My Disney Channel coverage is going to consist solely of me saying that there’s a new Cheetah Girls movie on the horizon where the gals take on India (“The Cheetah Girls: One World”) and that, while they might be hot, the Girls were way too damned perky for a 9:00 AM panel, constantly giggling and talking over each other. (Pity the poor transcriptionist.) Despite some insidiously catchy songs and Bollywood-styled production numbers, there’s no chance in hell that I’m going to be watching this…well, that is, unless my daughter wants to watch it. But she’ll only be three when it airs, so I’m hoping she’s not quite of “Cheetah Girls” age yet. If your kids are in that demographic, though, God speed to you.
Okay, how about a little ABC Family Channel love? This network keeps impressing me with its programming, even if they aren’t necessarily aimed at people my age. They first caught my attention with “Kyle XY” (which returns in January), kept it and held me rapt with “Greek” (returning on August 26th, woo-hoo!), and now that they’ve added “The Middleman,” they’ve secured a position where I’m instantly curious about pretty much anything they put on the air. Of course, by casting Molly Ringwald as the mother of a pregnant teen in “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” (which just got picked up for 13 more episodes, by the way), they’ve made an entire generation feel really, really old, but at the same time, that generation suddenly has ABC Family Channel on their radar, and I sense that will pay off handsomely for them in the future.
Coming in September is a six-hour miniseries event from the producers of “Alias” and “Gossip Girl” that should really grab those of us who appreciate a chick who knows how to kick ass: “Samurai Girl,” starring Jamie Chung, Stacy Keibler, Brendan Fehr, and Kenneth Choi.
Though “Samurai Girl” is based on a popular series of books by Carrie Asai and Annabelle Verhoye, producer Andre Nemec says we shouldn’t be looking for a precise translation from print to screen. “We really took the spirit and the archetypal nature of characters from the books,” said Nemec, “but because we didn’t really want to tell a story that had already been told, we spun a little bit of a different web. You can read the books, and they’re exciting and they’re wonderful and, obviously, the base for all of this, but the show goes off into a different direction in terms of the overall arc of the story, so it’s exciting and new.”
Hmmm. That sounds a little dodgy, but having checked out some of the miniseries, I do have to admit that it looked great and flowed nicely between drama, action, and even comedy…but, most importantly, Jamie Chung kicks some serious ass…and looks good doing it.
