'The Ricky Gervais Show' isn't a show that gets great ratings, but HBO seems to be happy with it (and having Gervais attached to any show on your network can only be a good thing), so they've decided to give a second season to the animated talk show. Gervais stars with co-hosts Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. It's basically their podcasts in cartoon form. We've joked here about doing a video version of our podcasts but I'm not sure if any of us want to see what we would look like in colorful animated drawings.

It's really a different kind of show, the type of show that has to be on cable, on a channel like HBO (or Comedy Central). You certainly can't picture it on CBS, in a comedy block between 'The New Adventures of Old Christine' and 'Gary Unmarried.' I love how an animated Gervais looks like Fred Flintstone's brother.

Michael Ausiello is reporting that filming of the second season of 'Spartacus: Blood and Sand' has been put off temporarily because of health problems that star Andy Whitfield is experiencing.

Whitfield has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and is undergoing treatment in New Zealand. Fortunately, the illness was caught early and Whitfield's prognosis is great. The show was supposed to start filming season two later this month but they will hold off until Whitfield gets better.

'Spartacus' airs Friday nights at 10 PM ET on STARZ.

'Undercover Boss,' the new CBS reality show where CEOs flip burgers and haul trash and spy on their employees to see how it's really like to work for their companies, is doing well in the ratings so the network has given it a second season.

Of course, now we are all wondering how they are going to pull this off. The longer the show stays on the air, isn't it logical to think that employees will wonder who this new employee is and why there are cameras following them around?

I wonder the same thing about 'Throwdown with Bobby Flay.' If someone from Food Network says they want to film me and do a special about the great things I can do with pasta ('Playing with Pasta!'), I would immediately think "oh, this must be one of those deals where Bobby Flay is going to show up and challenge me."

Joan Rivers' TV comeback continues today with news that TV Land has renewed 'How'd You Get So Rich?' for a second season.

According to Variety, the show, which Rivers hosts, will be back as early as May 5 (10PM ET) for a six-week run on the network.

In addition to 'Rich,' Rivers recently returned as host of E!'s 'Fashion Police' after a five-year hiatus. Rivers left the network in the 2005 for the TV Guide Channel after a salary dispute.

She also had a memorable run on NBC's 'The Celebrity Apprentice,' in which she memorably (read: infamously) beat rival Annie Duke.

This should come as no surprise to anybody who's been following the current television season. CBS has renewed The Good Wife and NCIS: LA for second seasons. Both shows are part of a solid Tuesday night lineup for CBS, amassing strong Nielsen ratings and even better numbers in total viewers, holding much of the audience from the NCIS lead in. All that adds up to a winning formula, and thus, CBS wasn't going to break up a good thing.

As for the quality of the two shows, they both deserved renewal. They've improved as the season has progressed, especially The Good Wife. What started out as a good premise has morphed into a very compelling legal drama with a lingering subplot – exactly what did Alicia's husband do to warrant the wrath of the enemies that have put him in prison? It's also a terrific set of actors and a star-turn by Julianna Margulies.

It was graduation day for a number of hourlong dramas.

TNT announced Thursday that it has renewed the Ray Romano drama 'Men of a Certain Age' for a second season. Meanwhile, CBS made a slightly more obvious decision, picking up the strongly rated 'NCIS: Los Angeles' and 'The Good Wife' for second campaigns, according to the Ausiello Files.

'NCIS: Los Angeles' and 'The Good Wife' rank at the top two new shows on television in terms of total viewers, averaging 16.8 million and 13.7 million sets of eyeballs, respectively.

There seems to be just an onslaught of TV news coming out these days, eh? Even if you don't count any of the Leno/Conan/Tonight Show stuff.

TNT has just announced that they have given a green light to a second season of Men of a Certain Age. The exact order is for 10 episodes, though I guess that could be increased at some point. The show has been getting good ratings (averaging 4.5 million viewers a week) and it's a genuinely good show. More serious than you thought it was going to be but also with some humor. Maybe it's because I'm in my mid-40s too but I find the show quite different than anything else on TV right now, and I'm happy to see a second season.

'Glee' is on a roll, and we're not just talking about the wheelchair-bound, soul-singing character Artie.

Monday morning Fox announced at the Television Critics Association confab that the sweetly buoyant TV phenomenon 'Glee' will return to Fox's 2010 fall line-up for an encore season. The adequately rated program about high school misfits who sing and dance their hearts out has struck a chord with the American public looking for something truly original in a TV landscape mostly filled with run-of-the-mill procedural and medical shows.

It's FOX day at the TCAs, and we've been greeted by a press release announcing that Glee, halfway through its first season, has been renewed for a second season.

"The show is a true and rare gem in television," said FOX entertainment president Kevin Reilly in the release. "We couldn't be more proud of what Ryan Murphy and the Glee team have created so far, and can't wait to see what they come up with for season two."

Can't say this is much of a surprise, given the show's popularity as well as it's off-network marketing potential. Mall tours, concert tours, World Series appearances... all of this is shaping up to make the show the feel-good hit of the 2010s, doesn't it?

Lucasfilms told us at Comic-Con that the new season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars promised more sophisticated storylines and higher stakes. It is war, after all. And they promised us bounty hunters. One of the most popular classes of characters in the franchise was conspicuously absent during the first season.

To drive this point home, they've even added a snazzy subtitle to the title of the show for this season, as well as giving it a premiere date. The action starts Friday, October 2 with the one-hour premiere of Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Rise of the Bounty Hunters.

That follows the pattern of the films, if you think about it. While the first film was technically Episode IV: A New Hope, it was only branded as Star Wars. The stakes were raised and things got much better with the next installment, complete with official subtitle. Rise of the Bounty Hunters even sounds like an episode in the film franchise.

See, this is a reason why cable is becoming the best place to watch TV. Lifetime has picked up Drop Dead Diva for a second season. The show is a real chick-flick kind of comedy/drama that has done well in the ratings ... for Lifetime.

The 2.6-3 million viewers would mean a cancellation on the networks – think Pushing Daisies – but on Lifetime, the charm and whimsy of Drop Dead Diva, the appeal to the female demographic, and the pairing with Army Wives on Sunday nights spells success.

While this off-network summer season has reached a fevered pitch after last with the return of Mad Men, not to be overlooked is that other cable shows have also been delivering the goods. Shows like Burn Notice and Leverage, for instance. Regarding Leverage, there's good news to report. TNT will air two extra Leverage episodes in the weeks ahead.

I'm glad that in this interview, Joss Whedon says that he and the team "really understand Dollhouse now. We understand what works, and what didn't work so well." I do wish he'd figured it all out from the beginning, as it would have saved him the situation he's in now. Off to a very shaky start last season, Dollhouse barely eked out a renewal.

The main problem is that it took about half of that short season for the show to find its voice and become something I was really invested in. So now Whedon needs to find a way for his show to "break out" in its second year, or I fear that Dollhouse will go the way of recent second season fails (not in quality, but in ability to make a third) like Pushing Daisies, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the most famous of all, Jericho. That core passionate following is great to have, but you need to grow your audience to make it to three.

Mere hours after the series premiered on the cable net, Showtime has renewed Nurse Jackie for a second season. Why so fast, you might wonder? Well, Showtime could point to the biggest premiere since 2004, but because it was on pay cable the total number of viewers is less than two million. Those are the kind of numbers that would get it canceled on USA or TNT, not to mention ABC or CBS, but for Showtime it's excellent.

Excellent is also what a majority of TV critics and bloggers -- including Jane -- had to say about the Edie Falco dark comedy. Some were more effusive than others, but for all intents and purposes, the press was pro-Jackie from the get-go. But not everyone loved the show. Nurses complained loudly about the depiction of their profession.

(S02E01) After the harrowing conclusion from last season, Mary Shannon was back and after 30 hours of sleep, she actually seemed ready to return to work. However, as Marshall soon found out, looks can be deceiving. Mary and Jinx and Brandi were still together and coping, but the effects of one of them nearly being raped, killing a man, concealing drugs, having their home turned inside out and suffering the indignity of the FBI invading every corner of your life took a toll. They thought they had come out the other side unscathed, but as the episode unfolded, damage was evident.

For Mary, getting back on a case, even as Marshall's sidekick, was a welcomed relief from administrative leave. Her denial of post-traumatic stress disorder was typical for her. In fact, she was suffering, but it manifested itself as a happy, chipper and congenial Mary. Stan, Marshall and Bobby D. were baffled by this alternate universe Agent Shannon, but for viewers wise to the ways of TV, it was clear that something was amiss.