TV Weekend: X-Files actress leads NBC action thriller

What’s a gal to do when her most famous character sounds like a nickname for Skeletor? If you’re Gillian Anderson, best known as Scully on The X Files, you take to the London stage, pop off films like The Last King of Scotland, and do BBC dramas like Bleak House and The Fall. Then you star in NBC’s Crisis, an action thriller that kicks off when the kids of Washington’s elite are kidnapped during a school trip. Anderson plays one of the frantic parents, Meg Fitch, while Dermot Mulroney is a former CIA analyst who was betrayed by the government. It’s Anderson’s first major role on American television since The X Files; astute viewers know she already moonlights on Hannibal as the peckish killer’s psychoanalyst. Early reviews of Crisis suggest it’s the latest broadcast TV offering to mimic the kind of dramas now gaining praise on cable networks — serious, ambitious fare that, if it were a high school student, would be reading Geoffrey Chaucer and applying for Harvard law. The high-concept premise seems eerily similar to Hostages, CBS’s recent ill-fated series about the family of an important doctor who is taken, well, hostage. The downfall of that series was that it failed to followup on its big-bang premiere, and couldn’t sustain interest. The Following, Fox’s gruesome yet tiresome series starring Kevin Bacon, also tried to cash in on cable’s intense, serialized dramas like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. But even with a Season 3 renewal, its ratings have dropped, last month to an all-time low. We’ll see if Crisis avoids the same fate, but with Anderson — a Golden Globe and Emmy winner for The X Files — it stands a good chance. Also watch: Continuum, the homegrown sci-fi drama starring Rachel Nichols as a Vancouver cop from the future, kicks off Season 3 after earning three 2014 Canadian Screen Award nominations. Broadcaster Showcase teases that Kiera (Nichols) will be pushed into a “shocking alliance with a former enemy.” Also new this season is Rachael Crawford (Alphas, The Firm), who guest-stars as a yet-to-be-named new character. (Showcase) Over on The Good Wife, Alicia (Julianna Margulies) is the keynote speaker at a New York City conference for the American Bar Association. Also, she and Cary try to join forces with a powerful lawyer played by Crossing Jordan star Jill Hennessy. Sneak-peek photos show Will meeting with Alicia in a coffee shop, and busy street scenes with Elsbeth. (Global/CBS) --- Behind the Candelabra Saturday, HBO Canada Giving candelabras a much-needed publicity boost, HBO’s Behind the Candelabra was the big TV-movie winner during the most recent Hollywood awards season. Starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon as pianist Liberace and his younger lover Scott Thorson, the film picked up 11 Emmy Awards and two Golden Globes, enough hardware to start its own section at Home Depot. It’s based on Thorson’s 1988 memoir Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, and tonight HBO re-airs the spectacle. It’s a good chance to acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with the story of excess, fame and love gone bad.

News Source: www.edmontonjournal.com