"George Lopez" leading lady Constance Marie admits that "at first we were nervous" about ABC's decision to put the five-year-old series on its midseason replacement list, and the show's absence from the air this past fall. However, she says, that changed as some of the network's new shows fell by the wayside — and particularly after Dec. 27, with the strong showing made by a block of "George Lopez" reruns the network threw on during the Christmas week dead zone.

"When they put on 'George Lopez' repeats and they did as well as some new programming, it looked like our audience was waiting for us to come back. We're very happy. We're sitting very nicely now," says the actress.

The show returns to the lineup Wednesday (1/24) — and it's coming out aiming to make noise, she wants us to know.

"We have guest stars including Mario Lopez, Jerry Springer, Stacy Keibler, Barbara Eden, Oscar de la Hoya and Adam West. We resolve whether my character is pregnant or not. There's an episode coming up where my character's mother dies; the great thing is that they've been able to blend the dramatic and comedic at the same time and come up with something really wonderful. We have some episodes about racism coming up. We've made it funny, but yet there's a lot of truth to it."

And then there's the attention-grabbing installment she calls "Does George Lopez Go Gay?" "That is a big one. That's coming up soon. There's a homosexual wedding and George Lopez is part of it. And I'm his butch wedding planner," she says.

In case anyone wondered, Marie adds that she's "not running out of steam at all" when it comes to the sitcom. "I'm so proud of it. We actually should be in the 'Guinness Book of World Records' as the longest-running Latino sitcom in the history of American television. And it's not just that it's a comedy with Latin people, but a quality family comedy, which is so rare these days."

IN FROM THE FIELD: Ashleigh Banfield became a memorable face on TV as viewers saw her reporting live on Sept. 11, literally running from the debris cloud as the World Trade Center was falling, continuing to talk as she aided an NYPD officer and found safety in a shop — and in subsequent months, wearing a head covering and interviewing Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan, visiting refugees in Pakistan, and so on. But the intrepid reporter is no longer willing to take the kind of risks entailed in her former life as a foreign correspondent now that she is a mother. "Very few of us are reckless in choosing to do that kind of work. What we try to do is make calculated risks," she notes. Still, former colleagues have been "kidnapped and killed, and I don't want that for my son."

Baby Jay is now a year old, and Banfield, who's become a Court TV mainstay, admits she sometimes misses being out in the field. "I have foreign correspondence in my blood. I feel really lucky to have found a calling so early so I will never lose that, but at the same time, priorities have entered my life that I never knew could be so strong. It didn't take me but 10 seconds to focus on this tiny little six-pound baby I delivered to realize my whole life had changed."

SEX IN THE SKYSCRAPER: Casting has commenced for Zoe, Juliette, Caitlin and Dylan — a.k.a. the heroines of producer Darren Star's "Cashmere Mafia," his latest attempt to capture sexy lightning in a bottle, as he did with "Sex and the City," among other shows. In fact, it sounds a little like "Sex and the City" meets "The Apprentice," as the aforementioned college friends-turned-executives all work on Wall Street and delight in moving and shaking within the world of mega-money. The potential series' start date is yet to be determined, but apparently they have some of the publicity already figured out, touting the ladies as having "one foot in the board room and the other in the bedroom." Ouch. Now there's a big stretch.

THE DEVIL YOU SAY: If you're into demons and exorcisms, you can look forward to "Demons" — at least, if the CBS pilot soon to be directed by Mick Jackson comes to fruition. The British filmmaker certainly is keeping up his eclectic ways, with credits ranging from feature fare like "The Bodyguard" and "L.A. Story" to major television pilots, as in "Numb3rs" and "In Justice."

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.