Did you like Rent? Sure you did. All that singing and dancing about homelessness, poverty, death and art in the late 1980s was a real crowd-pleaser. Well, in real life, the formerly bohemian, now gentrified, section of New York City known as “Alphabet City” featured more crime than chorus lines. And it’s that version that Spike Lee and Robert DeNiro will bring to Showtime with a show called Alphaville. Lee will direct the pilot episode about the lives of that neighborhood’s residents – the poor, artists, junkies and musicians – with his trademarked stylized grit. In other words, it’s going to be just like Rent, but with some murders in place of the big dance numbers and parallels to La Boheme. No cast, shooting schedule or Showtime call for more episodes yet, so there’s always DeNiro in the weird NYC drag comedy Flawless to keep you occupied until then.

If a gallery artist like Julian Schnabel could make the leap to directing films, it stood to reason that a stylish fashion designer like Tom Ford could do the same thing. And as Romeo reported previously, the Shirt-Always-Unbuttoned One walked the walk and got his debut feature, A Single Man, out of the wishing stage and in the can. Based on a Christopher Isherwood story, the film stars Colin Firth as a man confronted with the sudden loss of his partner, and co-stars Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode. But would the movie impress buyers enough to make it into theaters? Fast-forward to this year’s Toronto Film Festival where a minor bidding war has resulted in The Weinstein Company picking up Man for distribution. That gives audiences a few months to get ready for a chest-hair-intensive promo tour as the release date eventually draws near, sometime in 2010.

It seems like it was just matter of time before gay movie force-of-nature Brian Singer (X-Men) joined forces with gay TV-producer/writer Bryan Fuller (“Pushing Daisies”) and the two collaborated on something suitably idiosyncratic. Nothing if not atypical, these two are known for their singular visions and creative energy. So why not hook up with NBC to get Augusten Burroughs’s novel Sellevision onto the programming schedule? A pilot about the funny goings-on at an ad agency (think a modern “Mad Men” with gays and laughs) is in the works for the peacock network and – after seemingly countless attempts and just as many stalls and non-starts – may finally see a finished product on TV screens as early as next season. Fans still grieving the cancellation of “Pushing Daisies” already have their fingers crossed.

Media-aware lesbian fans of English actress Saffron Burrows – the veteran indie film staple who was once linked romantically to Harry Potter film alum Fiona Shaw – will be happy to know that the beautiful Brit is about to add a little more crime and punishment to her resume. After a stint on “Boston Legal,” and a co-starring role in the critically acclaimed Jason Statham heist caper The Bank Job, Burrows now looks to be joining the cast of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”. She’s currently in talks (read: bumping up that lowball salary offer, most likely) to replace departing star Julianne Nicholson and work opposite Jeff Goldblum on neatly solving all sorts of crimes in under 60 minutes. Look, it’s not the _Cagney & Lacey_ reunion you’ve always dreamed of, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Her bitchy turns in Mystic River and The Nanny Diaries notwithstanding, Laura Linney usually plays nice, or at least pleasant, people. So what’s she doing starring in a Showtime series called The C Word? Get your mind out of the gutter – the “C” is for “cancer.” The Tales of the City and Love Actually star plays a suburban wife and mother coping with that life-changing diagnosis. It’s an intriguing premise, made all the more so by the fact that the pilot will be directed by Bill Condon, the gay filmmaker behind Kinsey, for which Linney snagged an Oscar nomination. (Condon’s also the guy behind Dreamgirls and Gods and Monsters, of course.) Expect some gallows humor and moving drama interspersed among the biopsies and chemo; the pilot shoots this fall and should air in 2010.

With his Catch Me If You Can currently in the process of becoming a musical, Steven Spielberg clearly has Broadway fever. He’s developing a dramatic series about the creation of a Broadway show, from writing the songs to getting the investors to opening out of town, and he’s rallied some experts – gay men, of course – to help. Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, who brought Chicago and Hairspray to the big screen, are in talks to produce the series, with songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (whose credits include Hairspray and Catch Me) to create the tunes for the show-within-the-show. Oh, and the fictional Broadway show created over the course of the series is then planned to actually open on the Great White Way. So forget High School Musical; this is the real deal. The Showtime series is still in the early stages of development, but Romeo can’t wait.

Older actresses often have to struggle to keep working (witness, in recent years, the soap opera purge of anyone over 50). They wind up playing the Rappin’ Granny or they simply retire from the business altogether. Meanwhile, pioneering comedian Lily Tomlin keeps moving full steam ahead. She’s just signed on for the third season of the FX drama Damages, where she’ll play the matriarch of a wealthy, powerful family who causes headaches for Glenn Close’s Emmy-winning, take-no-prisoners lawyer Patty Hewes. Campbell Scott will play Tomlin’s son and fellow funny-man Martin Short will appear as the family’s attorney. The new season has already begun production, so there’s not much longer to wait until we get to witness the two strong women battle on basic cable. Go catch up on those first two seasons on DVD!

Since the shrill and tacky women featured on Bravo’s hit “Real Housewives” franchise so often seem like drag queens, it was inevitable that someone would skip a step and create a similar show about actual gay men. And so we get “Kept,” an upcoming Logo reality series about fabulous (in their own minds, anyway) Manhattan party boys and their glamorous (in their own minds, anyway) lives. And since it’s almost impossible to do a show about fashion-twinks without some sort of sugar-daddy element to it, look for “Kept” to live up to its title by introducing us to the check-signers so often hiding unseen in the lives of no-job-having, club-hopping, designer-duds-wearing, substance-snorting, cosmo-spilling, hair-product-abusing gay boys. No word yet on when the show will premiere, but be prepared for a gay audience that despises the show while obsessively poring over every second of it.