When New TV Shows first heard that the creative forces behind Nip/Tuck and Glee were developing a new show in the horror genre, our indifference was palpable. Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck may have come up with a cultural phenomenon with their spiritual successor to the High School Musical films, but neither that or Nip/Tuck before it have ever bothered the top of our must-watch list.

All that said, the newly released teaser trailer for American Horror Story has upped our interest considerably — purely because it looks less like a TV show and more like an FMV-heavy PC adventure game from the 1990s. Seriously. Look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JOugYXSfNow

See what we mean? If someone sent us a link to that video and declared that it was a sequel to The 7th Guest or Phantasmagoria then we’d be totally on board, so it’s only fair that we give AHS a chance. As far as we can see, it’s got three things going for it right now:

• As mentioned, the promotional material makes it look like a modern-day follow up to Mega CD perv-em-up Night Trap, meaning it could well turn out to be simultaneously both the best and worst TV show ever
• It stars the fabulous Connie Britton, who’s coming off the back of great work on Friday Night Lights
• It’s going to be on FX, which tends to have a better hit to miss ratio than many of its competitors

Judge for yourself on October 5th, when American Horror Story makes its debut.

Breathe easy, drama fans. Following an uncertain couple of weeks, the destiny of the best show currently on TV has been secured, with AMC renewing Breaking Bad for a final order of 16 episodes.

Tense negotiations over the future of the show over the past few weeks had seen producer Sony Pictures TV publically moot the possibility of the moving Breaking Bad away from AMC and agreeing a deal with a rival network. An agreement has now been reached, however, with both sides deciding that the story of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman would indeed conclude on AMC where it all started.

Breaking Bad’s creator and executive producer Vince Gilligan says that knowing exactly how many episodes his team has to bring the show to a natural conclusion will be a huge advantage: “It’s a funny irony — I’d hate to know the date of my own last day on earth, but I’m delighted to know what Walter White’s will be (episodically speaking). This is a great gift to me and to my wonderful writers. It’s knowledge which will allow us to properly build our story to a satisfying conclusion. Now, if we don’t manage to pull that off, we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves.”

Now all that remains is to tie Gilligan himself down; his contract only currently sees him committed to the show until the end of Season Four. It would be hard to imagine Gilligan walking away from a show that has always been very much his baby but let’s hope things get sorted out sooner rather than later all the same.

All 16 remaining episodes will be filmed together but it’s not yet clear if that means the show will bow out with an extended final season (none of the previous seasons have had more than 13 episodes) or if we’ll get two smaller chunks spread across a longer time period. Scheduling details are yet to emerge; we’ll keep you posted as soon as we hear.

This Autumn will see the return of hit BBC spy romp Spooks — but production company Kudos has announced that the show’s tenth season will also be its last. But why on Earth has the BBC axed one of its hottest primetime properties? There’s a simple answer answer for that — it hasn’t.

The decision actually came from Kudos itself, as chief executive Jane Featherstone told The Guardian: “It was a very difficult decision to make. But we didn’t want to get to the point where the BBC said we don’t really want another one, we wanted to kill it off in its prime.” It’s a commendable decison from a creative team that seems to value integrity and innovation over the easy route of flogging a once-popular show until it’s long outstayed its welcome.

Spooks, which airs under the name MI-5 in the US, has a history of bumping off main characters in gruesome fashion so it’s fair to assume that the show may look to bow out with a bang. The final, six-episode season will air on the BBC from September.

If you’re new to the show, you can catch up on DVD — Seasons 1-9 are available from Amazon.co.uk

Abby Kowalski loves her job almost as much as she loves her family. She’s a cop who’s just made detective and taken the only open slot available to her — within the Internal Affairs Department. But get this, right: she’s got three brothers who are also cops. And a dad. Guess what? He’s a cop too. They’re all cops! And she’s taken a job in Internal Affairs! Cripes, that’s bound to cause some family friction, right?

Well, yes. That’s the whole premise of Lifetime’s new police procedural Against The Wall. But considering the pilot episode sees two of the aforementioned brothers share around 30 seconds of screen time and the third sway wildly between ‘the supportive one’ and ‘the one who’s just as disgusted as dad — and dad’s really pissed!’ then you’re left wondering why exactly you’re supposed to care.

Not only that, but the character of Abby is so full of contridictions that it’s hard to get a hold of what the writers are going for. She’s straight laced but kooky. Reserved but outgoing. Romantically challenged but not averse to a one-night-stand. Outwardly nervous about her new role and yet strong and bolshy in the interview room. She likes baking cakes and watching the Chicago Bears. You just can’t put a label on sassy old Abby!

And then there’s the horrible sub-Sorkin slapstick — she’s level-headed yet ditzy! — involving everybody’s stock favourite: absent-mindedly knocking over the mountain of cans at the supermarket. Oh, and each epiosde from here on in seems to be named after a song title. Ugh.

Hang on a minute. She’s working for IAD and four members of her immediate family are no-nonsense, salt of the earth cops? You don’t suppose one of them might end up in a spot of… no, that would be too predictable. Wouldn’t it? Oh.