Thursday Night -- Raw, Indeed

Viewers are continuing to lap up the effluence of unrestrained cutthroat ambition spewing forth from The Apprentice, tonight at 9pm on NBC, and don't expect anything different tonight. The network's feeling confident enough to slate Friends and Will & Grace repeats the hour before, and even CBS is using encore CSIs (including one that delves into the evidently not-so-naughty-anymore world of furrie fetish).

I'm still going to sing the praises of ABC's 8pm Threat Matrix, looking to be particularly good and creepy tonight with a tale of terrorists who've changed their faces via plastic surgery in order to slip past authorities. Reminds me of the timeless original Outer Limits episode "The One Hundred Days of the Dragon" where an evil Asian despot used face-changing science to hijack the American presidency. Now that's a plot that bears remaking! In the bad news department, ABC just cut back the season order for Threat Matrix to 16 episodes, not boding well for the continued existence of this struggling but worthy series. Watch it while you can.

And at 10pm, there's no other choice but Showtime's The Chris Isaak Show, as delightful as ever in its third and final (boo-hoo) season. Tonight Chris gets home renovation fever and decides to install a steam room. This show always delivers the goods, alternately amusing and thoughtful, with some of the most genuine characters and performances anywhere on TV. Though I'm not generally an advocate of feel-good anything, TCIS skillfully manages to project an underlying sunny outlook without the usual sappy cliches. Highly recommended!

 
Drama, Drama, Everywhere

9pm is an abundance of riches tonight, with 24 looking to up the intrigue ante with the return of the President's evil ex-wife Sherry to the scene over on Fox, and USA's Traffic miniseries midway through its three-part presentation. (You have to give NBC extra credit for opting out of the entertainment biz for the hour with a news special on the New Hampshire primary.) If you find yourself going for Jack Bauer's continuing adventures and won't make it for USA's Traffic encore at 11pm -- or possibly missed yesterday's Part One, I recommend waiting until tomorrow and recording the first two segments starting at 5pm, then hang in for the last part at 9pm. Or just tape the whole shebang and get to it later, or wait until Sunday when they'll be running it from noon until 7pm. In fact, saving Traffic for later is probably the best idea, since 24 doesn't have an encore play on FX this year, which seems like a mistake to me.

In the you'd-better-have-a-strong-stomach department, HBO premieres a new documentary entitled Shelter Dogs tonight at 7:30pm. Profiling dedicated but edgy animal rescue kennel operator Sue Sternberg, this America Undercover presentation tackles the there's-no-good-solution problem of animal overpopulation. If you're the kind of person who doesn't even want to think about dogs getting euthanized, skip this program, but if you can take it, Shelter Dogs, like all of HBO's terrific docs, is sure to be a riveting and intelligent 73 minutes of television. If you miss it tonight there are frequent encores scheduled, so be sure to visit the HBO website for more information.

Need I mention the brand new Keen Eddie up tonight on Bravo at 9pm? There's just too much else to watch; even I'm going to catch this one later.

And on the theory that anything with a komodo dragon is automatically great, National Geographic Channel gets my 8pm vote for their Built for the Kill special about particularly dangerous animals. You may already know about the super-deadly saliva of the komodo, but it never hurts to get a refresher course. Animal Planet weighs in with two hours of Mad Mike and Mark at 8pm & 9pm, where we get to tag around with the professional wildlife photographer duo.

If you're open at 10pm, you might want to catch an encore of Court TV's original movie Chasing Freedom starring Juliette Lewis. Though Court's forte is their cadre of non-fiction series and it's doubtful that they can realisitically compete with HBO or other networks offering their own made-fors, they deserve a hand -- and your eyeballs for a couple of hours -- for trying.

 
Keen Eddie's Back!

I've been away in Nova Scotia so I'm a little behind here, but thank goodness I'm back in time to recommend the terrific series Keen Eddie once again, now that it's on Bravo. I loved this show from the beginning when it premiered on Fox last June but was rapidly yanked due to less-than-reality-series numbers. Fans were elated to hear that Bravo will be showing the entire run, including several unseen episodes. Rather than rehash everything I've previously written about this delightful show, here are my earlier posts, which without a doubt prove that hindsight is 20/20.

From 6/4/03, after 2nd week of the show:

Bloody brilliant! I really liked Keen Eddie last night on Fox, so my advice is watch it while you can because it's probably doomed. The series was announced last fall but hasn't seen airplay until last night, and for all the talk about how TV is now a 52-week-a-year business, being shoved into the summer isn't exactly primo placement. But what else can a network do with a show that's clever, quick, slightly non-linear, kinda nutty, and basically different from most of what's working on network television these days?

And god help it, but Keen Eddie is even described as a drama/comedy, and we know -- despite America's penchant for claiming it loves a sense of humor -- that viewers (except for some watching pay channels) absolutely hate a hybrid. If you have any doubt, take a look at the dramas that are working these days -- both CSI series, all the Law & Orders, and whatever's in between, and certainly most of what looks like gold for next year. Pity the poor show that tries to dispense a little wit along with the woe. It seems as thought the teen-oriented shows can sometimes make a go of it -- I'm thinking of Buffy The Vampire Slayer here, for instance -- but as a rule, keep it grim.

If you're one of those people who need the slow and steady pacing of Law & Order, then Keen Eddie may not be for you, but try not to let the fancy editing and snazzy exciting visually tricks put you off. Those techniques are some of what makes Keen Eddie fast and funny, in addition to the breezy dialogue and a requisite complicated storyline. The basic premise of Keen Eddie -- disgraced American cop is sent to London to redeem himself -- is actually quite like that of Dempsey & Makepeace, a syndicated show from the '80s (some of you may recall it), but a lot of water has flowed under Tower Bridge since then and this series is strictly nowsville. Yes, I know I've got a thing for everything British, but Keen Eddie knows that a lot of Americans think Brits are somewhat weird-looking, often priggish and overly-polite, and the show plays on these preconceived images very effectively. If nothing else, you'll get a kick out of Eddie's main Scotland Yard partner Monty (played by Julian Rhind-Tutt), who looks like an Upper Class Twit yet is anything but a prude. Keen Eddie himself is played by Mark Valley (Once and Again, Days of Our Lives), and he's got a brash Yank charm that sounds like it could be cliched as hell but really works. There's also a lovely lady in the mix, Eddie's reluctant roommate Fiona (Sienna Miller), who presumably will end up in a romance with Eddie (or not...), and for cheap laughs a randy bull terrier who's got the hots for Fiona's pussycat.

A show like Keen Eddie may not change the world, but it just might make living in it a little more enjoyable. As I said before, I don't think the smart money would be on the show surviving, but evidently they've already produced 13 of them so at least we'll have a little bit of heaven while it lasts

From 6/17/03:

Keen on Eddie

Keen Eddie, in addition to romping along at a bracing pace and being stuffed with as much crazy dialogue as the law allows, features a wonderful assortment of guest stars and bit actors in every episode. It's been a particular treat to see the larger-than-life actor/comedian Alexei Sayle in his recurring role as Rudy, a struggling actor with criminal connections who seems destined to interact with Eddie for the duration. Sayle, who was a huge comic sensation in Britain beginning with his lunatic appearances on The Young Ones (now available in a great DVD set) back in the '80s and continuing with several of his own series, has traded in a bit of his crazy edge but replaced it with a genial energy that makes him irresistible. He was also featured in the UK miniseries Tipping The Velvet which BBC America ran last month, but you'd never know it, what with BBCA's butchering of the episodes. How nice to see a lot of him in Keen Eddie!

Ratings have been predictably dismal for the show, but unless you're a person with strictly mainstream tastes -- and more power to you if you are, it must make TV watching so much more satisfying -- you know that's what often happens with shows that are somewhat out of the ordinary. Keen Eddie is delightful and unexpected, and that's surely enough to put it on the endangered species list. Currently it's set to run through July, at which point it will be replaced by the early-starting fall series The O.C.,which will eventually move to Thursday nights when 24 comes back. If ratings don?t improve soon, it would almost be a miracle if Fox didn't pull the plug sooner, but let's hope that they let Keen Eddie find its way for a few more weeks at least.



Well, Fox obviously did pull the plug and only a handful of episodes actually aired, but now that Keen Eddie's on Bravo, relax and settle in for many hours of completely satisfying and delightful television.

The pilot is on again tonight at 7pm, and it's also airing again (smartly programmed, for inevitable latecomers) a couple of times this coming Wednesday. New episodes air Tuesdays at 9pm; this week it'll be a never-seen episode with Ron Moody.

Check out Bravo's website for Keen Eddie for more information on the show.

Here's the complete airing scheduling so you don't miss a bloody thing!


More, Please!

Also on tonight, if you've fallen for the celebrity poker craze -- as I unfathomably have -- Travel Channel premieres its Hollywood Home Game series at 9pm. The two-hour show features Jack Black, Drew Carey, Mimi Rogers (who guested on Bravo's show, too) among others in a for-charity game played on a Hollywood soundstage, not in a celeb's home as originally publicized. But not to worry, the playing's the thing here, and if the surprising excitement and television presence of poker holds true here as well as it did on the Bravo series, this could be a lot of fun.

Bravo, either coincidentally or intentionally, is running several episodes of their show tonight also at 9pm, and you'll have a chance to see the nutty David Cross-Mimi Rogers episode at 10pm, plus the ultimate showdown at midnight. That's a lot of poker -- I recommend some fancy channel-switching to catch a sampling of both -- but certainly a great alternative to watching the silly but much-touted Golden Globes on NBC. How many of you recall when this tawdry little soiree was so denigrated that it used to run on TBS, not so many years ago? (Trio's recent documentary on the GG, airing again tonight at 7pm, told the whole story.) That said, I hope Amber Tamblyn and Jessica Lange win in their respective categories, as well as anybody from Monk, but we all know it's nonsense....

And of course there's Curb Your Enthusiasm at 9:30p on HBO, and the second episode of Showtime's lipstick-lesbian soap The L Word at 10pm.

Pick wisely, record frequently, and watch constantly!