Discover Yahoo! With Your Friends

Explore news, videos, and much more based on what your friends are reading and watching. Publish your own activity and retain full control.

To get started, first

YOUR FRIENDS' ACTIVITY

    The Most Promising Midseason TV Shows

    By Richard Lawson | The Atlantic Wire – Mon, Jan 2, 2012
    The Most Promising Midseason TV Shows

    Happy New Year! The happiest part of the calendar flipping over to January is that it means new television will soon be flickering on our screens. Yes, it's near about midseason time, which brings us the return of much-missed favorites (30 Rock, Justified, Portlandia) and the debut of some promising newcomers, and not a few clunkers. There's a full list of premiere dates at EW.com, but here let's highlight a select few.

    RELATED: Julia Louis-Dreyfus Becomes HBO's 'Veep'


    The Best

    Angry Boys

    RELATED: Glenn Beck Moves Israel Rally Citing Assassination Fears


    Playing multiple characters as he did in his strange but delightful earlier series We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High, Australian comedian Chris Lilley's new show, Angry Boys, is an odd, offbeat charmer. The series is basically about the aches and pains of male adolescence, though Lilley approaches this general topic from strange angles -- he plays twins, one deaf and both harmless delinquents, he plays a black American rapper, and he plays the Asian mother of skateboarder, and he plays a middle-aged lady who's juvenile corrections officer. Not everything hits perfectly, and some of the jokes are Australia-specific in a way that American audiences might not get (us included), but it's a weird and curiously thoughtful show that's at times laugh out loud spot-on. (Premiered on HBO last night, airs Sundays at 10pm)

    RELATED: The Simple Delights of 'Ringer'


    Project Runway: All Stars

    RELATED: Huge Opening Night for 'Smash'


    If the recent Top Chef: All Stars season is any indication, inviting back some old favorites can reinvigorate a long-in-the-tooth competition series. And many favorites are indeed back, folks like Austin Scarlett, Rami, and Sweet P. There are also much-reviled villains like Kara Janx and famous cat thrower Kenley Collins. Sure the show's glitter has dimmed since it moved to Lifetime and the creative production team the Magical Elves jumped ship, but the format is still more engaging than most reality television, and really who hasn't missed watching Austin swan around the design room? They ought to make it work and be "in" and all that catchphrasery. (Premieres on Lifetime, Thursday Jan. 5 at 9pm)

    RELATED: Good Luck, Goodbye, Katie Couric


    The Firm

    Making a series based on characters from an eighteen-year-old movie (and an even older novel) doesn't seem all that innovative, but we're still intrigued nonetheless. A lot of that is owed to the solid cast, which includes Josh Lucas in the lead role, the always terrific but criminally underemployed Molly Parker as his wife, Juliette Lewis as his sassy assistant, and Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer in a recurring role. The show, which is set several years after the action of the original story, could be just another clunky legal drama or ultimately directionless mystery series, but we'll definitely give it a watch for those actors' sake. Juliette Lewis alone makes anything worth checking out, right? (Premieres on NBC, Sunday Jan. 8 at 9pm)

    Smash

    We know we keep harping about this show, but it's a television series, in 2012, about theater! Big, broad, easy-lifting Broadway musical theater, but theater all the same. Which is pretty exciting and extremely rare. (No, Glee does not really count.) And the pilot delivers on all the requisite swoons and silliness of the genre, while also maintaining a surprising level of smarts and sophistication. But mostly yeah: auditions and dance rehearsals and imagined musical numbers! On TV, at long last! (Premieres on NBC, Monday Feb. 6 at 10pm)

    The Worst

    ABC's Work It (Jan. 3), about two guys dressing in drag and pretending to be women to get jobs, looks about as horrifying as any new show has in this TV year. The dumbly renamed Are You There, Chelsea? (Jan. 11) seems like a single joke -- Chelsea Handler is a party girl screw up -- that falls flat. Speaking of old jokes, do we really need a Napoleon Dynamite TV series (Jan. 15), almost eight years after the fact? And what we've seen of The River (Feb. 7) takes a cool concept -- found-footage mystery/horror set in the Amazon -- and squashes it with weak writing. But our prediction for worst new show of the midseason is MTV's I Just Want My Pants Back (Feb. 2), a trying-too-hard series about sexy young things living and loving in Brooklyn that, while desperately claiming to be true-to-life, in no way resembles what sexy young things living in Brooklyn are actually like. Here are your pants, now go home.

     

    1 comment

     Post a comment
    [ [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/KeQd0p', '[Slideshow: See photos taken on the way down]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 7]], ' http://yhoo.it/KpUoHO', '[Slideshow: Death-defying daredevils]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['know that we have confidence in', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/LqYjAX ', '[Related: The Secret Service guide to Cartagena]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['We picked up this other dog and', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JUSxvi', '[Related: 8 common dog fears, how to calm them]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 5]], 'http://bit.ly/JnoJYN', '[Related: Did WH share raid details with filmmakers?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 3]], 'http://bit.ly/KoKiqJ', '[Factbox: AQAP, al-Qaeda in Yemen]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have my contacts on or glasses', 3]], 'http://abcn.ws/KTE5AZ', '[Related: Should the murder charge be dropped?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JD7nlD', '[Related: Bristol Palin reality show debuts June 19]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 1]], 'http://bit.ly/JRPFRO', '[Related: McCain adviser who vetted Palin weighs in on VP race]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 15]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/white-house-stays-out-of-teen-s-killing-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120411/martinzimmermen.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['Titanic', 7]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/titanic-anniversary/', ' ', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/b/4e/b4e5ad9f00b5dfeeec2226d53e173569.jpeg', '550', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/navy-jet-crashes-in-virginia-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120406/jet_ap.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]
    [ [ [['did not go as far his colleague', 8]], '29438204', '0' ], [ [[' the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 4]], '28924649', '0' ], [ [['because I know God protects me', 14], ['Brian Snow was at a nearby credit union', 5]], '28811216', '0' ], [ [['The state news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Rosaviatsiya', 6]], '28805461', '0' ], [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]
    One money saving tip you probably haven't tried
    Add your ideas and help make it happen. Join the conversation.
    Episode 11: Hard times for Hometown Hardware
    Should Bill and Donna take on more risk to boost their business?
    One small business owner surprises Bill and Donna
    How Josh's comment on a Remake America video laid the groundwork for something bigger.
    Learn more about Remake America »
    Loading...