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'X-Files' Star To Land In PBS' 'Masterpiece' Slot

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 10, 2007

Gillian Anderson, best known to American audiences as Agent Dana Scully of the FBI, from the Fox television show "The X-Files," will be one of the new hosts of "Masterpiece Theater" on PBS when it begins its new season Jan. 13, the program's producers plan to announce today.

Naming Anderson as a host is part of a broad overhaul of the look and scheduling of "Masterpiece Theater," now 37 years old, intended to bring in more viewers.

Anderson will introduce the January-to-May block of costume dramas that are to be known as "Masterpiece Classic." They will begin this season with adaptations of six Jane Austen novels. Additional hosts will be chosen to introduce summer programming under the rubric "Masterpiece Mystery" and the fall block of dramas, to be known as "Masterpiece Contemporary."

Anderson is already familiar to "Masterpiece" viewers, having starred as Lady Dedlock in Charles Dickens' "Bleak House," shown on PBS in January 2006.

Will Led Zeppelin Reunite, Play Bonnaroo?

Will Led Zeppelin play Bonnaroo, the huge rock festival staged each June in Manchester, Tenn.?

That's the big rumor in the music industry leading up to the classic-rock demigods' performance today at a tribute concert in London and lead singer Robert Plant's recent comments advocating a full-scale reunion tour (which Rolling Stone already has dubbed "the biggest tour ever" on its cover).

"It's just a rumor, none of that is real," says Randy Phillips, chief executive of AEG Live, the concert promotion company that runs O2, the London arena where Zep will be playing in a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records.

The Zeppelin tour would have Plant, guitar hero Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer Jason Bonham (behind the kit in place of his late father, rock icon John Bonham).

The group hasn't toured since 1980 (the year Bonham died), and their last full concert dates in the United States were in 1977.

Cusack's Film Shows War's Personal Toll

In "Grace is Gone," John Cusack plays a young father struggling to tell his daughters their mother has been killed in Iraq. He says he wanted to get inside one family's grief and the Iraq war's personal toll.

"I just wanted to do something that just told the human side of it and would allow people of any ideological perspective to kind of come together and find common ground," Cusack told ABC's "This Week" in an interview that aired Sunday.

"I wanted to explore the reality of grief and loss, so that the war didn't become another abstraction that's on the television, and the pundits of both sides of left versus right, you know, they attack each other and use it as a political football," Cusack said.

Today's Birthdays

Actor Harold Gould is 84. Actress-singer Gloria Loring is 61. Actor-director Kenneth Branagh is 47. Chef Bobby Flay is 43. Violinist Sarah Chang is 27. Actress Raven is 22.

Sources: The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times

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