It’s as if Tim Allen has the Midas touch when it comes to picking TV shows of which to star in. ABC’s Last Man Standing, only in its first season, has already solidified Allen as a twice-successful leading man in the world of the network sitcom. In regards to his hugely successful run with Home Improvement, he says of this second go-round, “It doesn’t take a genius to see the similarities here. Instead of Tool Time, I have a VLOG, and on this show I have three girls instead of boys.”

Yes, the formula is familiar, but hey, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? In Last Man Standing, Allen’s Mike Baxter is a traditional man’s man, a lover of all things adventurous and outdoors. A pick-up truck-driving sportsman, Mike is constantly fighting to salvage his idea of a man’s world. He works at an iconic outdoor sporting goods store where he is the king of the hill, and then he returns to his female-dominated home front where he is the odd man out save for his toddler grandson, Boyd.

Among his wife, Vanessa (Nancy Travis), who has recently returned to the work world where she was quickly promoted, and his three daughter’s, he is caught juggling his mission to get men back to their rightful place in society in conjunction with his roles as husband, father and grandfather.

The main outlet for his woes proves to be the VLOG he speaks of. His longtime friend and boss, Ed (Hector Elizondo), puts him in charge of the company’s webpage and Mike soon discovers the cathartic platform which gives him a voice in which to appeal to those who also agree that manliness as a whole is under assault in this new woman’s world that he finds himself trapped in.

Currently filming the episode entitled "This Bud's For You", they bring on Robert Forster (The Descendants) to play Mike’s dad, Bud. There is a certain magic to the set as it is the old Seinfeld soundstage. The laughter is palpable as we watch some takes with Forster before they break and answer a few questions.

One of television’s most celebrated Producer/Screenwriters, Shonda Rhimes returns with a new series tomorrow, April 5th, as Scandal premieres on ABC. Shonda Rhimes, creator and head-writer of the Emmy award winning Grey’s Anatomy, brings us a brand new drama about a crisis management firm in Washington, DC. Miss Rhimes delves deep into the behind-the-scenes machinations of a mesmerizing crisis manager, named Olivia Pope. The new series stars Kerry Washington (Ray, The Last King of Scotland) as Olivia Pope, a former communications director to the President of the United States, who decides to leave the White House to open her own prominent crisis management firm. Olivia, who dedicated her life to protecting and defending the public image of the nation’s elite and keeping those secrets under wraps, hopes to start a new beginning but can’t seem to escape her own past.

Olivia’s staff includes Guillermo Diaz (Half-Baked, Weeds) as Huck, an ex-CIA computer hacker; Katie Lowes as Quinn Perkins, an inexperienced lawyer with a secret past; Columbus Short (Stomp the Yard, The Losers) as Harrison Wright, a charming, slick-talking attorney with great detective skills; and Darby Stanchfield (Jericho, Mad Men) as Abby Whelan, the firms crack investigator. It soon becomes apparent that Olivia’s dysfunctional team, who specialize in fixing other people’s problems, can’t seem to fix their own.

Earlier this week IAR’s Dana Gardner, along with several other members of the press, had a chance to sit down and discuss Scandal with Olivia Pope’s crisis management team: Guillermo Diaz, Katie Lowes, Columbus Short, and Darby Stanchfield. The actors talk about difficulty with the show’s fast-paced dialogue, what attracted them to the show, the importance of the DC setting to the characters, Shonda Rhimes’ rules concerning dialogue, shooting a DC-based Drama in LA, and the difficulty with using Twitter.

In 2011, major studios experienced a new found reticence to finance huge and ambitious genre projects, no matter how sure a thing they may have seemed.  One of the most frequently-cited examples of this economic sensibility was The Dark Tower, a cinematic trilogy and two season television series adapting the novel series by Stephen King.  Universal Pictures abandoned the project last summer, though director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer seemed confident that The Dark Tower would find a new studio home.

Hollywood insiders were surprised last fall to hear that NCIS, a series in its ninth season that has pretty much always flown underneath the radar, was suddenly the number one scripted show on television. But it completely makes sense once you consider that the show’s audience transcends demographics and includes both men and women, young and old, rich and poor, Republican or Democrat. In fact, the show will reach a unique and honored television milestone when it airs its 200th episode of the series tonight, February 7^th on CBS.

The show revolves around a fictional team of special agents located in Washington D.C. known as the Major Case Response Team, a division of the primary security, counter-intelligence, counter-terrorist and law-enforcement agency of the U.S. Department of the Navy. They are basically the people who deal with high-profile shenanigans. The team is comprised of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon, The Presidio), Special Agent “Tony” DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly, Dark Angel), Timothy McGee (Sean Murray, JAG), Goth-chick Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette, The Ring), Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard (David McCallum, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and his assistant, Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen).

I recently had the chance to speak with actor Brian Dietzen about his role on NCIS and the show's longevity. The actor discussed the popular series, his character, it’s upcoming 200th episode, what it’s like to speak to fans that happen to be in the military, and working with fellow actor David McCallum.

Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve.  For two consecutive years, director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate served up holiday-themed ensembles unreasonably packed with bankable movie stars and romantic comedy cliches.  Had New Year's Eve been a bigger hit, you can only imagine that we have spent the next several years besieged by these novelty offerings until the holidays were finally exhausted.  That could still happen, actually.  But even if it does, we'll always have MLK Day, a parody trailer for a fictitious romantic comedy that expertly eviscerates the cloying, manipulative style of those films.

Over the course of its second season, the already-enjoyable FX series Archer went from an undeniably sharp comedy set in the world of international espionage to – no hyperbole – one of the best shows on television.  The animated show follows the exploits of the staff at International Secret Intelligence Service, aka ISIS, a private spying company.  Though there is an element of the spy spoof to the show, its more focused on the ensemble of characters, pretty much all of whom are unrepentantly self-involved, petty, and mercenary. The voice cast, led by certifiable national treasure H. Jon Benjamin as the reckless, libidinous Sterling Archer (codename: Duchess), along with Jessica Walter, Aisha Tyler, Chris Parnell, Amber Nash, and series creator Adam Reed, all do fantastic work ranging from deadpan to wildly broad. 

The second season only got more fittingly outrageous as it went on, and a recent arc of three new episodes served to bridge the gap between season two and the upcoming third, while also giving Archer the chance to inadvertently become a pirate king.  Today, five new promotional clips serve to show that very little has changed at ISIS and remind us all that the third season begins on January 19th.

192 episodes over eight seasons apparently weren't enough of 24, as a movie continuing the terrorist-foiling Jack Bauer has been in development for some time now.  It's been well over a year since the last time we saw Keifer Sutherland screaming at suspects and generally acting without regard to jurisprudence. 

It's also been about eight months since any updates on the 24 movie, about which Sutherland and producer Brian Grazer remained enthusiastic and hopeful, despite some setbacks.  Now, it seems that 20th Century Fox and Imagine Entertainment are aiming to get production on 24 underway in the spring of 2012.

While Marvel heroes have been making their way to theaters on the regular for a decade, the superheroes of DC Comics have gotten to the screen with less regularity.  Warner Bros has The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel on the way, but the the vast stable of DC characters is a potential source of nigh-endless television potential, and the latest less-recognizable superhero who might get his own television series is none other than Booster Gold, aka Michael John Carter.  The cable network Scyfy (formerly known as Sci Fi) has ordered a pilot script for Booster Gold with the hope of creating a one-hour drama series.

AMC is a cable network unafraid to put it all out there with material other wouldn't even approach.  It currently has three hugely popular flagship series; one is set in the 1960's and centers on philandering ad-man with identity issues, another follows a chemistry teacher-turned-meth-cook-turned-malicious-bastard, and the latest is a comic book adaptation set in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.  The second season premiere of The Walking Dead, based on the Image comic by Robert Kirkman, was the highest rated basic cable drama of all time, with 7.2 million viewers tuning in.  Only two episodes into the second season but established as AMC's most popular show, the network has officially renewed the zombie epic for a third season, which will presumably premiere just in time for Halloween in 2012.

It's no longer even a point of debate that we're in the midst of a television renaissance, with cable TV providing fertile ground for a veritable jungle of challenging, high quality serialized stories that are allowed to go well beyond the limits of traditional televised content.  A host of shows currently on the air transcend the medium, and among those shows is FX's Sons of Anarchy.  When it debuted in 2008, the Kurt Sutter-created series immediately won acolytes with it stylish direction and captivating story, which cleverly took the most basic ingredients of Hamlet and dropped them into the brutal, complicated world of a California biker gang.  Currently in its fourth season, with FX having ordered a fifth, Sons of Anarchy will now provide the first ever interactive iPad shopping app, syncing up with episodes as fans watch, allowing them to peruse unique merchandise that ties directly into the show's action.