There's good news, and there's bad news.

CBS vs. AMC

Let’s start with the bad news first.  CBS which does its part to ruin television, is developing its FOURTH comedy series based on a Twitter feed.  The first of golden bunch was $#*! My Dad Says, starring William Shatner, which premiered this Fall.  Next season CBS will unleash the other three on the masses.   Dear Girls Above Me and Shh…Don’t Tell Steve, have been in the works for a while, and now Mother of All Something is being added to the bunch.  Don’t worry though, entertainment genius Jessica Alba is attached to executive produce, so it’s sure to be gold.  I don’t doubt that these Twitter feeds are amusing, but is it necessary to base an entire 30-minute sitcom on them?  I do not understand how The Big Bang Theory or Two and a Half Men are so successful, but at least they weren’t based off of the 140-character musings of a Canadian stay-at-home mother of three.

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s the good news.  AMC has ordered 10 episodes from the recently screened pilot, Hell on Wheels.  The series is set in post-Civil War America, and centers on a former confederate soldier Cullen Bohannan.  Bohannan is led westward to work on construction of the first Transcontinental Railroad during his quest for vengeance.  AMC’s track record has been pretty good thus far, with the critical success of Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead.  While some may be skeptical of how a Western will play with audiences, it’s nice to see that AMC is taking a risk the same way they did with The Walking Dead.  I have hopes that this show will be on par with HBO’s Deadwood, which I miss so dearly.