BOOB TUBE: TV for a warm summer night

CP's Dylan Williams offers a preview of the summer TV season, including True Blood, So You Think You Can Dance and Big Brother 13.

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BOOB TUBE: TV for a warm summer night

POSTED: Thursday, June 16, 2011, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: TV

CP's Dylan Williams offers a preview of the summer TV season.

True Blood: This supernatural HBO drama, centered around telepathic protagonist Sookie (Anna Paquin) and her romantic misadventures with various vampires and other mythical creatures in the small New Orleans town of Bon Temps, is often scorned as a wannabe Twilight story. And, although the concept for True Blood came about four years before Twilight became a best-seller, the HBO drama has some big Vampiric shoes to fill. So far, it has done the job pretty well. The third season left us thirsty for more sexy, southern vampire shenanigans. Relationships across race, age and mythic species torment the dark and beautiful protagonists, and Paquin’s enticing (and gap-toothed) performance alone sucks many viewers in (pun intended). Season four is said to be loosely based on the fourth book from The Southern Vampire Mysteries (the series upon which the show is based). Sundays beginning June 26, 9 p.m., HBO.

So You Think You Can Dance: The six-time Emmy-award-winning Idol-style dance series returns to Fox for its eighth season. Legendary judge Nigel Lythgoe is joined this season by Mary Murphy (as well as various guest judges), and host Cat Deeley returns, as intense and mind-numbingly bubbly as always. Although the actual performances (as opposed to open auditions) have just begun, the competition is already fierce. The Top 20 this season include a jazzer from Guam and a ballrooming Lithuanian. My early personal fave dancer for this summer is Robert Taylor Jr., of Brooklyn, N.Y. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m., FOX.

Franklin & Bash: Cable network TNT has spent an immense amount of money advertising this all-new courtroom dramedy, starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar (of Saved by the Bell fame) and Breckin Meyer (Garfield, Kim Possible) as young, flippant courtroom lawyers who break traditional mores and laugh unrepentantly in the face of traditional law practice. The first two episodes have been promising. Although predictable almost to the point of being cliché, the plot is entertaining and Meyer and Gosselaar’s “no-holds-barred” attitude should endear viewers to the characters and the series as a whole. Only time will tell whether the show can balance its comedy with the fuck-the-man cliché for a whole season, but I the odds are stacked in TNT’s favor. Wednesdays, 9 p.m., TNT.

Big Brother: The legendary, international reality television sensation returns to CBS for its whopping 13th season, with hypnotic host Julie Chen and a whole new set of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed housemates. We can expect the same will-testing isolation and fissuring debauchery in the upcoming season, as well as Chen’s iconic interventions to pass judgments on and evict the subjects — excuse me, houseguests. Although Big Brother has never been my favorite series, I have to admit that the concept is funny, and the hidden cameras often spy intimate moments that are priceless when aired on national television. Hopefully this season will prove more engaging than those from years past, with all-new challenges and more drama than one house can handle. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays beginning July 7, 9 p.m., CBS.

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