24

Splendid news, Elisha Cuthbert haters – it looks like Kim Bauer will be too busy this Fall to appear on the next season of 24 (or the two-hour 24 TV movie).  Today, it was announced that Elisha Cuthbert has signed on to star in a new CBS drama pilot entitled NY-LON.  The series, based on an English drama of the same name (which starred Rashida Jones, of The Office), follows Cuthbert, a teacher and record store clerk in New York on her romantic escapades with a London stockbroker.  The title is sufficiently clever and, unlike a fair number of 24 fans, I don't mind Elisha Cuthbert.  I don't understand how someone with two jobs is able to go back and forth between London and New York so often, but I guess we'll find out.

While this is only a pilot order at this point, one should assume it has a fair chance to be picked up.  First, Elisha Cuthbert has enough clout and other options that she's probably not going to agree to star in a pilot without the confidence that it will indeed be picked up.  Second, the writers' strike allowed all of the networks to rethink the pilot season in general, and as a result there are going to be a lot less pilots ordered and produced then there used to be, which also increases the chance for a pick up.  Caterina Scorsone has been cast in the pilot as Cuthbert's roommate and Johnny Whitworth as Cuthbert's ex-boyfriend.  I wonder if the show will be split half and half between New York and London.  Not literally, but with the setting (I assume it will all be shot in LA). 

In other 24 news, Jack Bauer him, Kiefer Sutherland, has been added to the long list of celebrities who will be appearing on Idol Gives Back, the American Idol charity special, which will air on Wednesday, April 9 on FOX.  This may be part of Sutherland's DUI penance, but he's always seemed like a good guy, so I'm sure he wasn't opposed to doing this.  It also helps that FOX employs him. 


-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
Source: TV Guide
(Image Courtesy of FOX)