Has reality television finally gone too far? A man who died of a terminal illness has been mummified like an Egyptian pharaoh for a new reality show set to air on the British network Channel 4. The program will be titled 'Mummifying Alan.'

The Daily Mail reports that the man, whose identity will be withheld until next week when his family will explain his decision to be part of the reality show, had an interest in preservation techniques used in ancient Egyptian times.

The program, which will air on Mon., Oct. 24, will make TV history, as a scientific embalming experiment has never been shown on reality television before. A team of scientists will be performing the mummification, a complicated technique used by ancient Egyptian embalmers, at one of the UK's leading pathology labs.

'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding' (Sun., 9PM ET on TLC) purported to pull the curtain back on the Irish Traveller and Romany communities, but it left us with even more questions and uncertainties. Certainly the most disturbing custom appears to be one that many of these people aren't even fully supportive of.

Premarital sex is frowned upon, but "Grabbing" is the custom of a young man finding a girl and basically forcing her to kiss him. He often gets physical with her, holding her until she acquiesces. Sounds more like sexual assault than a custom, and that's an assessment many of them seem to agree with.

Cheyenne, who was grabbed during filming, said of the experience, "It's not nice at all, but you just have to live with it. Just keep trying to get him off of you and that's about it. That's all you can do."

There are very few moments in American history when the unrepresented and disenfranchised masses of society manage to muster together enough courage and strength to topple the high watermark of oppression. They seem to come along once in a millennium, but when they do, they give you this warm and fuzzy feeling inside that maybe life doesn't suck as much as you thought it did and everything, like the movies, may actually turn out alright in the end, closing credits, fade-to-black.

The early days of the American colonies saw the uprising of the Boston Tea Party in which angry settlers grew tired of unreasonable taxation. The mid 20th century saw the sluggish but eventual snowballing steamroll of the Civil Rights Movement. And I like to think that the new millennium's moment of triumph goes to the total destruction and annihilation of Fox's 'Spaced' remake. Granted, I'm not setting the bar very high, but it's only been ten years. Baby steps.

David Cross and Will Arnett will soon be back together on TV, according to the USA Today's Pop Candy site. The show is called 'The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret.' Cross co-wrote the project with an English comic named Shaun Pye, and he'll star in the title role as a temp who winds up running and energy drink company.

Pop Candy also says the project will co-star director Spike Jonze, which seemed like a misprint, but Slashfilm seems to confirm that. The series will get six episodes, a standard series run for U.K. television, and will air on Channel 4. No word yet on any plans to air the series in the States, but the obvious eventual outlets would be HBO or Showtime, and/or a DVD release.

OK, so it's not Arrested Development, but the new Channel 4 show The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret does have both David Cross and Will Arnett, and from this clip of the pilot it seems like something AD fans could get into. Arnett's character doesn't seem to far removed from his 30 Rock character. Amber Tamblyn plays Cross' girlfriend.

[via TV Tattle]

A few months ago, I ever-so-giddily wrote about the entire first season of the British comedy Green Wing being available on Hulu to American viewers. It only seemed right to spread the good word, as it happens to be one of my favorite shows (it's like Scrubs if it were a little less annoying and more demented).

Well, shame on me for being late with more news, because it wasn't until reader Erik pointed it out that I saw that the entire series of Green Wing is now on Hulu. Having both seasons and the finale special means that you get the laughs and closure. Isn't that nice?

Hey, gang! It's time to get your sketch comedy fill and kick the Saturday Night Live summer break shakes.

This week, I'm here to educate you on a little British program called Big Train. It was created by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan, the brains behind Father Ted, and ran two seasons/series in 1998 and 2002. Most of the sketches were surreal and played with the most beautifully serious deadpan expressions. There are people in giant cat and mouse costumes getting in fights, professional evil hypnotists lurking in hallways, as well as jockeys being preyed upon by Prince, so it's a wonder the actors could ever keep straight faces.

I recently -- and giddily -- posted about Hulu.com's inclusion of Channel 4's Green Wing, one of my favorite programs. Hulu is definitely on my good side right now, as they also have the first season of Peep Show online now. Those of you that don't have this in your list of British comedies to conquer, you should. Now. I mean, once you get over David Mitchell's extra-weird, giant, almost-black eyes, it's pretty enjoyable.

A lot of readers outside of the United States regularly express their disgust with us over our use of Hulu's videos on some of our posts.

Well, I've got some good news ... for 1/100ths of the rest of the world.

Hulu could be coming to the United Kingdom and include more programming than what's available in the States. So if you Brits have been hankering for some Facts of Life but don't feel like the necessary humiliation of having people see you buy it at the local video store, you're in luck.

You guys, you guys (Americans, specifically)! Green Wing is on Hulu! Exclamation mark!

All right, let me back up. I am a British comedy nerd. Some of you more eagle-eyed readers may already know that one of my favorite shows is something called Green Wing, which aired on Channel 4 way back in 2004. It's one of those programs that perfectly blends the quickness and quotability of sketch comedy with the engaging story arcs of more traditional sitcoms. There is no laugh track (thank goodness) but a beautifully quirky score that heightens the comedy instead of fighting with it. Plus, it's just plain snazzy.

It's easy to forget in these troubling times that America isn't the only country that's feeling the tight, constricting pinch from the claw of the economic lobster.

This is a GLOBAL economic meltdown. Everyone is feeling that pinch and looking forward to the day when they can grab that lobster by the antennae, throw it in a boiling pot of water, rip off the tail, sprinkle it with butter, pepper and herbs and serve it in a roll with a side of waffle fries. Damn I'm so broke and hungry.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, however, has an interesting way of dealing with their economic problems. Instead of trimming at the bottom, they are aiming their gardening shears squarely towards the top.

After years of reaching US audiences as only a series of forwarded video clips and teh internetz, the original Channel 4 British sitcom The IT Crowd is finally coming to American TV. The IFC Channel has picked up the series and will begin airing it September 29.

I had to make an extra point to specify that this is the UK IT Crowd and not the NBC remake starring original cast member Richard Ayoade and Joel McHale. No, no, that project is still dead. As much as I love Ayoade and McHale, I couldn't help but feel a little relieved that the show didn't take off. I'd rather get my fix from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and The Soup than see them attempt to tip-toe through that dangerous territory of American remakes.

The script for the IT Crowd's third season has just been completed, and folks from the show are looking for some help to dress up the set. Calling all geeks with decent knowledge in pop culture! If you've never seen the show before, it's basically the geekiest show about IT guys in the history of British programming. "Did you turn it off and on?" is a recurring joke, so that should say enough.

Let's start with the good news, because I like ending on a downer. American fans of the British comedy Spaced, starring Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes (nee Stevenson), and Nick Frost, are in for a treat because the Spaced Region 1 DVD finally has a release date! Expect the good stuff to come out July 23 of this year. I'm tempted to buy it just because it's something new, shiny, and Spaced-related, but I already splurged on the 3-Disc Collectors' Set and a region-free player that I got just so that I could watch the series. Why, yes, I am a sad little person.

It's rather comforting, if a little scary, to see that even computerized icons can age a lot.

Britain's Channel 4 has brought back Max Headroom, the 80s TV character that everyone thought was just a computer creation but was actually actor Matt Frewer, for a series of TV commercials. The ads (or are they called adverts or something over there?) will show Max insulting Channel 4 for ignoring his idea of a digital TV world.