'SNL' knows that even macho dudes love 'Downton Abbey' [video]

We already know that "Downton Abbey" has won over a far wider audience than the usual PBS "Masterpiece" fare. But this weekend, a "Saturday Night Live" skit mocked Downton-mania by imagining a crossover between fans of Lord Grantham and the cars, tattoos and extreme sports-loving young male Spike TV viewer.

The spoof  "Downton" ad featured the Spike narrator explaining the premise for dudes: "They've got three daughters named Hot, Way Hot and The Other One." He goes on to describe the beloved, sharp-tongued dowager played by Maggie Smith as an "old lady who looks like a chicken. We hated her at first but then we got high and she made us crack up."

What about the servants? They're "a bunch of tuxedo'd people who live in the basement and their lives suck!" All too true -- though as critic Mary McNamara pointed out this weekend, the show doesn't paint a realistic portrait of the era's class relations.

If "Downton" fans are smart, they'll start campaigning for Maggie Smith to host "SNL" sometime soon. It worked with Betty White.

The video is below, complete with some late-night language:

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-- Joy Press

twitter.com/joypress

Caption: Maggie Smith in "Downton Abbey." Credit: PBS.

 

Bounty hunters and bad tenants highlight new Spike TV slate

The Spike cable channel has picked up four new reality series designed to appeal to its core adult-male audience. The shows share a common theme of putting dynamic characters in high-pressure situations, executives said.

The new series include:

"Big Easy Justice": Bounty hunter Tat-2 and his "Elite Recovery Team" hunt down elusive criminals in post-Katrina New Orleans. Production companies headed by Jennifer Lopez and "Today" weathercaster Al Roker are behind the project.

"American Digger": Former professional wrestler turned modern-day relic hunter Ric Savage visits battlefields and historical sites in the hopes of digging up artifacts and striking it rich. But first he and his crew must convince homeowners on the properties to allow them to dig.

"World's Worst Tenants": Professional evictor Todd Howard confronts "the most despicable, dirty, outrageous, dangerous and insane tenants imaginable, and forcibly removes them."

"Undercover Stings": Undercover cops track down criminals with sting operations.

Spike has also ordered a new season of "Repo Games," the game show in which unsuspecting debtors get a chance to keep their possessions by answering trivia questions.

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-- Greg Braxton

Photo: "Repo Games'" Josh Lewis and Tom DeTone. Credit: Shannon Faulk / Spike TV

TruTV serves up Hulk Hogan, little-people wrestlers and testosterone-filled shows

Looks like TruTV is trying to out-Spike Spike.

The cable channel, announcing its programming plans to advertisers during the annual upfront on Tuesday, will air a series about little-people wrestlers with former professional grappler Hulk Hogan serving as mentor to the budding league. The working title is "Hulk Hogan's MCW."

Spike TV broke ground in this controversial area last summer with "Half Pint Brawlers," that followed a band of hardcore, proudly politically incorrect wrestlers led by an athlete-performer nicknamed Puppet the Psycho Dwarf. The show, which featured the stars battling on Bourbon Street and in a Louisiana maximum-security prison, ran one season.

So who knows if there's a public appetite for more hand-to-hand combat between pint-sized contenders?

Hogan's role will be to guide the newly formed Micro Championship Wrestling league in its training, recruiting and performing to "show the world that little people are serious athletes who have the determination to succeed," according to the network's statement. "The goal is to get this new business off the ground and into the arena."

Hogan, the cast and crew recently spent about four weeks filming at live fighting events in South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. The series is scheduled to run six episodes this summer on TruTV, where executives have renewed a number of testosterone-charged shows and picked up male-targeted programming about semi-pro football players, motorcycle racers, repo men, tow-truck drivers and practical jokers.

Among the highlights of TruTV's upfront:

Spike plays sports, rewrites history

Slacker cops, prank calls, big guns, pro hockey -- and Carmen Electra! That should give the Spike audience something to chew on, so to speak.

Spike TV, the aggressively male cable network known for Ultimate Fighting and the Guys Choice awards, has put together a slate of programming that's heavy in two areas: historically based infotainment and scripted sports shows. There's also a Gordon Ramsay-like character thrown in to shake up underperforming bars and nightclubs, a la "Kitchen Nightmares," in a series called "On the Rocks" and a nod to the current pop culture obsession with the paranormal, "Haunted Civilization."

"It feels like the most ambitious group of shows we've ever done," said Kevin Kay, Spike's president, who's been going "door to door" to woo advertising and media agencies to commit their ad dollars for next season on the channel. "We want to make sure all guys know that Spike is for them."