TV Tidbits: Local man's film about railways to air during UNC-TV's Festival

A documentary by Robert Van Camp, a filmmaker from Winston-Salem, will be shown Monday as part of UNC-TV's Festival fundraiser.

Celebrating North America's Steam Railways is the latest installment in Van Camp's Emmy award-winning series Great Scenic Railway Journeys, which started on UNC-TV in 1994.

This new installment looks at 18 historic railways in Alaska, the Canadian Rockies, New Mexico and other locations. It examines the effect that steam engines had on the development of the United States and Canada. It will air Monday from 8 to 11 p.m., with Van Camp appearing live in the studio during program breaks. It will be repeated at 10 a.m. on March 1.

Joss Whedon's latest series, Dollhouse, got lackluster ratings last week with its Friday the 13th debut, drawing 4.7 million viewers and finishing in third place in its timeslot.

But it has proven popular on iTunes, reaching the No. 1 slot among all TV shows on Monday. By Wednesday, it had dropped to No. 6.

Whedon's most recent project, Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog, was also a big hit on iTunes last summer. It is now available on DVD from Amazon.com.

A new episode of Dollhouse will air today at 9 p.m. on Fox. Eliza Dushku, who appeared in Whedon's series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, stars as a woman who is mentally reprogrammed to learn different skills and have different personalities as an operative of a secretive agency.

Fans of the TV series Breaking Bad can get a taste of the show with special online content before its second-season premiere on March 8.

Five original "minisodes," each running three to five minutes, were released online on Tuesday at www.amctv.com and Crackle.com/breakingbad. Members of the writing staff of the series wrote the scripts for the minisodes, which were directed by series director John Shiban. Each minisode fleshes out background stories of the characters. It features actors from the series, including star Bryan Cranston.

Cranston is also featured in Walt's Warning (www.waltswarning.com), a viral video site that has video blogs from his character, Walt.

And on March 6, the "Minisode Network" -- which is available on Crackle.com, YouTube, MySpace, Hulu.com and other services -- will offer five-minute abbreviations of all seven episodes from the show's first season. The first season will also be available in full-length form on DVD starting Feb. 24.

The series is a dark comedy-drama. Cranston plays a mild-mannered high-school chemistry teacher. When he learns that he has terminal cancer, he decides to use his skills at chemistry to manufacture illegal drugs so he can raise money to help his family's financial future.

Before he created the recently-canceled ABC series Pushing Daisies, writer/producer Bryan Fuller was responsible for another offbeat comedy-drama about romance and death. And like Daisies, it drew a cult following -- but not enough to save it from cancellation after two seasons.

Dead Like Me, which ran on Showtime, told the story of a young woman who was recruited into a career as a grim reaper. Now, the series is back as a one-shot, straight-to-DVD movie, Dead Like Me: Life After Death. It came to DVD this week, packaged either by itself or in a nine-disc boxed set with the two seasons of the series. Extras include commentaries, deleted scenes and features.

It should be noted, though, that Fuller was not involved in the new movie. He is now working on the troubled NBC series Heroes.

Other new and recent TV-to-DVD releases include chef Gordon Ramsay's reality series The F Word; the fifth season of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch; and The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection, a nine-disc set with 192 cartoons featuring the Pink Panther, The Inspector, the Ant and the Aardvark, and Roland and Rattfink.

■ Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 or at tclodfelter@wsjournal.com.