LITTLE ROCK — Hardly a day goes by when I don't turn on the TV and muse, "Ya know, what we really need on television is more blood and guts. Real slasher-film stuff. Saw- and Hostel-worthy terror."
Watching CSI's slow-motion computer-generated images of a bullet slicing through someone causing severe abdominopelvic injury resulting in dehiscence and eventual mortality is not enough.
Seeing a murder victim on Bones reduced to an ear and two quite-graphic garbage bags of chili con carne isn't enough.
It's not enough to watch as Ducky explains the lack of postmortem enterotoxemia in a corpse splayed out on his autopsy table like a frog in biology lab.
We want more and, in case you missed my heads-up last week, CBS is giving it to us.
Harper's Island is a limited drama series that airs its second episode at 9 p.m. today. It's a murder mystery spread out over 13 weeks with the finale set for July 2.
Harper's Island has a satisfying surfeit of blood and guts, screams and gore. Naturally, it's rated TV-14. That means it'll give 13-year-olds nightmares, but worldly 14-year-olds will think it's cool and probably want to play the video game.
If you missed the premiere last week, I'll catch you up.
The show is about a group of family and friends who hop a boat for a destination wedding on a secluded island up there in the Pacific Northwest somewhere. As CBS puts it, "They've come to laugh, to love, and, though they don't know it, to die."
Insert ominous cello music.
As the festivities begin, dark secrets are revealed and a murderer starts killing folks one ... by ... one. Think of it as Survivor: Wedding Island, except you don't get voted off - you die. Most graphically.
"By the end of the 13 episodes," CBS teases us, "all questions will be answered, the killer will be revealed and only a few will survive." It's gruesome stuff.
Don't just take my word on it. The Los Angeles Times labels the series "network television's first attempt at a by-the-book splatterfest." The Times pulls no punches: "Between the beheadings, bisections, eviscerations, live burnings and hangings, the traditional gore boundaries of network TV are lost amid the blood trails and body count. If only they could have figured outhow to do it in 3-D."
Hot dang! Finally a network TV show we can sink our teeth into. No longer will we have to pay premium-channel fees to get our fill of sanguinary shows. Gather the whole family, including your 14-year-old, and enjoy!
TV TIDBITS
More better dancing.
So You Think You Can Dance kicks off season five on Fox May 21.
More better doctors.
Mental, a new Fox medical drama set in a mental facility, launches May 22 and stars Chris Vance and Annabella Sciorra.
More better
Hell. Enjoying the current season? Chef Gordon Ramsay will return July 21 for the vein-popping summer season of Hell's Kitchen on Fox.
Returning shows.
Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics! returns with "all-new" (not to be mistaken for half-new) episodes on May 22, followed by more "all-new" Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? episodes.
The CW summer.
The CW will trot out two new reality programs this summer. Six episodesof Hitched or Ditched arrive May 26. It follows long-term couples who have a week to set a wedding date or break up.
The half-hour docudrama Blonde Charity Mafia debuts July 7. There will be six episodes about a group that "runs the D.C. social circuit from charity events to society parties."
New miniseries.
David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, is working on an HBO miniseries about the film industry. A Ribbon of Dreams is set in 1913 and follow two men who form a partnership and become movie pioneers.
Real America.
Tom Brokaw is setting out for 10 months along U.S. 50 to gather real stories from real Americans. The vignettes of Dispatches from the Road will air beginning early next year on USA Network,NBC Nightly News, MSNBC and Today.
The 3,000 miles of the highway run almost due west from Ocean City, Md., to Sacramento, Calif.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
Weekend, Pages 33 on 04/16/2009