Cable TV once again offers challenging summer series

Reality is for people who can't handle TV, it's commonly said, but summer makes for a double bind. Then, with viewership generally down because people would rather go out for an ice-cream cone than sit inside in front of the boob tube, cheaply produced reality TV series dominate the major broadcast networks, so that it's difficult to find a sanctuary from reality - on TV or anywhere else.

Yet cable channels have come to the rescue in recent summers, never more than last year, when series like "Flight of the Conchords," "The Closer," "Saving Grace," "Damages," "The Kill Point" and "Mad Men" made for not just the most popular, but the absolute best TV summer ever. It looks like more of the same this year, with the major networks once again filling summer with reality series and the top cable outlets counterprogramming with daring, challenging scripted series - shows a little too quirky or edgy for the networks, and all the better for it. Can the cable channels duplicate what they did last year, however, while still playing catch-up from the writers' strike? We'll just have to see.

So let's glance ahead quickly, shall we, to what a viewer can look forward to this summer, starting with the scripted series that put to shame many of the top-rated winter comedies and dramas, then finishing with reality series - including three that are almost too real. I'll write more on all these shows at length when they debut, but for now let me set out these backyard party appetizers.

Scripted series

"The Closer" with Kyra Sedgwick and Holly Hunter's "Saving Grace" both return July 14 on TNT. USA's glib, playful spy series "Burn Notice" is back July 10, followed the next week by Tony Shalhoub's "Monk" on July 18. AMC's stylish '60s drama "Mad Men" returns for its second season at the peak of summer on July 27.

The writers' strike put a crimp in development - in cable as at the broadcast networks - but a few new series of note will make it to the small screen. Spike's improvisational working-stiffs comedy "Factory" debuts Sunday, and A&E adds "The Cleaner," starring Benjamin Bratt as something of a bad-habits interventionist, on July 15. Better yet is HBO's Iraq war miniseries "Generation Kill," David Simon and Ed Burns' follow-up to "The Wire." It debuts July 13 on the premium-cable channel.

The networks haven't totally thrown in the scripted towel to cable. They dimly recall that summer once made for a low-pressure environment that allowed quirky, unconventional series to blossom - like "Twin Peaks" and "Northern Exposure." So CBS is already out with the wife-swapping '70s period drama "Swingtown" and will follow that with the slightly more formulaic SWAT-team police drama "Flashpoint" on July 11. NBC too has already brought out the anthology horror series "Fear Itself," although it's heavily indebted to Showtime's earlier "Masters of Horror."

Reality fare

For years, "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge," or "MXC" for short, has been one of cable's best-kept secrets on Spike. Taking the '80s Japanese game show "Takeshi's Castle" and overdubbing it with clever, bawdy dialogue in the manner of Woody Allen's "What's Up Tiger Lilly?" it mixed playful verbal humor with bone-crushing slapstick. Now ABC brings out not one but two new reality competitions seemingly copped from the Japanese original. "Wipeout" debuts at 7 p.m. today on WLS Channel 7, immediately followed at 8 by "I Survived a Japanese Game Show." As TV entertainment goes, it's the closest thing to spilling a quart of motor oil in the doorway of a Starbucks and sitting on a curb across the street to watch people go slipping in and out.

ABC produces yet another dance competition, "Dance Machine," debuting Friday, and on July 20 it will add a competitive angle to its Disney Channel sibling's "High School Musical" franchise with "Get in the Picture," which will find aspiring kids competing to be cast in side roles in an upcoming "HSM" project. In addition to its annual "Big Brother" embarrassment, CBS responds July 10 with the new "Greatest American Dog" competition.

As for cable, the sewing, scissoring mother of all reality competitions - at least of recent summers - "Project Runway" returns for another cutthroat design competition July 16 on Bravo.

Yet three other "reality" series figure to bring the summer to a climax. NBC and its cable outlets carry the Summer Olympics from Beijing for just over two weeks beginning Aug. 8. The closing ceremonies will lead right into the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Denver Aug. 25 - carried gavel to gavel in prime time on PBS and the major news channels and more sporadically on the broadcast networks - followed by the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Sept. 1, Labor Day, which will signal the end of the summer - and the formal beginning of the presidential campaign. It will take some fall TV season to distract us all from that reality.

Ted Cox writes Tuesday and Thursday in L&E, Friday in sports and Friday in Time out!

Remotely interesting: The Illinois Broadcasters Association presented WFLD Channel 32 with the Silver Dome Award as TV Station of the Year last week. Unfortunately for the station, oops, the departed Mark Suppelsa was named best anchor.

WGN 720-AM got the Silver Dome as Radio Station of the Year.

End of the dial: Christina Filiaggi has returned to Roe Conn's afternoon show on all-talk WLS 890-AM after her job was trimmed in budget cuts in February.

Michael Damsky, former general manager of adult-alternative WXRT 93.1-FM, has hooked on with Citadel Broadcasting as vice president and director of sales for WLS-AM and oldies WZZN 94.7-FM, which is changing its call letters to WLS-FM.