Video clip probably NSFW, BTW!

It's so hard to tell about the general quality of the show, glamored as we were by director Alexander Payne's reliably gentle/tough hand and the nimble work of Jane Adams, as Thomas Jane's pimp, who is one of Hollywood's most criminally underused actors. She gave a fine, nuanced, weird performance last night—spanning from sexual ecstasy to untethered artist sadness to hard-minded pragmatist with natural ease. And Payne's details—his close-ups, his visual aesthetic that's both warm and chilly—provided such a lovely backdrop for this kind of pleasingly lived-in acting.

But Thomas Jane? Hm. He's always been such a conundrum. He was maybe going to break out and be big after The Sweetest Thing and The Punisher and then it just fizzled into nowhere. And he's got that curious face, that bashed-up maybe-handsome, maybe-too-unfocused set of features that can be manly and attractive one minute, and then sort of sad and grizzled the next. It works mostly to his favor, we think, in the role of Ray Drecker, a washed-up high school coach who, in his youth, had a string of opportunities that never panned out (hey... sounds familiar!). Anne Heche ably plays his angry, moved-on wife in a part that could either stay shrill or round out to something unlikable, sure, but undeniably compelling in its true-to-life humanity (see: Nikki Grant on Big Love).

So we like it OK. But we're definitely not in love. We're trying to remember the last time a TV pilot grabbed us and demanded further viewing. Didn't happen for True Blood or, hell, even Big Love. What about over on Showtime? We're sorta liking Nurse Jackie, but it's really only for the same reason as Hung: a wonderful performance by a lead actress amid a sea of other, murkier things. In the case of Nurse Jackie: What the hell were they thinking casting that guy as Jackie's husband? He's like twenty years younger and belongs in some indie about softly strumming guitars in a sparsely-furnished New York apartment, not playing the borough-dwelling owner of a local dive bar. Also, Anna Deavere Smith is sort of embarrassing herself with jokey-joke cameos as a stern hospital administrator. And while Eve Best is a terrific actress, we're not sure that her hyperbolic character—bitchy blase rich Englishwoman doctor with a boatload of Blahniks but no love for children—belongs alongside Falco's more dependably "real" Jackie.

Both of these shows have promise, and we'll stick with them, but we're disappointed that we're not more excited. Not everything can be The Sopranos or Mad Men where we're hooked like suckers from the very beginning, but watching a show out of duty or some pretentious high-minded ideal that this is Good Television starts to feel like work after a while.

· NBC has picked up a reality series starring Tony Robbins which they plan to pair with The Biggest Loser for an inspirational programming block they're calling "So You Lost the Manboobs—Now What? Tuesdays." [Variety]
· Lionsgate posted loses of $93.4 million, vs. a profit of $7.3 million one year earlier. Turkeys The Spirit, Punisher: War Zone and Transporter 3 were blamed, as well as double-digit drops in home video sales. Mad Men and Crash's lifted the TV division's profits 82%. Such is the power of the Hamm...and racist cars. [Variety]
· Actor/writer Chris Moynihan (For Your Consideration, Psych) got a greenlight for his pilot 100 Questions for Charlotte Payne, about a (everybody now!) "young woman navigating dating life in Gotham." We have three: 1. Is he perhaps just not that into you? 2. Are you a werewolf? 3. Do you know Charlotte Simmons? [Variety]
· Aaron Eckhart and Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins have joined Johnny Depp in Rum Diary, based on Hunter S. Thompson's novel about a "washed-up, hard-drinking journalist (Depp) in 1950s Puerto Rico." Cult-favorite director Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I, How to Get Ahead in Advertising) directs—his first feature since 1992's Jennifer Eight. This is the kind of movie we could really imagine our ex-hippie alcoholic pothead 8th grade math teacher getting into. God we hope he's still alive. [THR]

· HBO has gone on a buying spree, picking up two more comedies—How to Make It in America, and Bored to Death, a hipster-noir starring Jason Schwartzman—hot on the heels of their Hung order. Cocaine Cowboys, meanwhile, from Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, got a greenlight. There's a joke about coke-dick in there somewhere, but we were raised better than that. [THR]
· Are you going into Cheno-withdrawal anticipating the final Pushed Daisy? She's already lined up her next TV gig: co-starring in David E. Kelley's new NBC drama, Legally Mad. She plays Skippy Pylon, "a brilliant but not entirely well attorney who is relentlessly cheerful with flashes of psychosis and often is mistaken for a teenager." We've always thought Gloria Allred: The Early Years would make a great drama, and now we're justified.
· The Newlywed Game has been resurrected by GSN, offering a "modern take" on the whoopie-making-quiz classic. Don't worry, gay-marrieds. We have a feeling there's a place for you at this table, too. [THR]
· Allen Shapiro has plunked down $255 million for the TV Guide Network, which has "The Lisa Rinna Show" and "ponzi scheme" written all over it. [Variety]
· Kung Fu Hustle director Stephen Chow has dropped out as The Green Hornet's director "over creative differences," but will still play Kato. [Variety]

The network ordered ten episodes of the show, starring The Punisher star Thomas Jane, but series creators Dmitry Lipkin and Colette Burson want to underscore the fact that the show isn't only about his pavement-scraping flesh pendulum:

The sexual aspect will be a major source for comedy but not the main focus of the series, said Lipkin and Burson, who are already writing Episode 5.

"It has its sexual moments, but the show is very much about what's happening in the country, how people are trying to survive using what God had given them," Lipkin said.

Alexander Payne has committed to staying on as series EP after having directed the pilot—one of the first purchases of the network's new entertainment president Sue Naegle back in April, who couldn't help noting at the time that there was a great deal of heart beneath this universal story of a working-class man and his colossal he-trunk.

• HBO high on "Hung" [THR]

Clearly that's all Payne — himself long entrenched among Hollywood's generously beschlonged elite — had to know before signing on to his first TV directing gig. The pilot is in the works as we speak, with casting announcements soon to follow; we expect no less than Payne alum Thomas Haden Church to sign on as the lead, while Zak Efron, breaking through in his first real young adult role, will play the troubled son coming to terms with his own one-eyed, pavement-scraping inheritance.

• Alexander Payne signs on for 'Hung' [Variety]