News Brief : Renewals and Cancellations

.... Lifetime cancels Army Wives after 7 seasons
Lifetime has decided to divorce Army Wives—its longest-running original series—after several mostly happy years together. The show concluded its seventh and now final season this past June.

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.... FX Renews The Bridge for Season 2
I get the feeling that FX wasn't too sure about this one, but the network has gone ahead and ordered a second season of The Bridge anyway. Season 2 will run for another 13 episodes and reclaim the show's status as a summer series in 2014. The renewal comes late in The Bridge's first season.

... ABC Renews Mistresses for Season 2
Mistresses, the trashy summer series will be back for a second season. That's right, Mistresses, the ABC soap starring Alyssa Milano, will be back next year. Apparently, the show was the number-two scripted network drama of the summer behind Under the Dome.
Mistresses left literally dozens of viewers hanging by a thread with a Season 1 finale that was bloated with awesome and full of insane, unresolved cliffhangers. Now we'll finally find out whether Milano's character Savi survived her terrible merge onto the freeway in her sweet ride, we'll see how her white husband reacts to her half-black baby (oopsie!), and we'll learn whether Yunjin Kim's character was shot by a crazy Penelope Ann Miller.

.... HBO renews Boardwalk Empire for Season 5
HBO has put some extra cash in the pockets of organized crime and re-upped Boardwalk Empire for a fifth season, just three episodes into Season 4. The move continues HBO's tradition of quick renewals, and was likely nudged along by Boardwalk's performance at this year's Primetime Emmy Awards: In addition to Bobby Cannavale's surprising win for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama on Sunday, the series also bagged trophies for Outstanding Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series, Outstanding Hairstyling for a Single-Camera Series, Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour), and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series. HBO hasn't announced an episode count or target air date for Season 5, but if history is any indication (and shouldn't it be, for a period piece like this one?) "12" and "fall 2014" would be pretty safe bets.
Boardwalk Empire's still-young fourth season is averaging 7.5 million viewers per episode, according to HBO, and the show is almost certainly hoping that it will continue to earn critical recognition now that it's introduced even more potentially award-winning characters in Ron Livingston's Roy Philips and Patricia Arquette's Sally Wheet. Jeffrey Wright's Dr. Valentin Narcisse may even be an Emmy lock. Only three episodes in, the guy is quite an intriguing villain, and a perfect foil to Michael Kenneth Williams' criminally underutilized Chalky White.

... BBC America cancels Copper
I regret to inform you that BBC America has decided to pull the plug on its period drama Copper after only two seasons. The series followed Detective Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones) in post-Civil War era New York City as he struggled with his own personal demons and the demons that plagued the slums of Five Points New York. The Season 2 finale on September 22 will now serve as a series finale.

Revolution, Season 2 Premiere : this Show didn't evolve and move forward, it revolved on itself.

Revolution S02E01: "Born in the U.S.A."


   One of this season's most exciting new fall shows is Revolution, NBC's new drama about a world that's 15-and-a-half years removed from a worldwide blackout and six months removed from a domestic nuclear attack. Wait, what? Revolution is in its second season? Are you sure?  Season 1 of the NBC sci-fi series was dissed by creator Eric Kripke himself, and by May, the show had lost a large portion of its initial audience.

That's the mental approach show creator Eric Kripke hopes viewers will take going into Season 2, and really, it's the only way Revolution stands a chance at ever fulfilling the potential it had when it was but a wee logline gestating in Kripke's brain. At Comic-Con this past July, Kripke said that Season 1 was full of mistakes and crashed several times, rendering it barely able to crawl across the finish line. Electricity was too common in a world that wasn't supposed to have any, there were guns everywhere, and the light switch that powered everything was the only thing people talked about, which meant people talked about it way too much.

So what did Kripke do to kick off Season 2? He blew up the whole damn show. He nuked it—literally—by letting the bombs that were launched in the Season 1 finale fall on Atlanta and Philadelphia in the opening moments of Season 2. Season 1, you are dust. Let's pretend you never happened. Not only was it the right choice to make for this one-time hit, it helped the series experience its own... Revolution. Bam!

All that's left in the ruins of Season 1 is probably what the show should have been in the first place: bleak, filthy, and chaotic. Gone are the Disney overtones, the terrible dialogue, and the useless characters ; in their place are a new team of writers (Supernatural's Ben Edlund, Defiance's Rockne S. O'Bannon) and a new attitude. Revolution felt like a completely different show in "Born in the U.S.A." Maybe the episode should've been called "Reborn in the U.S.A.," because aside from the familiar faces, it was almost unrecognizable. And dammit, it was good. Well, compared to what we were used to.

We can see the effect of the destruction on all of the show's core characters, too. They all played a role in the obliteration of millions, and it's weighing them heavily, particularly with Rachel. And the nuclear hangover has carried over into the most important aspect of the show: its tone.

Let's briefly talk about what actually happened in the premiere. Miles, Rachel and Aaron were all hanging out in the fake town of Willoughby, Texas, feeling mostly miserable about vaporizing the East Coast. Rachel's dad was there, and he's a good addition to the group as a man who can lend more insight into the pre-blackout romantic entanglement of Miles and Rachel. The threat of well-organized militia armies has been replaced by the threat of savage, independently run war clans, bringing a Mad Max feel to the show, these guys aren't dopes like the hapless fools of the Monroe Militia. They hang people! They're actually scary! And they scooped up Miles (who goes by Stu now, btw) and friendly Sheriff Mason.

Aaron now has an interest in entomology because he witnessed a massive firefly fireworks show. He also talked about other critters acting odd, as though nature was ready to reclaim the planet from the human vermin that destroyed it. I seriously thought Aaron was a goner when he took a sabre to the chest and actually died at the end of the episode, but the final frame showed Aaron gasping and springing back to life. You got me, Revolution. But what does it mean? I guess that's what next week is for.

And how about the new Charlie? I'm kind of liking this version of her. She's sluttier, more driven, and badass than she was in Season 1. Based on the limited time we spent with her, she's already looking like a much more improved Charlie. Charlie stalked Monroe to New Vegas (helllllo, Fallout), where the latter was engaging in some bare-chested boxing for sport. The citizens of Under the Dome took an unbelievable eight days to start punching each other over resources, but here on Revolution it's been six months since the bombs dropped (plus an extra 15 years of no electricity before that), and all hope was lost five months and 30 days ago. What else is there to do? Charlie tried to kill Monroe to take him off her list, but before she could put an arrow through his skull, Monroe was whisked away by some unknowns.

Over in the Great Plains Nation, the Nevilles roamed around what looked like a campground for Bonnaroo in search of Tom's wife, but things were looking bleak. Tom was a broken man without a purpose until Secretary Justine Allerford, a representative of the U.S. government who was displaced by savages like President Kelly of the Georgia Federation and Monroe of the Monroe Militia showed up. They're back to reclaim the country and supposedly make it great again, but all I got from them was a nutjob Tea Party vibe. Tom did too, because he stopped trying to kill himself and figured that Randall was working with them, therefore they're responsible for his wife's death. "I am going to rip them apart from the inside until they are begging me to die."

The world is different, the characters are different, the writing is different. And that's the best news I have about Revolution. I'm not foolish enough to say that the show is back on track. One better episode doesn't erase the 22 hours of disappointment we trudged through last season. But given the circumstances, Revolution returned in the best way possible. We'll see if it can keep moving in the right direction.

Culled from TV.Com

News Brief : Charlie's daughter is cast, CBS eyes another summer Sci-fi and Shonda Rhimes takes on crime

... Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Arcadia, House) has landed the big role of Charlie's long-lost lesbian daughter in Two and a Half Men. Right now the character is only slated to recur, but if things go well, Tamblyn will be promoted to series regular and make the big bucks.

News Brief : Game Of Thrones castings, Show renewals and Who's the best 'Anti-hero' character on TV

.... FX's plan for The Strain 
The network's upcoming adaptation of Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hagan's trilogy of vampire novels is already pretty highly anticipated around these parts: Lost and Bates Motel showrunner Carlton Cuse is working with del Toro to bring it to the airwaves, and House of Cards' Corey Stoll is starring. But at FX's TCA executive session, network head honcho (and all-around smart guy) John Landgraf announced that they already have episode and season limits (39-65 and 3-5, respectively) in mind for the show. Pre-planning doesn't always work, but knowing end dates early, especially for high-concept series, is a really good idea.

News Briefs: Family Guy Is Headed to The Simpsons' Springfield

News Briefs: Family Guy Is Headed to The Simpsons' Springfield

... Whoa, I don't quite know what to make of this. Peter Griffin and the rest of the Family Guy gang will be road-tripping to Springfield for a Family Guy episode set for fall 2014 in what may be the greatest crossover the world has ever. The Griffins will buddy up to Homer and the Simpsons, and they'll pair off for some crazy shenanigans. But more importantly, we'll find out which beer is superior: Duff or Pawtucket? (Duff, duh!) The voice cast of The Simpsons will provide the voices for the four-fingered yellow freaks, so this ain't no one-sided stunt, but is this a mash-up that we really want to see?

... CBS would like you to know that with DVR, online streaming, and OnDemand stats factored in, more than 20 million people have watched its summer hit Under the Dome, up from the 13 million who watched it on day one. [CBS via press release]

... TV Land has ordered 10 more episodes of The Exes, its comedy starring Donald Faison, Wayne Knight, and Kristen Johnston.


CASTING NEWS

... Arrow has caught its Black Canary. Death Valley's Caity Lotz has landed the juicy role, which will see her become a love interest for Oliver (Stephen Amell). She'll start as a recurring character but should eventually become a series regular.

... Taryn Manning is staying in prison! The actress has been promoted to series regular on Netflix's fantastic new series Orange Is the New Black, where she plays redneck methhead Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett. Earlier this summer, Netflix renewed OITNB for a second season before the first even aired.

... Grey's Anatomy has added two actors to its stable. Hellcats' Heather Hemmens and Being Human's Bobby Campo (he also played the great Yolo in a one-episode bit on Justified) will recur on the ABC soap as a couple that gets involved in a *surprise* medical emergency. They'll appear in the premiere with a chance at sticking around longer than that.

Shows airing this week 30th June - 6th of July 2013

This Sunday sees the return of America's favorite serial-killer Dexter for an eight and final season, Sunday also sees the premiere of Showtime's new show Ray Donovan about a Hollywood fixer (have seen the premiere, good show that drags a bit, but still good nonetheless.) who may need fixing up, as his professional life clashes with his personal life. Monday sees the premiere of the scripted reality show, Siberia (Pilot review is already up).
This week also sees a lot of shows going on break, Royal Pains, Burn Notice, Graceland, Magic City and Soul Man, Continuum is still on its break but  they'll all be returning next week.

==== Sunday - Copper Season 2 Episode 2, Crossing Lines Season 1 Episode 2, Dexter Season 8 Premiere, True Blood Season 6 Episode 3, Falling Skies Season 3 Episode 5, The Killing Season 3 Episode 6, The White Queen Season 1 Episode 3, Ray Donovan Series Premiere and Whodunnit Season 1 Episode 2.

==== Monday - Longmire Season 2 Episode 6, Defiance Season 1 Episode 11, Warehouse 13 Season 4 Episode 19, Teen Wolf Season 3 Episode 5, King & Maxwell Season 1 Episode 4, Under The Dome Season 1 Episode 2 and Siberia Series Premiere.

==== Tuesday - Perception Season 2 Episode 2, Pretty Little Liars Season 4 Episode 4, Rizzoli & Isles Season 4 Episode 2 and Twisted Season 1 Episode 4.

==== Wednesday - Necessary Roughness Season 3 Episode 4 and Franklin & Bash Season 3 Episode 4.

Next week sees the return of HBO's Newsroom and the debut of 3 new shows, NBC's Camp, FX's The Bridge and Netflix's Orange Is The New Black (all episodes will be available at once for subscribers).

Leave comments on the shows and episodes you are most excited to see..

News Brief: Awkward Loses Its Showrunner, Shows to be at Comic–Con and New Casting News

... MTV's Awkward showrunner and creator Lauren Iungerich is departing after the currently on-hiatus third season wraps up. MTV is likely ordering a fourth season, dependent on who they find to replace Iungerich. But Iungerich's very funny and talented voice was all over the series, and the loss of her will be, like, totally obvs.

... FX is developing a TV version of the book Mohicans, which served as the source material for the film The Last of the Mohicans. The idea would be to make it a miniseries that follows the development of America as seen through the eyes of the characters from the books.

... The CW is developing an adaptation of the Venezuelan telenovela Jane the Virgin, and you have to listen to this awesome description. Jane, a respectable, religious goody-goody, gets accidentally artificially inseminated through a series of hilarious circumstances!
... Simon Cowell is launching Afghanistan's Got Talent.

... History Channel's The Bible miniseries has sold more than 1 million units of its Blu-ray and DVD editions.
... Captain Planet might become a movie. Let our powers combine.

CASTING NEWS

... Elementary's Sherlock Holmes has an older brother, and we'll all get to meet him in Season 2. Rhys Ifans (The Amazing Spider-Man's the Lizard, Human Nature) will play Mycroft Holmes and I'm pretty convinced that he could actually be Jonny Lee Miller's real-life brother. Mycroft will appear in the premiere episode, where the two brothers will confront their recent falling-out after Sherlock heads to London.

... In today's The Leftovers news, the show has added The Secret Circle's Chris Zylka. In the Damon Lindelof drama about those left behind after the Rapture, Zylka will play a college dropout who settles under the wing of a guru.

... TLC's Who Do You Think You Are?, which is being revived by TLC after cancellation by NBC, has announced the celebs who will let Lisa Kudrow poke around their families' pasts and talk about them on TV (minus the "your great granddad was a Nazi sympathizer" part). Here they are: Christina Applegate, Kelly Clarkson, Cindy Crawford, Zooey Deschanel, Chelsea Handler, Chris O'Donnell, Jim Parsons, and Trisha Yearwood. Who Do You Think You Are? debuts July 23 on TLC.

... 1980s dreamboat Andrew McCarthy will guest-star on CBS's summer drama Unforgettable. He'll play a rich dude who enlists Carrie's help to get his kidnapped young daughter back.

... First Andrew McCarthy, now Sendhil Ramamurthy!?!?!? A day after casting the Pretty in Pink star, CBS's summer series Unforgettable has booked Ramamurthy (Heroes) for a guest role. In the second season's second episode, he'll play a criminal who's employed by a mystery man.

... Last Resort's Scott Speedman will star in Ryan Murphy's HBO pilot Open. The drama is described as an exploration of modern sexuality. Speedman will play a hunky sports executive, and chances are very high that you will get to watch him have sex. Let's see if he's learned anything since Felicity!

... Maggie Gyllenhaal will star in Sundance Channel's 2014 miniseries The Honourable Woman. She'll play a lady who inherits her dad's arms-smuggling business but uses its resources to install data cable networks between Israel and the West Bank and then earns a position in the U.K.'s House of Parliament.

COMIC-CON
... The X-Files will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a panel at this year's Comic-Con. Series creator Chris Carter and writers David Amann, Vince Gilligan (who now has his own nifty show), Howard Gordon, Darin Morgan, Glen Morgan, John Shiban, and Jim Wong will be on hand for the Thursday, July 18 panel. Gillian Anderson has also confirmed an appearance, but there's been no word from David Duchovny. He's got to show up, right?

... CBS Television Studios has announced the shows its bringing to Comic-Con: Under the Dome, Intelligence, Star-Crossed, and Beauty and the Beast.

... Falling Skies will be at Comic-Con, too.

RELATIONSHIPS NEWS
... Pretty Little Liars' Lucy Hale and Revolution's Graham Rogers (Danny!) are dating!
... Justified's (and The Following's, I guess) Natalie Zea got engaged! Congratulations to Zea.

REQUIRED READING
... James Gandolfini's funeral was held this week in New York. The procession, including a eulogy from The Sopranos creator David Chase, was surreal and truly touching.

NEW SERIES: "Under The Dome" Review

Under the Dome pilot  was a fun ride. Based on one of the numerous novels by Stephen King, who’s being having his novels and stories on TV and in the cinema. 

A small town is entrapped inside a mysterious plain transparent dome, cutting them off from the world. No sound, electronic,radio waves could penetrate it from the outside. This isn't a town without its own secrets, we're shown early on that somethings amiss in the town already, something the authorities know about and aren't telling the town folks. Mysterious deliveries of propane over a few weeks period, too close for coincidence. A mysterious stranger, unlucky enough to have hit some cows and have an accident just before the 'dome' entrapped the town, thereby trapping him inside the town. Who he is, what he does are also mysteries we don't know yet, although we're shown him burying someone in the woods at the beginning of the episode. We're introduced to interesting town folks, a councilman (who's power hungry), a town sheriff with a heart problem (something happens to him at the end of the episode, thereby opening up new directions and plot-lines for the show.), a female journalist (who's husband is the dead body buried in the woods), two home-alone teenagers (their parents are trapped outside the 'Dome') and a psycho kid (the son of the council-man) who has obsessive and trust issues.

Positives;
--- The mysterious epileptic attacks of the two teenagers, and both of them saying the same things in a trance.
--- The story and reasons behind why the authorities were storing propane even before the 'Dome' came down.
--- The tussle for power and control of the whole town.
--- The mysterious man and his connections to the town and the late doctor.
--- What the late doctor was doing on Sundays when he lied to his wife that he was
working at the hospital.
--- The effects on the show were great, top-notch. The cow sliced in two, the small plane crashing into the dome, the truck speeding and ramming into the dome, seeing how it folded on itself. One of the best CGI effects on any show this summer, considering its a Network show and not for cable.

Negatives;
--- Didn't like the psycho-kid story-line. Its a plot i believe is going to drag down the narrative, we aren't shown how he came to be this, meaning there's gonna be no back-story explanation of how he became obsessive kid. End of the day, he'll contribute nothing to the show and end up dead, possibly a heroic or gratuitous death.

Will definately tune in to watch more episodes.

News Briefs: Game of Thrones Is the Most Pirated Show of the Season

... Congratulations, Game of Thrones! A lot of people are so addicted to you that they are willing to break the law to watch every one of your episodes. The HBO fantasy series was the most pirated show of the spring by a wide margin, averaging approximately 5.2 million illegal downloads per episode. That's almost the same number of people who watch the show legally—an estimated 5.5 million viewers. Rounding out the top 10 pirated shows of the season are The Big Bang Theory (2.9 million), How I Met Your Mother (2.85 million), The Walking Dead (2.7 million), Hannibal (2.1 million), Vikings (1.9 million), Arrow (1.85 million), The Vampire Diaries (1.8 million), Modern Family (1.75 million), and Revenge (1.7 million).


BUSINESS TIME
.... Under The Dome, CBS new summer show debuted to very impressive numbers, earning 3.2 ratings with 13 - 14 million viewers. Impressive numbers, ratings-wise and viewership-wise for a new summer show, they don't normally perform well outside of the Main TV season.

... Apparently AMC's Mad Men had an up-and-down season creatively, but when it comes to ratings, it was pretty much the same old, same old. Last night's Season 6 finale pulled in an audience of 2.7 million viewers, about the same as last season's (give or take a hundred thousand people), but it was just big enough for AMC to tout it as the highest-rated Mad Men finale ever.

... Lifetime debuted Devious Maids, a.k.a. Los Housewives Desperados, this past weekend and it did rather pedestrian in the ratings. Just 2 million people tuned in to watch the latest from Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry. Lifetime's top shows hover around the 3 million mark.

.... Stars has ordered "Battlestar Galactica" executive producer Ronald D. Moore's Outlander, based on Diana Gabaldon's bestselling books. The Outlander series follows Claire Randall, a married combat nurse from 1945 who is swept back to 1743, forced to marry Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser and finds herself torn between two times. The show's 16 episodes will begin filming in Scotland this fall and premiere next year.

CASTING NEWS
... Expect a very cranky American person to arrive at Downton Abbey. Legitimately great actor Paul Giamatti will drop by the fourth season of the PBS import as Harold Levinson, brother of Cora and uncle to Mary and Edith. His character is described as a maverick playboy, and will appear in the Season 4 finale next year.

... Hunky twins Charlie and Max Carver have been cast in the HBO pilot The Leftovers, the Rapture-themed drama from Lost's Damon Lindelof. The facsimiles, best known for playing the Scavo twins on Desperate Housewives, will play—you guessed it—twins who befriend the main character's daughter.

... Boardwalk Empire's Julianne Nicholson has landed the lead role on Sundance Channel's original drama The Descendants. A straight-to-series order for six episodes, The Descendants follows a sheriff who's struggling to prevent a small town and a Native American tribe from tearing each other apart. Nicholson, whose other credits include Law & Order: Criminal Intent and She will play the sheriff's boozing wife.

SAD NEWS
... Gary David Goldberg, the creator of Family Ties and Spin City, passed away on Sunday at the age of 68. The multiple-Emmy winner helped launch the careers of Michael J. Fox and Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence (Lawrence co-created Spin City with Goldberg). Goldberg's other credits in varying capacities included The Bob Newhart Show, Alice, Brooklyn Bridge, and The Tony Randall Show.

... Discovery Channel continued to look like a shell of its former self last night with a live broadcast of daredevil tightrope artist Nick Wallenda walking across the Grand Canyon on a two-inch wide high-wire with no harness and only Jesus to guide him along. And lots of people tuned in to watch him fall to his death (he made it safely to the other side)! The broadcast averaged 8.5 million viewers, but at its peak, 13 million viewers took a peak at the program, crushing everything on network television.