Introducing Caffeine … For Your Weekly Fix of TV News!

Hello and happy Sunday, readers! Hope you’re all enjoying your weekend. I’ve been compiling TV development news for my personal blog, and our lovely leader here at TheTelevixen offered to post it here as a new weekend feature. Since this list was written before I knew it would be reaching a more general audience, it’s tailored toward my own biases – light on the comedy; heavy on new projects from actors and writers I like. But if you’d like to hear more about certain genres or shows in the future, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do. Enjoy!

Taylor Kinney (of The Vampire Diaries) has been cast as a hot hairdresser in A Mann’s World. Heee. That same link has some other casting I don’t care so much about.

A few items of note here: De Niro is producing a cop show called Rookies, presumably not to be confused with Rookie Blue; ABC has a “dysfunctional family drama set in the world of professional dance;” Rob Thomas’s Little League show got a director.

Kevin Williamson (of Vampire Diaries) has joined The Secret Circle. Wheee. (This is based on another trilogy by the same author, this one about witches.)

Comedies that I’d probably watch once and never again: here, here, here (okay, the one about a family of doctors sounds vaguely interesting), here, here.

Krysten Ritter has joined Dreama Walker in Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apt. 23, and that combination makes this a must-see for me.

ABC Family picks up a comedy and two dramas. To series, not pilot. I’m sure you’re amazed that I’m excited about the dramas but not the comedy. (The Nine Lives of Chloe King is supernatural and has my favorite actress from The Gates, and Switched at Birth is what it sounds like but has Vanessa Marano from Gilmore Girls!)

David O. Russell is developing an FX drama for Connie Britton. No premise has been released yet, but honestly, with Russell, FX, and Britton in one sentence, I’m not that concerned.

Starz has an upcoming political drama starring Kelsey Grammar as . . . President Bartlet, basically? Except mayor of Chicago? Hm.

Dan Savage may be doing an MTV advice show.

The Walking Dead will have a writing staff after all.

Amber Heard as a Playboy club bunny in the 1960s? Hmm.

Jesse McCartney has joined Locke and Key.

An NYPD detective who remembers everything? Count me in. And wait, A&E has a Boston detective with hyper-acute senses. Trend?

NBC orders pilots for an American Prime Suspect and a post-Civil War historical drama. I am cautiously intrigued by both.

Kyle Killen of the late lamented Lone Star is doing an Inception-style drama? Huh. Okay.

My inexplicable enthusiasm for 7th Heaven alums continues: Barry Watson has been cast in a pilot! About cola! Whee!

Ethan Hawke on TV? In a high-octane CIA procedural? Okay.

ABC picks up four pilots and two pilot presentations, all of which sound varying levels of promising.

Honestly, none of these CW pilots sound that great, but it’s the CW, so I’ll try whatever makes it to air. Seriously, though, CW, play to your strengths: More pretty teenagers; fewer lawyers.

CBS has a supernatural medical drama that sounds like it should be on that CW list.