My Name is Stewie

My Name is Earl was renewed for a second season before the first was even half over, and I think we can at least bank on a third even though the first is still running: all good news if you ask me.

A brand new episode airs in the US tonight, and UK fans only have to wait until tomorrow to get their next dose (the Brits are currently a few episodes behind but NBC won't need to skip many more weeks for reruns or snow-games before Blighty gets ahead).

The show was celebrated this week during the William S. Paley TV Festival at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills. Two previously unseen episodes were screened, and there was a Q&A with cast and crew. According to IGN's report, they teased with information about the remainder of the season and the eventual DVD release.

Most exciting, maybe, is the promise of a special, DVD-only episode on the eventual Season One box-set. Running to something like 15 minutes, the mini-Earl will tell a "What If?" story in which the hospitalised Earl Hickey doesn't stop on that fateful Carson Daly broadcast, flipping onwards to The Family Guy instead. As a result, the quest for Karmic redemption doesn't become Earl's inspiration - Stewie Griffin does. "Comic mayhem" will doubtlessly ensue - and my money is on Jason Lee having to try on something like an English accent.

The final episode of the series, the Q&A revealed, will deal with item number 1 on Earl's list. Seemingly, it comes top of the pile as it was the last misdemeanour Earl committed before winning the lottery and getting whupped by the car. They promised that the episode will reveal "all kinds of fun things".

There's a sense of continuity in My Name is Earl that makes the show so rewarding to follow, from running gags and recurring minor characters through recurrent camera and editing motifs to a string of variations on how they handle Earl's list and the machinations of Karma. There's a very particular world, and a worldview, being fleshed out in every episode. This stuff is custom-cut for DVD collections, cult followings and retrospective marathons.

Marc Buckland, the show's key director, set the lively style from the very first moments of the very first episode, shamelessly riffing on Raising Arizona. He joins Mark Mylod and Todd Holland as a genuine great in directing one-camera sitcom and I hope he stays with the show and continues to develop it's tone and language. It's far too rare that TV comedy benefits so much from the input of a single director, and I hope Buckland will get the respect he deserves.