Ryan Phillippe is the new Julian Assange.

Tags: charlie's angels, community, damages, happy endings, ken marino, marlon wayans, memphis beat, new girl, saturday night live, taran killam, wildwood

Guess who officially joined the cast of The Office today?

Tags: Adrian Pasdar, Amy Madigan, Anger Management, Brad Womack, Burn Notice, Charisma Carpenter, Charlie Sheen, Common Law, David Hasselhoff, Diane Deal, Elizabeth Hurley, Emily Maynard, Gossip Girl, James Spader, Kristina Apgar, Lance Henriksen, Law & Order: SVU, Mariah Carey, Matt Lanter, Memphis Beat, Michael Ealy, Sons of Anarchy, Stephanie March, The Bachelor, The Lying Game, The Office, The X Factor, Warren Kole

I have a thing for quirky cop shows. The Unusuals, Raines, Justified, The Closer, the D'Onofrio-era Criminal Intent... If there's an unusual cop tracking down a criminal, I'm on the case. So when I heard that My Name is Earl star Jason Lee was going to be playing a Memphis police detective who sang in nightclubs at night, I knew I had to see it. I wasn't sure that Lee had the gravitas to pull off a cop role, since Earl was a light-hearted fairy tale and most of his most famous film roles have been of the "talkative man-child" variety, but I was certainly rooting for him to prove himself. And while I'm not entirely sure that he did (yet), the show itself is a entertaining Southern cop drama with moments of levity, which puts it somewhere between Justified and... well, My Name is Earl. And since I liked Earl, that's good news in my book.

Tags: Jason Lee, Memphis Beat, review

Fans of Jason Lee, the city of Memphis and old-school cop shows rejoice -- Memphis Beat is nearly here. The My Name is Earl star has taken on the new role of Detective Dwight Hendricks, a Memphis cop with a deep appreciation for the city and its musical heritage. How deep? He also performs on stage at night, crooning Elvis tunes. But this isn't Cop Rock -- this is a new crime drama on TNT, with a light-and-dark mix of gritty real crime and quirky character exploration. To find out more about the show's origins and destination, we talked to the creators and head writers, Liz Garcia and Joshua Harto, who also happen to be married.

Tags: Jason Lee, Memphis Beat