>THE CLIENT LIST: Sundays 10PM on Lifetime – If Nothing Else Is On… It’s the very prosaic, unsexy ordinariness of THE CLIENT LIST that makes it somewhat revolutionary. For HBO or Showtime to air salacious shows about the lives of hookers (as they have, with Hung and Secret Diary of a Call Girl) is just […]

  One more drama for ABC:  the murder-driven soap SECRETS & LIES, which had a high-profile deal that would have required the network to pay a large penalty if it hadn’t ordered the series (it has a 10-episode order, which may tag it as more likely for midseason than fall).  It’s based on an Australian […]

> The Games are barely slowing down. THE HUNGER GAMES:  We’ll find out soon enough whether any of the genuinely exciting rumors about possible sequel directors (Alfonso Cuaron, David Cronenberg) are true, because Lionsgate needs Catching Fire in the can by early 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence has to report for X-Men duty.  For now, THE […]

  It’s a deja vu weekend, as THE ACCOUNTANT (RatPac/Warners) had a $9M opening day (including $1.35M from Thursday night), according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, almost identical to last Friday’s $9.3M for The Girl On The Train (including $1.23M from Thursday night), another adult-aimed thriller with a production budget in the $40M range and […]

  WAYWARD PINES:  Midseason TBD on FOX THE FACTS:  M. Night Shyamalan is the marquee producer of this neo-Twin Peaks-ian limited series.  (He also directed the pilot.)  It concerns Secret Service agent Ethan Burke, who travels to the small, strange town of Wayward Pines in search of two missing agents.  The people he encounters there […]

> OPENINGS:  THINK LIKE A MAN (Screen Gems/Sony) ran away with the weekend, with a $33M opening that beat every Tyler Perry start except Madea Goes To Jail.  Perry’s movies tend to be quite frontloaded, ending up with a little over double their opening weekend, and we’ll see if Think can hold up better.  In […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  The SHARK TANK season finale rose 0.1 in final numbers.  All else remained as reported below. FRIDAY CABLE:  With no NBA Playoffs on tap, it was a quiet night, dominated by comedy reruns.  The only sizable numbers were WWE (Syfy) at 0.7 and SONS OF GUNS (Discovery) at 0.6, both steady with […]

> FRINGE ties for its network lead on the night!  (Don’t read the fine print.) FOX:  The newly-renewed FRINGE went up an essentially meaningless 0.1 to 1.1.  Since THE FINDER (facing original competition on every side) dipped 0.1, that put both shows at 1.1–but don’t make any bets on Finder joining Fringe on the 2012-13 […]