The Week in Gay TV: Wanda Wraps Up, RuPaul Crowns a Queen and an Unhappy "Happy Town"

Welcome to a new edition of Week in Gay TV, your source for which shows will be competing for your attention this week including the return of Lancelot on Merlin, the season finale for The Wanda Sykes Show and the debut of horror serial Happy Town.

While I’m missing the presence of Spartacus (what an amazing season finale! I’m now trying to convince my guy to give the show a second chance after he originally dismissed it), Caprica, and Shamelesson Friday nights, now that all three series have wrapped up their current seasons, Starz is hoping to (partially) fill that gap with a new season of Party Down.

The show may be losing the amazing Jane Lynch (there’s some other show I hear is keeping her busy nowadays) but the equally great Megan Mullally is ably stepping into her shoes.

Along with Party Down, Starz is debuting a new dramedy Gravity about the members of a support group for people who’ve survived a suicide attempt. Among Gravity’s stars are Breaking Bad’s Krysten Ritter and Ivan Sergei from The Opposite of Sex. Like Party Down, Gravity can be tough to watch. The characters aren’t easy to like, especially Ritter’s aloof cosmetics counter clerk, but they seem like complex personalities worth taking the time to get to know better.

Gravity's Ritter and Sergei

NBC’s celebrity ancestry reality show Who Do You Think You Are? has already profiled a number of gay-fave celebrities and this week it looks at the family history of gay icon Susan Sarandon. I’m still hoping for the show to look at the life of a gay celebrity — might I suggest George Takei, who would also give the show a chance to explore some Asian history.

Santiago Cabrera demonstrates he can look good in anything,
even garb off the rack from the Renaissance Faire

Friday’s Merlin features the return of Lancelot. This is the episode I’ve been eagerly anticipating the most and not just because Santiago Cabrera looks so good in a tunic. Last season, Lancelot’s episode made good use of Arthurian legend and I’m hoping to see how his return plays out. Smallville, meanwhile, sees Ally McBeal alum Gil Bellows show up as Maxwell Lord.

Saturday has Sophie Okonedo teaming up with The Doctor in a new Doctor Who. I’m not a huge fan of Matt Smith's new Doctor, though I see plenty of potential — and that’s how I felt after I watched “Rose,” so there you go. I should find my excitement after a couple more episodes, especially once Steven Moffat starts making use of his contributions to Who continuity.

The great thing about CGI is that I can imagine myself reacting
to a more realistic monster than what audiences will see.

Mothman, a new SyFy original movie, debuts Saturday with Firefly's Jewel Staite facing the legendary West Virginia monster. As a kid from Hawai’i, that leaves me dreading the day the SyFy Channel’s original movie division learns about the Night Marchers or Madame Pele. Meanwhile, HBO has a new original movie debuting Saturday, You Don’t Know Jack, which stars Al Pacino as assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kervokian with Susan Sarandon as the head of a local Hemlock Society.

Ahhh, good times!