Gaywatch: New Year’s Entertainment Resolutions Part I:The Phantom Menance
By Tim Parks
Every year when the New Year begins to loom large on the final calendar page for its respective year – this one being 2011, in case you haven’t been keeping track and get it together if you haven’t, jeez – everyone is all about losing weight, exercising more, quitting their respective vices and resolving to make the upcoming year the one that will be the best ever.
Sometimes the resolutions stick like the floor of a “movie theater,” while others slide off faster than a greased up stripper falling off his or her pole.
But fear not, there is an easy way to make the most out of 2012, if only in an entertaining way, and that’s by salivating over some new TV shows. So get your Wet Naps at the ready as we look at what is coming up in the immediate future and a little bit beyond.
I Wouldn’t Drink If You Didn’t Upset Me So Mush
OK Ab Fab fans get your Bolly boners ready – it’s ok to say that when used in a sentence as in Patsy and Edina’s return to TV gives me a boner of the champagne variety, now settle down – everyone’s favorite alkie-haulics are back, beeyatches. But, there is a catch to it – don’t cry, hush now – the Absolutely Fabulous 20th Anniversary Special is just that…special.
Hold up, they announed there will be a total of 3 episodes total! Raise your glass in a toast, especially when it comes to Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley who will be celebrating, with champs and little nibbly things no doubt, a homecoming of one of the dynamically drunk duo who has a spooky new friend in tow.
Oh and Bubble(Jane Horrocks, hopefully the Horr is silent) stages her own version of something you might have heard of, this little event called the Royal Wedding. Unfortunately, their Christmas Special will not be airing in the US. Remember, I am just the messenger…stop throwing things at me, fruit bruises easily. Airing January 9 at 10 on BBC America…isn’t that an oxymoron?
Someone else that likes to get her swerve on, Chelsea Handler, is serving as the bartender, err, the executive producer on the from-the-page-to-the-soundstage version of NBC’s Are You There, Chelsea? That’s minus the Vodka and It’s Me from the memoir title, ok?
Since the filthy late night talk show hostess with the mostess is busy with her chit chatting on E!, Laura Prepon of That ’70s Show will portray Chelsea Newman…bet she’s glad she kept her hair dyed blonde. Newman, like her real-life counterpart, doesn’t curtail her libation intake after a DUI, she just avows to never drink and drive again. It’s called progress people! Oh, and Handler will be onscreen as the other Chelsea’s older sister Sloane – I’m cornfused…won’t this mess up the space/time continuum or something?
Plus, Prepon’s former ’70s costar, Wilmer Valderrama, will guest star on a future episode, talk about a, um, coup? Hey, if her other former co-star, Ashton Kutcher, can make a successful TV comeback…oh wait, that was only for a few weeks. Wednesdays at 8:30, starting on January 11.
G To The A To The Y
NBC’s Smash, which is pronounced with several more s’s sssister, doesn’t sound all that gay. Psyche! It’s a more mature take on Glee – hey that’s what’s been said about it, I love me some immature Glee – with Will & Grace’s Debra Messing (gay) about the staging of a Broadway musical based on Marilyn Monroe’s life (double gay). It also features Megan Hilty as the star of the show tune extravaganza, Katharine McPhee and Anjelica Huston as the latest big screen star to give the small screen a go. Begins on February 16 at 10.
Are you down with G.C.B.? Yeah, you know me. Word. But, what you may not know about this upcoming sitcom is that it had the acronym from its book source material of Good Christian Bitches, until it became Good Christian Belles. What did Rick Perry in his Brokeback Mountain jacket tell ABC that the title shouldn’t openly serve in primetime? Smooth move Ex-Lax.
Anyhoo, the skinny on this show is that it probably has more homo street cred than Perry would be comfortable with…look for his subsequent foot tapping arrest sometime in the future – it’s so hard to stop, just like eating potato chips, really self-hating Lays. OK, back on target. The series is produced by Darren Starr (Sex and the City), co-stars Annie Potts (Designing Women) and Kristin Chenoweth (Pretty much anything gay adjacent) in the TV tale of Amanda Vaughn AKA Leslie Bibb and her return to the gossipy fold of a Dallas suburb.
And then there’s David James Elliot’s ouch-inducing character of Ripp Cockburn, and a closeted married man named Blake Reilly…Must. Bite. Tongue. Starts on March 4.
Stuff and Thangs
One goal that is very attainable is to not watch Work It… a cross-dressing for the sake of employment “comedy”…didn’t they stop making crap like this in the ’80s? Hey, at least that decade’s similarly premised Bosom Buddies had Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari seeking housing as “women.”
This one stars Benjamin Koldyke – writes itself, really – as a not-so-passable lady person and does bring Prison Break papi Amaury Nolasco back to the small screen. I have a feeling it will be a short reunion, as the network only has two episodes in the can…just where it was created and belongs. Airs Tuesday January 3…you’ve been warned.
Are you missing Lost ? Sure, we all are! Then check out ABC’s The River and Fox’s Alcatraz starting on 1/16 and 2/7, as both are looking to fill that vacated slot.
Down the road, we have the Dallas reboot on TNT in the summer with the slurp-worthy Jesse Metcalf and Josh Henderson as Bobby and J.R. Ewing’s offspring, well, ride ’em cowboys! And Ricki “you-wuz-robbed-girl-on-Dancing With The Stars” Lake has a new talk show set to debut in September. Hopefully, it will be as trashy as her last one.
Cut. Print. That’s A Wrap!
See, there are scads of reasons to take a ladder and get over breaking those “other” resolutions. And these TV shows will not send you to the shame corner of your soul, begging forgiveness, unless you do happen to lay your peepers on Work It. Until next time, that’s all of the news that’s fit to print.
Tim Parks Media Ho 