A moment of silence, please. Or, at least, a moment of not Twittering. That's the same as silence nowadays, right? A Joss Whedon show has been cancelled (probably), which means that another angel has gotten its wings, which is also a metaphor for puberty.

This past weekend the Emmys handed out a large bulk of their awards during the Creative Arts ceremony, aka the Schmemmys (thank you, Kathy Griffin!). She was on hand to host the night, which means that they must have forgiven her for her "Suck it, Jesus" acceptance speech a few years back. Anyway, while I'm sort of dreading the predictability that is likely to unfold Sunday evening, at least the Creative Arts had a few pleasant surprises. Read on for the highlights.

With the notable exceptions of The Office and American Idol, American translations of British TV shows do not have the best luck. U.S. remakes of Coupling and Life on Mars didn't last long on the air, and it seems like many attempts at do-overs don't even make it past the pilot stage. Still, NBC has announced that they will remake the British series Prime Suspect, a crime drama about a female police detective played by Academy Award-winner Helen Mirren. Now, it may turn out to be really good, but we don't have high hopes because, without the talented Mirren (who earned two Emmys for the role), it'll just be another murder investigation series, of which there are plenty on American TV already. No, we think it's time the networks followed NBC's lead with Merlin and started broadcasting all of the British series that they're so excited to remake -- after all, most of the lead actors on TV this fall are British, faking American accents, so why not show them in their natural habitats? We've got a list of British shows that deserve wider American viewership, whether it's on the networks or just from the DVDs. It's a small fraction of what's out there, but it's what we like right now. (Disclaimer: Some of these have aired on U.S. cable networks in the past, but hey, so was Prime Suspect, on PBS's Mystery and Masterpiece Theatre.)

Just as the fervor over the Sci Fi Channel's name change to Syfy has started to die down, a rumor has come out that they're looking into expanding their reality television slate, which currently consists of Ghost Hunters. (If you can call that reality.) Once again, genre television fans are in an uproar, and Jimmy Kimmel isn't helping things by envisioning cooking show Iron Man Chef. But here are seven shows (in the seven main reality categories) we, as geeks, would actually like to see on Syfy, and we think that the geek community at large would like them, too.

The idea of adapting St. Elmo's Fire into an hour-long dramedy series makes us think two things: 1. Thank God it wasn't another Joel Schumacher film, like 8mm or Batman Forever. (Although a Lost Boys TV series would be amazing). 2. As good as it is, could there be a more generic movie to turn into a TV show? Half a dozen friends hanging out in a bar/restaurant? We can think of three shows like that off the top of our heads... although it's probably not a bad thing to want to re-capture the magic of a Friends or a How I Met Your Mother. Because you know every TV executive in Hollywood is doing the same thing, we dug deep and came up with eight other "Brat Pack" films (meaning films containing cast members of either Saint Elmo's Fire or The Breakfast Club) that are undoubtedly being considered for the small-screen treatment.

I know that I complain about Dollhouse a lot around these parts, but that has a lot to do with my high expectations for anything from the Joss Whedon world. Sorry, I've been spoiled. That said, while the beginning of this series was downright terrible, it did show some improvement as it went along (for those who made it that far), and I'm sort of intrigued at where this will go in Season 2 now that so much of the Dollhouse's world has been thrown into chaos. I'm especially curious now, since there have been some announcements about next season (from Comic-Con and post-Con) that sound very, very promising.

So G4 made a big deal this weekend about the fact that they were airing a panel from the San Diego Comic-Con on TV. It was a landmark event. Or something. I mean, in theory it's cool for us poor schmucks who don't get a chance to go to Comic-Con, but maybe this panel wasn't the one to start with. I get why they did it -- the mega-Star Wars franchise has been a part of Comic-Con since the '70s -- but now that there aren't any Star Wars movies coming out, they're pretty boring. I had the (dis)pleasure of sitting through one at the New York Comic-Con, and it had about 10 minutes of entertainment (in the form of the Robot Chicken guys) and 50 minutes of snooze-inducing content (everything else). That didn't bode well for this two-hour special.

At first glance, the idea of MTV adapting Teen Wolf into a dramatic television series looks like a pretty dumb idea. First of all, they've got an audience of 12-year-olds who have never heard of the movie, so there goes your built-in nostalgia support. And then there's the issue that remakes are often terrible and unnecessary, and of all people to do justice to a campy '80s classic, MTV is hardly the paragon of quality and creativity to be tackling such a mission. All true things. But I kinda think it's a good idea, despite all of that.

The final upfront of this nutty week was actually the fastest. Thanks to The CW for having an audience with a short attention span and realizing that long strings of numbers were meaningless. There was a DJ booth and they provided snacks (some nuts and an apple). Promising start.

The third day of upfronts brought us the endurance test that is the CBS presentation, held for the umpteenth year in freezing-cold Carnegie Hall. And once again, I was bemused by how defensive the executives sounded while touting the most successful network on television. CBS has the most popular drama (CSI), the most popular comedy (Two and a Half Men) and the most popular new show of the 2008-09 season (The Mentalist). And yet there's this undercurrent of resentment towards their lower-rated, but far "cooler," competitors that's actually fascinating from an armchair psychologist's perspective.