NBC

NBC has just bought a half-hour single-camera sitcom created by Steve Carrell. The show will be based on Carrell’s early days as a mail carrier in Littleton, MA. Temporarily called The Post-Graduate Project, the show will center on a small-town post office and the quirky characters that frequent it. Carrell will executive produce the show along with Thom Hinkle (Daily Show with Jon Stewart).

Guest Stars

Expect to see Valerie Harper on an upcoming episode of Desperate Housewives as Susan’s (Teri Hatcher) Aunt Claire. Jeremy Iron will be guest-starring for the first time ever on television on Law & Order: SVU, as Dr. Cap Jackson, a sex therapist running a sex-addiction clinic.

Pilots

Michael Urie, who played Marc St. James on Ugly Betty, returns to the small screen in the hour-long comedy TBS pilot, Brain Trust. He will be filling in one of the lead roles, alongside D.B. Sweeney, Jed Rees and Lindy Booth. Brain Trust follows police detective Billy Doyle, played by Sweeney, whose worked is often helped but also stopped by three local uber-geeks: Professor Nelson Kirby (Jed Rees), Professor Franklin Gordon (Michael Urie) and Professor Monica Ashton (Lindy Booth).

Meanwhile on TNT, a new pilot called Bird Dog is set to premiere soon starring Eliza Dushku. Wynn Everett, William Ragsdale and Suzy Nakamura have been added to the cast. In Bird Dog, Eliza Dushku is a police officer in a small town where her father plays her partner.

Watch out for these shows in 2011!

I’ve watched the show since the first episode, and although I am glad to see the show return both to the ABC lineup and Sunday evening, I’ve been a little disappointed. I expected to see more of the tornado clean up and aftermath, but it was magically gone. As a tornado survivor myself, that seemed a little too good to be true. While I realize that television is not reality, more realism would have worked far better in this circumstance.

And, I am amused at the title of the show, Desperate Housewives, in an age when few women want to be identified as a housewife. The term itself seems as dated as platform shoes and bouffant hairdos. Women who do stay home today seem to prefer to be called either a stay-at-home-mom or simply a homemaker. And, of course, the obvious is that the housewives of Wisteria Lane are anything but ordinary.

We don’t see the ladies ever struggling with bills or complaining about rising gas or food costs. We are privy to their secrets, sins, and sickness, but some of the everyday struggles women face are curiously absent. None of the gals worry about their weight or much about money. Although Carlo now says he is a blind, poor man, the Solis couple dwells in a beautiful mansion and doesn’t seem to want for any material items.

None of these housewives are ever REALLY desperate, but they are fun to watch.