Strike-shuttered scripted series are returning to the airwaves but reality TV may prove unwilling to give up the roost.

Perennial big guns like Survivor and American Idol remain popular, with the former thriving off a fans-vs-favourites edition that already boasts a pair of “showmances” among the four hottest Survivors ever. Ratings juggernaut Idol is similarly hedging its bets after last season’s lacklustre winner Jordin Sparks failed to produce any. So they’ve stacked the deck with ringers, most infamously with Irish crooner Carly Smithson — on whom MCA spent $2 million marketing a 2001 album that only sold 378 copies. Several semi-­finalists have even appeared on other reality shows, including 17-year-old frontrunner David Archuleta, who won Star Search. Also, one of the dudes, Robbie Carrico, used to date Britney Spears.

Critics claim this destroys Idol’s raison d’être — turning a shower singer into Kelly Clarkson — but the producers just want to avoid another Sanjaya.

Newbie reality shows have also been doing huge numbers. The sadly self-explanatory My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad bested Sarah Connor Chronicles while The Moment of Truth had the biggest debut of any series this season, despite its inherent ickiness. In this “most controversial game show ever devised,” regular folks subject themselves to a polygraph and answer painfully personal questions. Tell the truth and win a half-mil but lose your dignity and possibly your loved ones — one contestant admits she’d leave her hubbie for an ex, another reveals he’s made ethnic jokes about his wife’s family. Moment has aired in multiple countries, though the Colombian version got axed after a woman admitted to hiring a hit man to kill her husband.

It’s actually surprising that hasn’t happened yet in Hardisty, Alberta (pop. 760), which subjected itself to a CBC camera crew for the eight-part series The Week the Women Went —an adult male version of Kid Nation that’s attracted nearly a million weekly viewers. With the ladies sequestered at a spa, the beer-guzzling guys try to keep their offspring alive. While the show propagates slack-jawed yokel stereotypes about prairie-dwellers, it does shine an interesting light on small-town sexual politics, gossip and class divisions. Occasionally heartwarming, it’s also often cringingly intrusive — we’re told so many times how one woman cheated on her husband she may as well be wearing a scarlet letter — but viewers are loving it.

So the writers’ strike may be history but a lie-detector test reveals the ultimate victor was reality.

SURVIVOR AIRS THURSDAYS, 8PM ON CBS/GLOBAL; AMERICAN IDOL AIRS TUES-THURS, 8PM ON FOX/CTV; the MOMENT OF TRUTH AIRS MONDAYS, 8PM ON FOX/CTV; THE WEEK THE WOMEN WENT AIRS MONDAYS, 8PM ON CBC.

Clone wars
Geek hero Seth Green, of Buffy and Austin Powers fame, has spent recent years helming the wonderfully weird Robot Chicken, a satirical stop-motion series acted out by retro action figures.
While the Voltron and Skeletor skits are amusing, any ’80s baby knows the ne plus ultra of poseable plastic dolls was Kenner’s Star Wars collection. So Robot Chicken finally produced a dedicated special featuring voice work from George Lucas himself — who attends a Star Wars convention in an homage to a classic William Shatner Saturday Night Live sketch — alongside Mark Hamill and random guests Conan O’Brien, Seth MacFarlane, Hulk Hogan, James Van Der Beek, Malcolm McDowell and Joey Fatone.

It features a stir-fry of rapid-fire sketches, ranging from an ad for Admiral Ackbar cereal (“now with rotting shrimp!”) and a redundant weather report for Cloud City to George W. Bush using a Jedi mind trick to convince Laura into a threesome with Condi and an awesome Toshi Station power converters sight-gag.

If you have any idea what that last bit means, then this is the show you are looking for.   

ROBOT CHICKEN: STAR WARS AIRS FEB 29 AT 9PM ON TELETOON.

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