Sabrina Lloyd

Sabrina LLOYD won hearts last season on the NBC series "Ed" as Frankie, the spunky colleague and love interest of Ed (Tom Cavanaugh), even if she ultimately didn't capture Ed's heart. Lloyd, 32, who displayed a gift for fast-paced banter on "Ed" and the critical-darling sitcom "Sports Night," is happy to be showing off a more serious (and slower-talking) side in the independent romance "Dopamine," a feature film in limited release as part of the Sundance Film Series. The New York-based, jovial, petite (5 feet, 4 inches)

Sabrina Lloyd's fan base is largely split between Team Wade (her Wade Welles role in "Sliders") and Team Natalie (Hurley of "Sports Night"). Apart from those fanboy-obsessing roles, she has appeared on "Ed" and "Numb3rs," among others. She has made a slew of independent films including 2003's "Dopamine" and 2005's "The Girl From Monday." "I really, really, really loved 'The Girl From Monday,' a Hal Hartley film I did," she says. "It was ravaged by critics, just killed. I'm a big fan of his; I think he's a pure genius.

The elfin woman with the dark, shining eyes at the untended bar in a swank Burbank hotel has an easily sparked laugh. Her words come in quick, vivacious bursts, relapsed New Yorker that she is. It's easy to picture the 39-year-old Columbia University creative-writing student in one of those undercover-cop-in-school movies. "I was really focused on being a student and my agent sent me this script. I had midterms the next day, but I couldn't put it down," says Sabrina Lloyd, one of the stars of "Hello Lonesome," which screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Friday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The elfin woman with the dark, shining eyes at the untended bar in a swank Burbank hotel has an easily sparked laugh. Her words come in quick, vivacious bursts, relapsed New Yorker that she is. It's easy to picture the 39-year-old Columbia University creative-writing student in one of those undercover-cop-in-school movies. "I was really focused on being a student and my agent sent me this script. I had midterms the next day, but I couldn't put it down," says Sabrina Lloyd, one of the stars of "Hello Lonesome," which screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Friday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Sabrina Lloyd's fan base is largely split between Team Wade (her Wade Welles role in "Sliders") and Team Natalie (Hurley of "Sports Night"). Apart from those fanboy-obsessing roles, she has appeared on "Ed" and "Numb3rs," among others. She has made a slew of independent films including 2003's "Dopamine" and 2005's "The Girl From Monday." "I really, really, really loved 'The Girl From Monday,' a Hal Hartley film I did," she says. "It was ravaged by critics, just killed. I'm a big fan of his; I think he's a pure genius.

At last, a series about a wormhole. Fox is in its sci-fi, otherworldly mode. Earlier this month it launched "VR.5," an exciting hour of electro-glow virtual reality whose protagonist zooms herself to five-dimensional realms without leaving her apartment. Great fun.

Hatred and intolerance are targeted in "Love Off Limits," a thoughtful, nuanced "CBS Schoolbreak Special" about freedom of expression, airing today at 3 p.m. (Channels 2 and 8). The plot centers around a high school student film exploring the concepts of marriage and love, which makes the finals of a statewide competition but provokes concern from school board chief Ben Kane (John Savage).

A variation on the indie slacker dramas of the '90s, "Dopamine" manages to rise above the navel-gazing of that genre with well-developed characters and strong performances, particularly by the leads, John Livingston and Sabrina Lloyd. Written by Mark Decena and Timothy Breitbach and directed by Decena, the movie overcomes some forced artiness to be a sweet, smart romance without being saccharine.

What: "Sports Night" When: Tuesday, 9:30 p.m., Channel 7 The promos were right. This show has as much to do with sports as "Baywatch" did with water safety. (Not that I ever watched "Baywatch." Honest.) OK, so "Sports Night" is not about sports. What is it about? People. Funny people. Smart people. People who need people. People who talk like you and I wish we could talk.

"Can you imagine being thrown into a situation where you're moving between parallel worlds and meeting someone who looks just like you," says actor Jerry O'Connell with a grin. He's standing in a light rain on a street in Vancouver, which this time around doubles for San Francisco, setting of "Sliders," Fox's latest venture into sci-fi. The quirky show about time travel bows Wednesday. ("VR.5," Fox's other recent entry into the time and space universe airs Fridays at 8 p.m.

Sabrina LLOYD won hearts last season on the NBC series "Ed" as Frankie, the spunky colleague and love interest of Ed (Tom Cavanaugh), even if she ultimately didn't capture Ed's heart. Lloyd, 32, who displayed a gift for fast-paced banter on "Ed" and the critical-darling sitcom "Sports Night," is happy to be showing off a more serious (and slower-talking) side in the independent romance "Dopamine," a feature film in limited release as part of the Sundance Film Series. The New York-based, jovial, petite (5 feet, 4 inches)

When a foreign-born director starts making films in the United States, he or she often gets high on the physical landscape. Energized, they show us things that American filmmakers--often obsessed instead with turning landscape into metaphor-- take for granted. In "Father Hood" (citywide), Darrell James Roodt, the fine young South African director of "A Place for Weeping" and "Sarafina!" slips into that tradition--although his material is slim.

It is 1:30 a.m. and Aaron Sorkin is slouched in a director's chair, commiserating with Rob Lowe between scenes on the set of "The West Wing." The new NBC drama, which co-stars Lowe as a harried White House speech writer, is one of two shows, along with ABC's "Sports Night," created by Sorkin in his young career as TV's new golden boy. Right now the golden boy is beleaguered and exhausted. Up at dawn, Sorkin has been going at a David E. Kelley-style pace, writing every episode of both shows.