The Firm series premiere, Once Upon a Time, and interviews with Tricia Helfer, Callum Keith Rennie and Christopher Heyerdahl

^ In other words, here is what's on TV tonight:

Jane Espenson's new episode of Once Upon a Time, "Desperate Souls," airs at 8 pm on ABC.

Here is the synopsis (previews below):

Regina (Lana Parrilla) and Gold (Robert Carlyle) join forces to thwart Emma's (Jennifer Morrison) attempt to run for sheriff. In the fairy tale world, Rumplestiltskin continues his quest to help his son by finding him the power necessary to avoid war.

At 9 pm, The Firm premieres on NBC. Callum Keith Rennie is a series regular and, from the looks of it, Tricia Helfer makes her first appearance in the pilot, too.

The show was picked up for 22 episodes and, after tonight's premiere, it will air on Thursdays at 10 pm, in Prime Suspect's slot. Meanwhile, the last two episodes of Prime Suspect (with Jonas Pate on the producing team) will be aired back-to-back on Saturday, January 21.

Synopsis for The Firm (two sneak peeks below):

After young lawyer Mitchell McDeere (Josh Lucas, “J. Edgar”) exposed the law firm he worked for was a front for the Chicago mob, he and his family found themselves in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Now, a decade later, McDeere, his wife Abby (Molly Parker, “Deadwood”) and daughter Claire (Natasha Calis, “The Possession”), begin their efforts to reclaim their lives, which proves to be an uphill battle. Also starring Juliette Lewis (“Cape Fear”) and Callum Keith Rennie (“The Killing”). Tricia Helfer (“Battlestar Galactica”) and Shaun Majumder (“Detroit 1-8-7″) guest star.

Here is an audio interview with Tricia Helfer discussing her character on the show, from SoundCloud.com:

Tricia Helfer by JesseModz

And a short interview with Callum Rennie:



And, moving on to 10 pm, there is a new episode of Hell on Wheels, with Christopher Heyerdahl. TV Fanatic has a new interview with him.

Heyerdahl was attracted to playing the character because of his deep complexities.

"He’s a well drawn, extremely conflicted, three dimensional human being," said the actor. "One of the greatest things in any person, given the opportunity of extreme circumstances, and that’s of course the goal of any of these shows to put characters in extreme circumstances, is to watch them contradict themselves and to come up with actions that might seem to betray their characters but at the same time show us that there is more going on than we thought. And that’s always to me so exciting when you see a character being contradictory."

And while many might view the Swede as a villain, he's clearly not so black and white. Heyerdahl enjoys the variety of fan reactions to his character, saying:

"Either they hate him, period. They hate him but they love him. They find him creepy and it gives them the shivers but they’re attracted to him. So, there’s all these very many splendid ways of reacting to a character that just in the same way I’m attracted to this guy as much as anybody else is."

Here is the synopsis for episode 1x09, "Timshel:"

In the aftermath of the events of ‘Derailed’ Elam comes to Durant’s attention as a man who is willing to work off the books. Meanwhile, the looming railroad deadline throws Cullen and Lily together and Joseph must learn to live with the outcome of last week’s violence.

And some previews:

The first eight minutes of Once Upon a Time:



The teaser:



Two sneak peeks from The Firm, one with Callum Rennie and the other with Tricia Helfer:





And the teaser for tonight's Hell on Wheels, with Christopher Heyerdahl: