Tuning In to TV

Fantasia, the series

You already know Fantasia, the “American Idol.”

Now get ready for Fantasia, the show.

The “Idol” winner and nine-time Grammy nominee will return to reality television in a new unscripted series on VH1, the Hollywood Reporter notes. The show has received a series commitment from the network and is slated to premiere in early 2010.

According to THR, the show will chronicle Fantasia’s life as a recording artist and young single mother.

A North Carolina native, Fantasia earlier portrayed herself in “Life Is Not a Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story,” a 2006 Lifetime film based on her autobiography of the same name. She rose to fame as the winner of the third season of “Idol” and has gone on to a successful career as a recording artist. She later starred as Celie in “The Color Purple” on Broadway, a role she will reprise when the production opens June 30 at the Kennedy Center.

The VH1 show’s title and episode count have not been determined, THR said.

Star back after crash

Gale Harold is back on Wisteria Lane.

Six months after a serious motorcycle accident, the “Desperate Housewives” actor has returned to work, Associated Press reported Thursday. His character, Jackson, is primed to propose to Susan, played by Teri Hatcher.

Mr. Harold, 39, landed in intensive care as a result of the Oct. 14 crash. On the set of the show Wednesday, he said the accident taught him that “you can play hard, but you may have to pay a price.” It’s a price he says he has paid in full.

Mr. Harold’s return episode is set to air May 3 on ABC. The actor is signed to the series through the end of this season but says he has yet to be asked to return for 2009-10.

Ferrell goes ’Wild’

Actor-comedian Will Ferrell will appear on an upcoming episode of Discovery’s “Man vs. Wild” to promote his summer film “Land of the Lost,” Broadcastingcable.com reports.

The former “Saturday Night Live” funnyman and host Bear Grylls will spend two days in the mountainous region in northern Sweden, with Mr. Grylls showing Mr. Ferrell how to survive — a challenge that will include the duo eating reindeer eyeballs and drinking their own urine.

The partnership is the latest effort from Discovery to integrate upcoming films from Universal into its programming.

Previous integrations have included “Frost/Nixon” on “Cash Cab” and “Fast and Furious” in an episode of “Destroyed in Seconds.”

The episode will air June 5 on Discovery.

Weekend watch

• Grey Gardens (8 p.m. Saturday, HBO) — The story of swells living in squalor in a once-stately mansion surely would generate headlines.

When it’s learned they’re related to a former first lady — Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis — the brouhaha becomes even more pronounced.

That’s as true today as it was back in 1972, when authorities discovered Mrs. Onassis’ aunt and first cousin, “Big Edie,” and the aunt’s daughter, “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, holed up in their debris-and-vermin-filled estate, Grey Gardens, in New York’s tony East Hampton community.

The sad and sensational tale — exposed in a 1973 documentary by filmmakers Albert and David Maysles and later retold in a 2006 Tony-winning musical — has found its way to the small screen in HBO’s made-for-cable film.

Two-time Oscar winner Jessica Lange stars as Big Edie, and Drew Barrymore is Little Edie in the 90-minute production, which begins in the mid-1930s. Then 18, the younger Edie is the toast of the town. Ravishingly beautiful, she has men at her beck and call. The attention-seeking Big Edie is equally comely, and the two women revel in their fortune. Lavish and decadent parties abound as mother and daughter defy social convention and the deportment expected of the manor-born.

Directed by Michael Sucsy (who also shares a screenwriting credit with Patricia Rozema), the film fast-forwards to the 1950s as Little Edie travels to New York City with hopes of becoming an actress … but instead begins a ruinous affair with the married Julius “Cap” Krug (Daniel Baldwin), a former U.S. secretary of the interior. Her disapproving father (Ken Howard) summons her back to Grey Gardens, and her slow descent into madness (along with her mother’s) appears to begin.

We see the deterioration, but its cause is never fully explained.

Life, meanwhile, goes on as the Beales deal with a family tragedy (the shocking death of President Kennedy in 1963) and quickly moves to the discovery of the women’s precarious situation and their subsequent rescue by Mrs. Onassis (Jeanne Tripplehorn of HBO’s “Big Love”) in the ’70s.

Though this helter-skelter pace may leave some viewers feeling shortchanged, “Grey Gardens,” nonetheless teems with faithfully re-created period sets and costumes, an engaging script and superb turns from its leading ladies.

Look for multiple nods come Emmy time.

• We Shall Remain (1 p.m. Sunday, WETA-Channel 26) — This encore broadcast of the five-part series, which explores the American Indian perspective of American history, opens in March 1621 with “After the Mayflower,” with the alliance the Wampanoag leader Massasoit struck with the Plymouth Colonists.

• Natalee Holloway (8 p.m. Sunday, Lifetime) — The real-life tragedy of the Alabama teen who mysteriously disappeared during a high school graduation trip to Aruba in 2005 gets the usual melodramatic treatment from cable’s “network for women.” But is it too soon? Amy Gumenick plays the ill-fated teen, and Tracy Pollan is her mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, who immediately springs into action and challenges authorities when her daughter goes missing. Adapted from the book by Mrs. Holloway-Twitty.

• Desperate Housewives (9 p.m. Sunday, ABC) — After a three-week hiatus, the women of Wisteria Lane return with a brand-new episode as they reflect on the life and times of the presumed-dead Edie Britt (Nicollette Sheridan).

• Written and compiled by Robyn-Denise Yourse from Web and wire reports