BRAVO

It's always a little strange when holidays come to reality-television shows, since you know it had to have been taped, well, beforehand, and so everyone is just faking that it's Thanksgiving. Such was the case when the Top Chef crew headed up to a downright balmy Rochester, N.Y. (they cooked outside for the elimination challenge) to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the rock band, Foo Fighters.

Why? Well, Bravo's reality shows excel at presenting contestants with dumb challenges made slightly less dumb by involving some amount of cool (see also the drag queen challenge on the last season of Project Runway).  read more »

In addition to picking up Sarah Jessica Parker's American Artist, Bravo has also reportedly signed on a U.K. import called Fashion House to fill the void left by Project Runway. Fashion House will have contestants living in one house and working together to create an entire fashion line. [EW]

Meanwhile, Eli Holzman, creator of the show Stylista (premiering on the CW this fall), said he got the idea for the show after being rejected by Anna Wintour. [The Cut]

Al Reynolds, still dismissing gay rumors, has moved his campaign from YouTube to Miami Fashion Week, parading around with a woman who looked exactly like his ex-wife Star Jones.  read more »

The Sarah Jessica Parker-backed reality show that promised to be the Project Runway of the art world has finally been picked up by Bravo, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

America Artist is an hour-long art competition show in which contestants compete in front of judges—start guessing names!—to draw, paint, sculpt, and hopefully do some performance art until a winner is chosen. (Then all they have to do is go on to have a successful career in the art world.)  read more »

MONDAY

The new Batman flick, The Dark Knight, opened this weekend to rave reviews, sold out crowds and a record-breaking performance at the box office—it took in $155.34 million, according to the Associated Press, surpassing the $151.1 million Spider-Man 3 made on its opening weekend a little over a year ago. When a blockbuster generates this much hype, the networks can cash in with primetime tie-ins that appeal to TV-addicts regardless of whether or not they've actually seen the movie. It starts tonight with The Dark Knight's predecessor, Batman Begins, on FX at 5 p.m. Then at 9, turn to the History Channel for Batman Tech, which answers the question posed by the Joker in the original 1989 remake of Batman: "Where does he get those wonderful toys?"  read more »

The suspense is over.

Bravo has finally unveiled the new cast lineup for Project Runway just two days before the premier of season five.

"I feel as though we set the bar higher every season," host Heidi Klum said in a statement released this morning. "We've got some truly talented, innovative and deeply creative designers this year, and I think it's fair to say, the most diverse—everyone from a rocker chick who mostly works with leather to a more bohemian, surfer boy and everything in between."

Guest judges this season will include Diane Von Furstenberg, Sandra Bernhard, Apolo Ohno, Brooke Shields, LL Cool J, RuPaul, Rachel Zoe, Cynthia Rowley and Francisco Costa.  read more »

MONDAY

The three Americans who were freed recently from a leftist guerilla organization in the jungles of Colombia traveled home to Florida for the first time in more than five years on Saturday after undergoing 10 days of treatment in an Army medical center in Houston. Their highly publicized rescue by the Colombian military on July 2 served as a reminder that the large South American nation still has lots of problems, like political strife, a slowing economy, poverty, crime and drugs. (Did you see that VBS.tv documentary on Colombian scopolamine? Scary!) But tonight, Anthony Bourdain focuses on the brighter side of Colombian culture in the latest installment of No Reservations.  read more »

MONDAY

With all the local hype over The Real Housewives of New York City, we'd almost forgotten about their west coast predecessors and sister show, The Real Housewives of Orange County, which taught us everything we'd ever wanted to know about plastic surgery, Southern California Republicans and bad parenting. But now that summer's here, it's time to revisit Silicone Valley. Bravo's airing a Real Housewives mini-marathon starting at 5 p.m., followed by a sneak preview at 10 of the new reality series Date My Ex: Jo & Slade, in which twentysomething former Real Housewife Jo De La Rosa tries to find a new man with the help of her much older, career-advancing ex-boyfriend, Slade Smiley.  read more »

Monday

Is the impulse that drives viewers to A&E’s reality series Intervention charity? Or what the newspapers used to call "human interest"? Or is it just Schadenfreude? Either way, the show, which chronicles those confrontations between self-destructive people and their families and friends brokered by "intervention" specialists, certainly doesn't play for laughs. What you’re seeing is usually pretty horrific, and the train wrecks it picks through can actually become pretty touching stories. Methamphetamine and OxyContin addictions are common fare here; and the success stories, which are not guaranteed, are definitely the more edifying programs. So maybe it is charity after all? Tonight we meet Chad who, like most of the show's subjects, had a pretty troubled childhood—he ended up in juvie for felony arson. At age 15, Chad’s father introduced him to cycling, and he went pro and even cycled on the same team as Lance Armstrong. When he got kicked off the team for “personality conflicts,” however, he turned to drugs. He's homeless and spends his days drinking, panhandling and smoking crack. Can an intervention save his life? The show airs at 9 p.m. Of course before reality programs there were nonfictional programs about science and nature and history. The History Channel takes a break from reconstructing Hitler's last hours in the bunker to trot out an hour-long program about the origins of life on earth at 9 p.m. At any rate switch to Bravo at 10 and watch Clueless if you haven't seen it a few too many times already, or fire up the fourth season premiere of Weeds at 10 p.m. on Showtime.  read more »

Monday, June 9

This week kicks off with a controversial documentary about the Oscar-winning filmmaker-cum-Humbert Humbert, Roman Polanski (9 p.m. on HBO). As you may recall, Mr. Polanksi, a Polish Holocaust survivor who was married to the eight-months-pregnant actress Sharon Tate when members of the Manson family murdered her in 1969, pleaded guilty to getting it on with a 13-year-old in 1977. A year later, he fled the U.S for Paris, likely evading years worth of prison time. But Marina Zenovich’s new film, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which the LA Times calls a “surprisingly haunting examination of the politics, personalities and legal complexities of the 1977 case,” argues that Mr. Polanski’s flight to France was more than just a means of avoiding the slammer:  read more »

LOS ANGELES—Jeff Lewis is a 38-year-old real estate investor who, last year, agreed to have his life filmed by Bravo for a television show about flipping houses. The first season of his show, Flipping Out, showed audiences six episodes of a deeply neurotic man who treats his staff like a dysfunctional family and has managed to turn his obsessive-compulsive disorder to his advantage. “I’m very fortunate, because I found a business that validates and celebrates my disorders,” he told the cameras.  read more »

On Tuesday morning, at an upfront presentation to the media hosted at Tom Colicchio's restaurant Craft on East 19th Street, Bravo executives announced they will be expanding their Real Housewives franchise.

Next up?

New Jersey!  read more »

MONDAY

Put those electric razors back in their chargers, writers: it looks like you’re back to work on Wednesday. (Better yet, shave today, so when you report you’ll have just the right amount of writerly stubble.) Showrunners, ever the go-getters, will be in the office today, attempting to save their charges’ shortened seasons. Miraculously, TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello has a pretty comprehensive list of what the future holds for your favorite shows. (The man knows how to work a beat!) Unfortunately, the earliest anything is going to return is April, with the exception of Saturday Night Live, which could return as early as Feb. 16. In the meantime, here’s what passes for TV.  read more »

A Project Runway-like show that replaces designers with aspiring artists and sewing machines with palettes and sculpting knives?  read more »

When the new season of Bravo TV's reality series Project Runway debuts on Wednesday, you might notice a change of scenery.

After three seasons housed in the luxury high-rise Atlas building at 66 West 38th Street, the show's competing designers were relocated this summer to the equally luxe New Gotham building at 520 West 43rd Street.  read more »