BBC America

When I first told my good friend PopUK that the comedy series Gavin and Stacey was coming to BBC America, she was nothing short of delighted. Since it's one of her faves, I asked her to give us Yanks a taste of what makes the show so great before it premieres at 8:40 p.m. PDT/EST tonight. I'll let her take it from here:

So, you've already got our "British teens gone wild" import Skins airing on your shores, and now it's time for one of our most beloved series to arrive: Gavin and Stacey. It's a British comedy show with a love story at its (big, big) heart, so here's my guide to what you need to know before turning on your telly (er, TV) tonight!

Let's start with the adorable 20-something couple at the center of all this: Gavin and Stacey. The series begins before their first meeting — they've been talking on the phone for months at work and are finally taking the plunge and seeing each other face to face. The couple both live at their family homes, Gavin with his parents Mick and Pam, and Stacey with her widowed mother Gwen under the protective eye of her uncle Bryn. Gavin's a down-to-earth lad from Essex, England — which is to London as New Jersey is to New York City — and Stacey's full of sparkle and hails from Barry Island in Wales, the equivalent of a small town in South Carolina. (These American equivalents are where the characters are rumored to be hailing from in the upcoming NBC remake.)

The comedy arrives via the cast of supporting characters who flesh out the show. Gavin's mother has an inability to think before she speaks, whereas her husband Mick is down-to-earth like their son and fails to see the method behind his wife's madness. Gavin's parents are awesome, and whenever I watch the show, certain things they do feel so familiar to me from watching my own family at various gatherings. Stacey's Uncle Bryn (played by British comedy great Rob Brydon) is a simple Welsh man with a simple life; he's amazed by everyday things like online route planners and is very endearingly protective over Stacey.

For more about G&S, including a glossary, just read more

Gossip Girl encountered its fair share of criticism about its sex, drugs, and other vaguely inappropriate content when it premiered last Fall. But frankly, the Upper East Siders have nothing on the cast of Skins, the British show that premieres Sunday on BBC America. This show takes the limits of American TV and stomps all over them — and that's even without the edited-out language and nudity.

Skins, which just wrapped up its second season in the UK, is the rare show about teenagers that's actually written by people who remember well enough what it was like to be one: The show's writing staff has an average age of 22. The main character is Tony (played by Nicholas Hoult, aka the little kid from About a Boy — just try to get your mind around that one), the hottest and most popular guy in town; he, of course, has a gorgeous girlfriend, Michelle, to go along with his status. And then there's Sid, Tony's nerdy friend, who enlists Tony's help in losing his virginity in the first episode and somehow ends up buying a large quantity of weed. Sid's maybe the most relatable character of the bunch, but the one I loved the most in the first episode was Cassie, a spacey, anorexic, drug-addled beauty who thinks everything in the world is beautiful — except, possibly, for herself.

My UK friends told me the show builds slowly but deserves all its buzz (and acclaim, including a prize at this year's Rose d'Or festival) by the end. The first episode left me wanting another, so it's a good thing that Sunday's BBC America premiere will have two episodes back to back starting at 9 p.m. EDT and PDT. To watch the US preview — and then the original UK preview, which looks oddly like an Abercrombie ad with more drugs and puking and is probably NSFW — just read more

For all you folks who are huge fans of the Simon Pegg-Jessica Hynes comedy Spaced, you've probably already ordered or put at the top of your Netflix queue the new series DVDs, which are releasing this upcoming Tuesday, July 22. For everyone else, BBC America is awesomely running marathons of the show today, starting at 3:00 p.m. EST.

According to EW, those of you holding out for the DVDs will certainly not be disappointed, as they feature "uber-geeky, super-amusing, very informative commentary by Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, Diablo Cody, and of course show creators-stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, and director Edgar Wright."

In the meantime, I'm going to make my TiVo work overtime today with both this marathon and the Mad Men one. Yippee!

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• According to ComingSoon, America Ferrera will star in the coming-of-age drama An Invisible Sign of My Own, which will be directed by Mad Hot Ballroom's Marilyn Agrelo.
• Paramount and Brad Pitt's production company Plan B have picked up the rights to two memoirs, Beautiful Boy and Tweak, Variety reports.
• FX has ordered a series about a rebel motorcycle gang from one of the producers of The Shield, reports Zap2it.
• Mariah Carey's album remains at the top of the charts for the second week in a row, while Ashlee Simpson is coming in at No. 4, behind Leona Lewis and the Flight of the Conchords album, writes E! Online.
• The iTunes store has added three series from BBC America to its catalog, Broadcasting & Cable reports.
• Reuters reports that there's already a book and documentary in the works about New York governor Eliot Spitzer.
• Spike TV has given the green light to its first comedy series, The Factory, an improvised show from the co-creator of Strangers with Candy, writes the Hollywood Reporter.
• Jonah Hill is in talks to provide the comic relief as Shia's sidekick in the Transformers sequel, writes ComingSoon.

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BBC America, that is. The American BBC has acquired the rights to all four seasons of Monty Python's Flying Circus — along with "a pair of specials the troupe did for West German television" — and will air them in a 10-hour marathon on Memorial Day, Monday May 26. According to Zap2It:

The Flying Circus episodes have been digitally remastered, allowing fans of the Cheese Shop, "How Not to Be Seen" and Spam a fresh look at the classic sketch series.

It also includes the lesser-seen pair of "Fliegender Zirkus" West German TV specials, including one in which Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Terry Jones and Michael Palin performed new sketches in phonetic German.

Flying Circus has aired on TV in past years, though never on BBC America. Who else is making a mental note to set the TiVo on May 26?

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These days, so many activities are described as extreme, and unfortunately dieting is not exempt from this categorization. Two British journalists decided to explore the realities of extreme dieting by subjecting themselves to the techniques used by celebs, and they captured the highlights of their journey (or demise) on film for the BBC documentary Super-Skinny Me: The Race to Size Zero.

To read what this fascinating documentary is all about, just read more