Channel Surfing: Olyphant to Star in Elmore Leonard Pilot for FX, Sneak Peek at 100th Episode of "Lost," Enver Gjokaj Talks "Dollhouse," and More

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing.

Timothy Olyphant (Damages) has been cast in FX's untitled Elmore Leonard project, which is based on a short story by Leonard entitled "Fire in the Hole." Olyphant will play U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens who returns to his hometown in Kentucky. "He has a certain jaggedness, but he also loves his job," said creator/executive producer Graham Yost. "He is like an anachronism: He wears a hat, cowboy boots and a holster on his hip. It's a little bit like he was born 100 years too late." Project, from Sony Pictures Television and Timberman/Beverly Prods., will be directed by Michael Dinner and will start shooting at the end of May. (Hollywood Reporter)

The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan has a sneak peek at three scenes from Wednesday evening's 100th episode of ABC's Lost, entitled "The Variable." (Gee, does that title remind you of another famous installment?) All I can say is that this episode looks to pack quite a punch. (Chicago Tribune's The Watcher)

Dollhouse star Enver Gjokaj talks to E! Online's Jennifer Godwin about his character, Victor, and about what's coming up on the FOX drama, created by Joss Whedon. "We know he has a military background and that something bad happened," said Gjokaj about Victor. "Joss and I have talked briefly about that, but nothing is official." As for why Victor and Sierra (Dichen Lachman) seem to be propelled towards each other, Gjokaj said, "Pheromones? I'm not sure, but we know it's something deeper, more instinctual than liking her personality, because we don't really have those as dolls. I personally think Joss is asking, "What if there is such a thing as true love?" Something more than a pat psychological answer. What if two souls are attracted to each other even in the absence of memory?" (E! Online's Watch with Kristin)

Pamela Adelon (Californication) will star opposite Adam Carolla in CBS comedy pilot Ace in the Hole, where she will play the wife of Carolla's character, a nurse and mother of two. Should Ace in the Hole be picked up to series, Adelon would depart Showtime's Californication. Meanwhile, Leslie Bibb (Iron Man) has left NBC's untitled Justin Adler comedy pilot, following a creative shakeup that also saw Adler, the pilot's writer leave the project. Bibb's role is currently being recast. (Hollywood Reporter)

ABC announced several additions to its summer schedule, including three installments of news magazine Primetime, Primetime: Family Secrets, Primetime: Crime, and Primetime: The Outsiders, while Primetime: What Would You Do will return for another run. Series will air on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 10 pm ET/PT throughout the summer. The network also has four-hour mini-series Diamonds and Impact, special J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life, and a slew of reality series, including Great American Road Trip, which will now air Tuesdays at 8 pm beginning July 7th, and America's Got Talent, which will kick off with a two-hour opener on June 23rd. (Variety)

Spike is said to be close to signing a deal to acquire off-network cable rights to HBO comedy Entourage, possibly in conjunction with another channel in MTV Networks' stable, likely Comedy Central. Series will become available in 2010. (Broadcasting & Cable)

AMC's Mad Men took home the top prize yesterday at the BAFTA TV awards in London, where it won the trophy for best international series, beating out fellow nominees The Wire, Dexter, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, while Kenneth Branagh drama Wallander beat out Doctor Who, Shameless, and Spooks for the continuing drama prize. (Variety)

The New York Times talks to King of the Hill creator Mike Judge about the long-running FOX animated series wrapping its run after 13 seasons. Judge, who says that he wanted to stop working on the series six or seven years ago, says that there won't be a finale per se. "I’m not sure there will be a final episode this time around," he told the Times' Kathryn Shattuck. We did a final episode back in the first year we thought we were canceled. I was really proud of that last episode, and then when we didn’t get canceled, we had to kind of tweak it and do these different things to make it not seem so final. And I’m not sure there will be any kind of story arc. The thing I think we do well is kind of keeping it the same. I’m a big fan of just classic TV — the old Bob Newhart Show, Leave It to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show. There was something kind of comforting in that, episode after episode, they didn’t change that much." (New York Times)

NBC is bringing back axed reality competition series The Chopping Block to the schedule. The series, which was pulled from the Peacock's lineup last month, will return on Friday, June 19th at 8 pm and air the five remaining episodes of the series. (Futon Critic)

Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein) have set up production company Points West Pictures, which they hope will develop projects that will place them in front of and behind the camera. Company is in development on three projects, two of which are being written by Westfeldt. (Hollywood Reporter)

William Morris Agency and Endeavor are expected to vote today on a potential merger that would create a major new player on the talent representation scene. The combined joint entity, WME Entertainment, would offer 300 agents, one of the top client rosters, and an annual revenue of roughly $325 million. "The deal could trigger a new wave of consolidation, putting pressure on other smaller agencies to combine or find larger partners," writes The Los Angeles Times' Dawn C. Chmielewski and Meg James. "The last significant talent agency merger was in 2006 when International Creative Management bought the smaller Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann Agency in a move to inject new life into ICM's television business." (Los Angeles Times)

ABC Family has yanked freshman comedy Sophie off of its schedule effective immediately. The cabler will air back-to-back new episodes of fellow first-year comedy Roommates in the 9 pm hour and 10 pm hours on Monday nights beginning tonight, wrapping up its run now on May 4th, rather than June 15th. (Futon Critic)

MTV has given a series order to reality competition series The Stylist, which will pit fashion stylists against one another for a contract with a major agency, from Bunim-Murray. The cabler also ordered 80 additional episodes of dating series Parental Control, bringing the series' six season total to 200 installments. (Hollywood Reporter)

Style has renewed eight series, including Ruby, The Dish, How Do I Look?, Clean House, Split Ends, Clean House Comes Clean, Dress My Nest, and Whose Wedding Is It Anyway. The cabler has several new series in the pipeline including Mothers and Daughters of Dallas and Guiliana & Bill, a docusoap following former Apprentice winner Bill Rancic and his wife Guiliana, an anchor on E! (TV Week)

Stay tuned.

Channel Surfing: NBC Cuts "Chopping Block" from Schedule, Wesley Sinks Teeth into "Vampire Diaries," Katic to Return to "Big Love," and More

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I had a fantastic evening last night at a WGA event for the writers of ABC's Lost, which included Team Darlton, Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis, and Elizabeth Sarnoff.

After just three episodes, NBC has cut culinary competition series The Chopping Block from its schedule, effective immediately. In lieu of the Marco Pierre White-fronted reality competition series, which landed a 0.9/2 share among adults 18-49 and 2.6 million viewers overall, NBC will air repeats of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and NBC said that Chopping Block could return at a later date. (But don't hold your breath.) (Variety)

Paul Wesley (24) will star opposite Nina Dobrev (Degrassi) and Ian Somerhalder (Lost) in the CW supernatural drama pilot Vampire Diaries, from writer/executive producer Kevin Williamson. Wesley will play Stefan, a "gloriously, amazingly, epically beautiful young man" who is a 200-year-0ld vampire locked in a battle with his brother Damon (Somerhalder) for the love of a young girl named Elena (Dobrev). (Hollywood Reporter)

Branka Katic will reprise her role as Ana when Big Love Season Four launches in early 2010. "I'll be back to cause some trouble," Katic told Michael Ausiello. "I think she's somewhere out there licking her wounds. I think she divorced out of pure compassion because the damage she was causing the family was something she certainly didn't want to happen." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

FOX has announced its plans for summer, which include the launch of medical drama Mental on Friday, May 22nd at 9 pm ET/PT, the return of So You Think You Can Dance on Thursday, May 21st, and the launch of a new season of Hell's Kitchen on July 21st. (via press release)

Aussie actor Matt Passmore (The Cut) has been cast as the lead in FOX drama pilot Masterwork, from Prison Break creator Paul Scheuring. He'll star opposite British actress Natalie Dormer (The Tudors) and Brit actor Tom Ellis (Suburban Shootout). What's with all of the foreign casting on the project? It's just the tip of the iceberg, according to Hollywood Reporter's Nellie Andreeva, who looks at the sheer numbers of non-US actors scoring roles in this season's pilots. In fact, pilots Flash Forward, Maggie Hill, Inside the Box, and untitled US Attorney each have three non-US actors in major roles. (Hollywood Reporter)

ABC has acquired US rights to four-hour mini-series Ben Hur, from Alchemy Television Group, who will co-produce with Spain's Drimtim Entertainment and Antenna 3, Canada's Muse Entertainment, ABC, and Germany's Akkord Films and ProSieben. Project, which has no airdate, was written by Alan Sharp (Rob Roy) and will be directed by Steve Shill (Rome). (Variety)

Pilot casting alert: Stephen Rannazzisi (Paul Blart: Mall Cop) has joined the cast of NBC comedy pilot State of Romance, where he will play the roommate of romantic lead Mike (Steve Howie). Elsewhere, David Call (Canterbury's Law) has been added to ABC's drama pilot Empire State, where he will play the younger brother of blue-collar Romeo Sam (Mike Vogel). (Hollywood Reporter)

Production has begun in New Orleans on HBO drama pilot Treme, from The Wire creator David Simon. "This is an American story," said Simon. "This is about an American city trying to pick itself up and doing it without a great deal of help." Project, directed by Agnieszka Holland, stars Wendell Pierce, Peter Clarke, Steve Zahn, Kim Dickens, Khandi Alexander, Melissa Leo, and Rob Brown. (Associated Press)

In a rather unusual twist, 1st Call Equipment has signed on to be the exclusive provider of heavy equipment for Universal and all of its productions... as it segues into TV programming development, specifically daytime television. Under the new leadership of former King World executive Erni Di Massa Jr., the company will use its revenue to finance development efforts. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Not Enough Heat in This Kitchen: An Advance Review of NBC's "Chopping Block"

I'm a huge fan of culinary competition series like BBC America's superlative Last Restaurant Standing and Bravo's sleek Top Chef, so I thought I'd fall under the loopy charms of NBC's newest culinary offering, Chopping Block.

How wrong I was.

Chopping Block, which launches tomorrow evening, seems to be a rather tasteless amalgam of Last Restaurant Standing and FOX's Hell's Kitchen (hardly a surprise as host Marco Pierre White replaced Gordon Ramsay on the original UK edition of Hell's Kitchen) the result of which left me starving for something more substantial.

The premise is this: Eight couples are split into two teams and given their own restaurants to run in New York City while enfant terrible chef Marco Pierre White, who previously trained such culinary notables as Mario Batali and Gordon Ramsay, tasks the competitors with various challenges--from cooking a signature dish to changing the restaurant's decor--and offers his thoughts about the proceedings while twirling about in a chair and wearing a suit with checkered Vans. The winner gets $250,000 to put towards opening their own restaurant. (Which is a pretty generous prize, given that the talented winners of Bravo's Top Chef only get $100,000.)

Unlike Last Restaurant Standing, which gives each of its couples their very own restaurant to run, Chopping Block crams them into one restaurant, likely in an effort to increase the tension and drama by forcing these strangers to work side by side. However, also unlike Last Restaurant Standing, this series seems to focus all of its energies on the half of the couple who is cooking in the kitchen. There's no weight placed on front-of-the-house or seeing if the other half of the couple can actually run the restaurant and act as a suitable host; instead, they're reduced to the role of server. Which isn't actually very fun to watch.

Additionally, there's very little means with which to connect with the couples themselves, who remain mostly ciphers and reality show standbys from central casting: there's the hyper-aggressive know-it-all mother, the overly cocky young gun, take-charge guy with no real skills, uptight cousins, etc. Oddly, we're given a clip package of some of the teams in the first episode to flesh out their backstories, but not all. (We're treated to maybe three of these segments, including one in which a contestant reveals that she lost her fingers in a food processor accident.) Which leaves the majority of the teams somewhat unknowable. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only remember brothers Zan and Than's names... but only because they're the sort of odd monikers that only reality TV contestants seem to have these days.

Chopping Block itself seems to be overly formatted and there's a weird combination of rigidness and looseness to the way that the episodes play out. Challenges are won by the opinion, not of Marco Pierre White, but by a "mystery" food critic--different each week--who turn up at the restaurant for dinner service. White, meanwhile, seems to play the role of narrator, speaking eloquently about cooking and being a restaurateur from some unknown location, yet when he interacts with the teams he is stiff and awkward at times.

I'm not sure if these segments are meant to evoke Donald Trump's words of advice in The Apprentice or were filmed to give some semblance of cohesive tissue with the rest of the footage. Still, White is at least quirkily interesting; it's clear that he's passionate about food but these segments are where his zest comes through, rather than in the rest of the series, where he seems to haunt the proceedings like a stringy-haired and irate British ghoul.

There are some odd choices made with the series' format. In the first episode, the teams are given roughly 48 hours to open their restaurants and White challenges the chefs to compete head-to-head to see who will be the head chef... but in the second episode, they seem to choose their own head chef. They're forced to throw together their restaurants before opening... but then compete in the second episode for money for a makeover. (Wouldn't the teams have been better served by decorating the restaurant before opening rather than in the second episode?) And the zoom effect on the restaurant's menus while the chefs discuss their dishes? It's dizzying in a lose-your-lunch sort of way.

The Fringe-style three-dimensional chyrons are a nice touch, however, and stand out as somewhat innovative in a series that borrows far too liberally from other well-known formats. But, ultimately, Chopping Block is the television equivalent of junk food, rather than the sort of delicious and soulful meal White himself might serve in one of his own high-end restaurants. I'll pass on seconds, thank you very much.

Chopping Block premieres tomorrow night at 8 pm ET/PT on NBC.