to say that it was sneak-peeking the first episode of its animated spy comedy Archer (starring the voices of H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler and Jessica Walter), [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | August 17, 2009

FX's Lawman: There's a New Sheriff in Town

By James Poniewozik

I’m back from vacation and dealing with deadlines and mail: e-, snail and otherwise. While I try to clear a path to the surface of my desk, here’s something for your enjoyment that came to my Inbox while I was out: a scene from new FX drama Lawman, starring Timothy Olyphant, slated to debut next [...]

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Tuned In+July 28, 2009

FX Pins a New Badge on Olyphant

By James Poniewozik

Right now at the TV critics’ press tour, Joy Behar is on stage, announcing her new HLN talk show (because she has gone too long without a forum for her opinions). But I’d rather tell you about the fact that FX has picked up Lawman, an Elmore Leonard adaptation with Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood’s Sheriff Bullock) [...]