The ghosts of your favorite (cancelled) shows are haunting TV dramas this week:
“Tall Hot Blonde” (Saturday, 8 p.m., Lifetime)
In between packing up to move from ABC — the network that axed her post-“Friends” vehicle “Cougar Town” — to the comedy’s new home on TBS, star Courtney Cox is heading to summer camp, or at least a Lifetime campy movie. She directs and appears in this flick about a cyber affair that goes terribly wrong.
She’s joined by Garret Dillahunt, who’s taking time off from playing grandpa on the comedy “Raising Hope” (and the canceled “John from Cincinnati” and “Deadwood”) to transform his handsome face yet again into a character so ugly that he’s nearly unrecognizable. He is fantastic as the pathetic loser stalker, and will creep you out in this sad, true-life tale.
“Jane By Design” (Tuesday, 9 p.m., ABC Family)
Teri Hatcher made a brief appearance on the secret-life teen fashion drama this week as the surprise guest at Jane’s (Erica Dasher) birthday party. She’ll stick around for at least a few episodes, playing the mom who abandoned Jane and brother Ben (David Rogers), which may actually make this character more flighty than Susan was on the recently departed “Desperate Housewives.”
“The Newsroom” (Sunday, 10 p.m., HBO)
There’s this really great Aaron Sorkin show about a TV production with fast-paced dialogue, a beloved TV icon playing the wacky but wise boss, a grumpy anchor who reunites with his former flame/producer and plenty of grandstanding speeches about “important” issues. And that show is … “Sports Night.”
Sorkin’s fantastic early creation was yanked from the airwaves in 2000 after just two seasons, but its clone “The Newsroom” starring “Law & Order” alum Sam Waterston in the Robert Guillaume role, launches Sunday. It’s nearly (although not quite) as lovable as the original, with a “West Wing” theme replacing the non-existent “Sports Night” one, but it took Mama three episodes to stop calling Jeff Daniels’ character “Casey.”
“Dallas” (Wednesday, 10 p.m., TNT)
This show could be a virtual graveyard, with all the characters from the original series, but there are also plenty of familiar faces from series that ended in this century. Carlos Bernard (aka “24’s” Tony Almeida) popped up in last night’s episode in the recurring role of a Venezuelan businessman dealing with J.R. (Larry Hagman).
And in the coming weeks, watch out for a deliciously villainous Mitch Pileggi, who despite a string of memorable appearances on shows like “Sons of Anarchy” and “Grey’s Anatomy” will always be “The X-Files” Skinner to Mama.