Did the second episode of My Antonio really premiere at noon on a Sunday, or was the whole surreal hour just a weird mirage brought on by the heat?

A quick recap: crazy girls, scantily-clad Antonio looking for love, Dynasty mother, Antonio’s ex-wife, Tully, suddenly showing up. Got it. But now it seems that Tully has decided to join the cast, beginning with moving in with the girls. She’s hilariously grilled by Jennifer, who reveals a down-to-earth humor that is very, very welcome in this episode. Jennifer remains convinced that Tully is either a spy sent in by Antonio or his sister. It’s not hard to understand where Jennifer’s coming from; Tully, a good decade older than Antonio, is looking rough. She’s also wearing a Chicago “He had it coming” T-shirt during her confessionals. I wonder how much she’s getting paid for the show.

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I skipped the Mad Men season premiere last night in favor of the series premiere of My Antonio, in which Antonio Sabato, Jr., flashes skin while looking for true love in Hawaii. And boy, am I glad I did. Mad Men can wait, but the crazy-ass, top-heavy bitches—among them are a bartender, a few events planners, a NASA engineer, and a student—who are fighting for Antonio almost deserve to be watched in real time.

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Three hours into its 12-episode run, Defying Gravity is still an uneasy blend of Grey’s Anatomy and Solaris, combining the soapiness and annoying narration of the former with the “Bad things happen in space” dread of the latter.

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Never mind the ridiculous title or the Kirstie Alley-ish premise: Drop Dead Diva is another bull's eye from Lifetime, which has shown a surprising sense of humor ever since they decided to revamp their image from women in peril to something a little more contemporary.

You know you're in good hands when the involved story is dealt with in the pilot's first 15 minutes: Shallow Deb and plus-sized lawyer Jane both die, and thanks to her sense of entitlement, Deb ends up in Jane's body. Those first 15 minutes are a whirlwind of exposition, but how nice to not spend the whole pilot waiting for what we already know is coming.

More importantly, Drop Dead Diva isn't willing to wallow in Deb's dismay at being bigger than a size zero. She may be upset that her taut body is gone, sure, but more importantly, she's furious at the way people treat her as Jane. Gone are the days of inspiring awe and jealousy in the women around her—Deb now finds herself battling the office's resident mean girl for both her career and her former boyfriend. Because, of course, the day Deb died her boyfriend was hired to work at Jane's firm (I told you the plot was involved). So the question hanging over this season, at least, is whether Deb can make her boyfriend fall in love with her all over again.

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Why aren’t more people talking about Beautiful People on Logo? The BBC series about Barney’s creative director Simon Doonan’s childhood (updated from the ’60s to the ’90s) is the kind of deliriously whacked-out comedy that should inspire a cult following—especially since it’s produced by one of the men behind Absolutely Fabulous.

Beautiful People being British, half the jokes fly over my head, but who can care when there’s a fearlessly gay 13-year-old on television fully supported by his parents? When the young Simon (Luke Ward-Wilkinson) leaves for school in costume to audition for the school’s production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, he and his mother (scene-stealer Olivia Colman) sashay down the street singing “Take That Look Off Your Face” from Song and Dance, while his best friend Kylie (Layton Williams) offers up a high-kicking version of “Tomorrow” and the neighborhood’s mean girl belts “Don’t Rain on My Parade” before they all head off to school singing “Ease on Down the Road.”

Smartly going for the darkly comedic zaniness of AbFab, Beautiful People is another wise move on the part of Logo. If The Big Gay Sketch Show is frequently as dull and inexplicable as Saturday Night Live, at least Logo offers genuinely entertaining shows like Sordid Lives (which sadly looks unlikely for a second season), Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, and breakout hit RuPaul’s Drag Race. Beautiful People fits in nicely with those shows, even with its determinedly British, hyper-realistic style that finds a grandmother’s death from a microwave explosion played for laughs. With only three episodes left, make Beautiful People your must-watch summer TV fare. Think of it as a crisp gin and tonic in the middle of a miserable television heat wave exemplified by I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.

Photo courtesy of Logo.



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The networks continue flogging the corpse of the medical drama this summer, with two premiers last night.

As is par for the course for NBC these days, The Listener is as interesting as its title. Paramedic Toby Young (Craig Olejnik) can hear people’s thoughts (say hello to True Blood’s Sookie Stackhouse, Toby!) and, occasionally, access their memories. That’s it, except for the mandatory icy-until-you-get-her-warmed-up doctor who had a relationship with Toby (Mylene Dinh-Robic) and an angry but curious detective (Lisa Marcos) who spars with Toby while he investigates the cases she’s working on using his unorthodox skills. The writers assume that Olejnik and Marcos are generating sparks together. They are decidedly not.

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Despite some fervent proselytizing from no less than Martin Scorsese, 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven still lacks the cult following the film so richly deserves. Impossible to describe without using the word lurid, Leave Her to Heaven features more perverse activity than any number of more celebrated cult faves—including Nicholas Ray’s infamous Joan Crawford western Johnny Guitar. But now audiences have another chance to discover its particular pleasures at Film Forum through March 12.

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Most critics have been comparing BBC America’s new series Mistresses to Desperate Housewives, with the latter coming off unfavorably. And yes, Mistresses does sometimes feel like a less candy-colored look at the world of women than Desperate Housewives portrays, but comparisons to Sex and the City might be more apt.

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Having missed playwright David Johnston's previous work in NYC, I'm definitely grateful for the new clearinghouse production of his short plays Conversations on Russian Literature. Comprised of three mini works and a longer one-act, Conversations reveals a fresh and exciting new talent, one that distracts the eye with fistfuls of jokes while simultaneously accomplishing something far more significant without due fuss.

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Sure, laughter can make you momentarily forget about your economic woes, but schadenfreude also works wonders. So what could be better than the FUCT comedy troupe’s Wheel of Torture, in which audience members are invited to spin the titular wheel and then inflict a variety of tortures on a member of the troupe?

Opening Cherry Lane’s new theater, The Cherry Pit (formerly The Bank Street Theater), FUCT is returning back to NYC after traveling the country, garnering rave reviews and rabid fans. Interspersing improv with games, live music and dance, the eight members of the troupe (Sarah Bell, Jon Crane, Joe Galan, Tommy Galan, Brian Gillespie, Ian Lassiter, Janio Marrero, and Graham Skipper) promise a show that will make you laugh and squirm Thursday through Saturday for the rest of February. And for once during a comedy show, the squirming will be intentional on the troupe’s part. Besides, where else could you find actors willing to let an audience member use a stun gun on them?

Through Feb. 28. Thur.–Sat., 9pm. The Cherry Pit, 155 Bank St. (between Washington and West Streets), www.FUCTnyc.com. $20.

Photo courtesy of www.fuctnyc.com.


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