• Best bets: Kevin Bacon hunts a killer in 'The Following'

    By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, NBC News

    A creepy new TV series, engrossing police drama and yet another red-carpet awards show are our picks for the best in entertainment this week.

    MONDAY: 'The Following'
    The trailer for "The Following" makes the new FOX drama look like a big-screen movie. It stars Kevin Bacon, a major name in his own right, and the plot will remind you of a good old-fashioned action-horror movie, where one retired FBI agent returns to hunt down the serial killer he caught once before. Bacon plays the agent, Ryan Hardy, and James Purefoy plays Joe Carroll, the murderous college professor whose creepy Manson-like followers are willing to take over the killing for him. (Premieres Jan. 21, 9 p.m., FOX.)


    TUESDAY: 'End of Watch' on home video
    Jake Gyllenhaal read the "End of Watch" script in an hour and immediately declared he wanted to star in it, reports Collider.com.  Gyllenhaal plays Officer Brian Taylor in the indie cop drama, with Michael Pena as his partner, Mike Zavala. The two run afoul of a Mexican drug cartel in Los Angeles and soon find themselves in a tangled situation they can't escape. Roger Ebert called it "one of the best police movies in recent years." (On DVD and Blu-ray Jan. 22.)

    SUNDAY: Screen Actors Guild Awards
    Yes, all these awards shows are just warm-ups for the granddaddy of them all, the Academy Awards on Feb. 24. But all of them offer their own share of glitzy gowns, heart-warming or stumbly speeches and deserving winners, plus those who got robbed.  Like the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards cover both movies and television. On the movies side, "Lincoln," "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Les Miserables" lead all nominees with four apiece. The only television show to match that number is "Modern Family." Dick Van Dyke will receive the organization's life achievement award. Somehow we don't think his acceptance speech will make headlines in quite the way Jodie Foster's did. (Jan. 27, 8 p.m., TNT and TBS.)

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  • 'The Following' is 'a horrific, scary show,' creator says

    Fox

    James Purefoy, left, and Kevin Bacon star in the new Fox drama, "The Following."

    By Anna Chan, TODAY

    PASADENA, Calif. -- Another serial killer is coming to television, and he's aiming for the masses. Fox's upcoming crime drama "The Following" stars James Purefoy as Joe Carroll, a brilliant literature professor turned mass murderer who escapes from prison and has a cultlike group of followers who then kick off a series of new murders. Kevin Bacon plays former FBI agent Ryan Hardy, who returns to help the agency recapture Carroll and bring down his intricate web of followers.

    "It’s a horrific, scary show," creator Kevin Williamson told reporters on Tuesday at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif.

    He's not putting it mildly. The drama features gut-churning scenes, plot twists that will surprise as Carroll's reach from behind prison walls is revealed, and frightening lengths to which the killer's admirers will go to please him -- and ultimately, themselves.

    "What happened in Columbine in a lot of ways sort of inspired some of this in a weird way," Williamson said. It wasn't so much the horrific school shooting itself, he noted, but the mindset of the kids involved. "It’s sort of shining a light on -- sort of -- some of those kids, or some of those minds, or maybe the bored housewife. ... Joe Carroll is sort of this magnetic character and he can sort of pinpoint what’s missing in your life, what that little hole is and he can fill it."


    "These are people who don’t need the slightest bit of convincing to do the things that they do," Purefoy said of Carroll's followers, who Williamson also compared to Charles Manson's followers. "These are people who have joined up with him because he offers them a nonjudgmental and a safe place to enact the things that they want to do. So these aren’t people who were forced to join a cult. These are absolutely willing accomplices."

    Adding to the frightening factor, many of the characters who work for Carroll aren't your stereotypical killers. For example, actress Valorie Curry's character, the seemingly sweet and innocent-looking nanny Denise.

    "I suppose she’s monstrous in her acts, but what I find to be the core of her, we talk about it being a love story," said Curry. "The core of everything she does is just this utter devotion and total love for Joe Carroll. And everything else she does is just a means to an end, and it’s a practical way of getting closer to him and doing more for him. And that is scarier, I think, than somebody who is creepy or does things because they’re evil or does things because they like violence. That it’s all just about love is the scariest thing."

    "The Following" premieres Jan. 21 at 9 p.m. on Fox.

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