Sitcom

It's not like Geneva Holloway is an enormous star, some sort of paragon of the dramatic art. Her latest vehicle, a TV movie remake of "The Philadelphia Story" titled "It Happened in Philadelphia," was greeted by critics with undiluted venom: "I'm opposed to capital punishment but 'It Happened in Philadelphia' has turned me around," read one notice. "Ms. Holloway, like Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone," was another. Someone who's studied acting with Darryl Hickman deserves gentler treatment.

As the television networks announced their fall schedules during this week's upfronts, news was pretty mixed for TV's LGBT characters. The good news first: Former "Will & Grace" star Sean Hayes is returning to NBC with a new sitcom bound to touch on gay issues. In "Sean Saves the World," the openly gay Hayes stars as a divorced gay dad raising a teenage daughter (Sami Isler) with the aid of his overbearing mother (Linda Lavin). Judging by the trailer , the show will tread on conventional multi-camera sitcom ground, especially with that pushy laugh track.

Remember Lucy and William Holden? How about Lucy and John Wayne?Tonight, it's Ellen and Emma Thompson in ABC's "Ellen" (9: 30 p.m.-10 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2), and it is every bit the classic half-hour of sitcom madness as any episode of "I Love Lucy." In fact -- risking the wrath of legions of Lucy fans (Lucites?) -- I think tonight's "Ellen" is better than those rightfully cherished episodes from the 1950s.The reason it's better: Thompson. While big-name guest stars from the world of film mainly stood there looking 10 times larger than life on the sitcom screen while Lucy ricocheted off them like a butterfly on LSD, Thompson hits the stage running in the opening sequence and never stops until the final frame.

On Wednesday, HBO renewed the Baltimore-made sitcom "VEEP" for a third season. That means the series, which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Vice President Selina Meyer, will be producing another 10 episodes in the Baltimore area next year. That's good news for the local economy. During its first season, which consisted of eight episodes, "VEEP" hired 978 Marylanders for cast and crew and did business with more than 1,100 Maryland vendors, according to the Maryland Film Office. Here's the release from the premium cable channel: HBO has renewed the comedy series VEEP for a ten-episode third season, scheduled for 2014.

There will be more stand-up comics, new ethnic sitcoms and a family movie night come next fall on ABC, as the second-place network focuses itself on the 18-to-49-year-old audience.The changes ABC made yesterday in announcing its fall schedule were not huge. Only four new hours of programming were added. The only noteworthy cancellation was that of "Phenom," a Tuesday-night sitcom about a teen tennis star, which regularly finished in Nielsen's top 25.But ABC's direction is clear. The network wants more of what Brett Butler and Ellen DeGeneres brought this year with their sitcoms.

HOLLYWOOD -- Ashton Kutcher has apparently gotten the last laugh on skeptics who might dub his marriage to Demi Moore a farce. He's turned their love into a sitcom. The latest celebrity to spin his backstage life into a TV script, the former That '70s Show star has sold Fox an idea for a comedy series called 30-Year-Old Grandpa, executives say. It's about the complications that ensue when a young man becomes the stepfather to a brood of kids remarkably close to his own age, according to the trade paper Variety.

If you thought last year was bad, wait until you see the network television season that officially starts the week of Sept. 19.While it's true that quality sitcoms were in short supply last year, at least there was "Will & Grace" on NBC and "Sports Night" on ABC. There isn't one sitcom this season worth keeping."

It sure is fun to see two sitcom pros strutting their stuff on-screen. If only the same could be said of their behind-the-camera colleagues. Thus are Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton left high and dry in Fox's much-anticipated, new live-audience comedy Back to You. As warring Pittsburgh news anchors with a past - a tiresome, predictable past - the Emmy winners from Frasier and Everybody Loves Raymond can still snap off a line like nobody's business....

Television, which brought us the sitcom and the "infomercial," is now bringing us the "sitcommercial."This weekend in Baltimore, Bell Atlantic Corp. will launch the first episode of "The Ringers," a family comedy series with all the trappings of a traditional situation comedy -- including a laugh track and a crew of wacky but lovable characters.The difference is that this sitcom is a 30-minute ad for phone company services like Call Waiting and Caller ID. The comic situations here are built around the family's use of the telephone.

A few weeks ago, sitcom writer Mitchell Hurwitz had a brief Sally Field moment. His offbeat freshman show Arrested Development was nominated for seven Emmys, including best comedy, on the heels of taking top honors from the Television Critics Association. He said his first happy thoughts ("Wow. They really like us.") were followed by mild panic ("What do you think they like? What should we do now?"). Despite the show's success with critics, Arrested Development remains Fox's lowest-rated comedy.

"Deep" and "sitcom" are not words often used in the same sentence. But a visit to the "VEEP" soundstage in Columbia gave a glimpse of the larger cultural power of this savvy satire from HBO, returning for its second season Sunday night. I also came away dazzled by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who last year won an Emmy as best comedic actress for her portrayal of Vice President Selina Meyer. "VEEP" drills as far down into the state of the national psyche as any TV comedy has in the past 30 years.

Baltimore native Jason Winer knows something about family comedy. He's been an executive producer on ABC's "Modern Family" and won a Directors Guild Award for his direction of the hit series' Emmy Award-winning pilot. This week, "1600 Penn," a family sitcom about a fictional first family that he co-created, joins NBC's Thursday night lineup. (A sneak preview of the pilot aired in December.) On Wednesday, Winer and the cast will be guests at the real White House where the series will be screened for President Obama.

Actor Josh Charles, a Baltimore native and avid Orioles fan, will throw out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 2 of the American League Division Series between the Orioles and New York Yankees tonight at Camden Yards. Charles currently stars on the CBS sitcom, The Good Wife, and he previously was featured in the movie Dead Poets Society. Early Monday, Charles posted the following message on Twitter : Yes, I'll be throwing out the first pitch tonight and I will seriously consider naming my first son Buck if the @orioles win. #BUCKleUp

I don't like Charlie Sheen, and I thought the online mania over him last year after he was fired by CBS was a sign from God that American culture was in a very bad place and needed divine intervention to be saved. Given the political landscape these days, I'm not feeling any better about American culture, but I like Sheen's new FX sitcom "Anger Management"  a lot more than I thought I would. "Not only do I like it, as in, "Gee, that was a lot more fun to watch than 95 percent of the braindead network sitcoms I screen," I am impressed by it, as in, "Yikes, this thing actually looks like it might have something to say about American life today.

At first glance, it might not seem like much, two men calling ABC's “Modern Family” one of their favorite TV shows. But when one is the Democratic president of the United States and the other his Republican challenger, you have to wonder if there isn't something special about the show that recently finished its third season as the most popular in prime time among young adult viewers. Last week, The New York Times reported that President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both like iPads, grilled chicken, process-driven decisions and “Modern Family.” The shared sitcom is the item on the list that intrigues me. Everyone knows “Modern Family” is funny, winning and wise.

It's pilot pickup time in Hollywood, and Baltimore's Jason Winer got some good news yesterday with an order from NBC for 13 episodes of "1600 Penn," a political comedy that he co-created, directs and executive produces. The series will introduced as a midseason replacement when NBC introduces its new fall lineup Monday in New York on the first day of the upfronts.   The other creators and executive producers are Jon Lovett, a former White House speech writer, and Josh Gad, from "The Book of Mormon, who also co-stars.

About a decade ago, after Ted Harbert had been accused (wrongly, he says) of killing the television theme song, he put together a tape he called Ted's All-Time Favorite Theme Songs. He still has a few copies left, with the full-length tracks of such classic themes from Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Mission: Impossible. Harbert hasn't updated the cassette in the last 10 years. He hasn't had to. "Theme songs are not a top priority for people" in television, says Harbert, the former president of NBC Studios and chairman of ABC Entertainment.

If you didn't see the debut of HBO's"Girls" Sunday night, here's some advice: Do whatever it takes to see it. Smart people are going to be talking and talking and talking some more about it for weeks. In 30 years of writing about television,  I cannot remember five other TV comedies that have blown me away the way this one did. I am sure I am only about the 50th reviewer to compare it to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show. " But I watched that one as a twentysomething baby boomer feeling for the first time that prime-time TV was speaking to and for my generation in a meaningful way. I am guessing "Girls" will have that same kind of electricity and cultural thunder for people who are in their 20s today.

It's a cold, gray Friday afternoon in a dark and drafty concrete warehouse at an industrial park in Columbia. Not exactly the setting in which anyone would expect to find glamour, wit or the next big thing in pop culture. But through a series of doors built into a maze of temporary walls and stage flats, there's a group of a dozen tall director's chairs bearing Vice President of the United States seals set in two ragged rows along with a bank of TV monitors and warming lights. And in the center of the first row, sitting sideways in a black power suit coat and skirt, legs casually crossed, is Julia Louis-Dreyfus, star of HBO's new political satire "VEEP.