Interrupting Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

I didn't intend to break up my year-end wrapup, but two potentially really terrific pieces of news caught my attention and I wanted to share them.

News No. 1: The No. 1 here doubles as a pun. Variety is reporting that the new "Prisoner" TV miniseries will air on AMC in Jan. 2008. The series is being co-produced by Britain's Sky/Granada network.

This is a TV miniseries remake of the original "Prisoner" TV series from the 1960s, starring Patrick McGoohan. It shouldn't be confused with the movie-version remake of the same series, to be co-written by David Webb Peoples ("Unforgiven") and directed by Christopher Nolan ("Batman Begins," "Memento"). Perhaps appropriately, the number of initial episodes for the AMC series will be six.

News No. 2: We may see a new animated "Star Trek" series on the air. Unlike the 1970s series that ran for one season which continued the adventures of Captain Kirk & Co., the new proposed series would be set 150 years after "Star Trek: Nemesis" and feature an all-new crew. (I've been saying the Trek franchise should have gone in this direction instead of "Star Trek: Enterprise," but no one listens to me.)

The series would be set up along the lines of the very successful Cartoon Network series, "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," which ran a couple of years ago and bridged the gap between the second and third prequels.

Anyway, the Trek cartoon sounds pretty promising. You can read about it here: http://trekmovie.com/2006/12/13/cbs-considering-new-animated-trek-series