Alcatraz reached another milestone with “Webb Porter.” The mystery surrounding Lucy was partly addressed in an episode that benefitted from all the improvements of the double feature, (“The Ames Brothers”/”Sonny Burnett”) and used violin music to dampen the violence.
TV Line reports that NBC has renewed its freshman supernatural drama Grimm for a second season with a 22-episode order. Ever since its late premiere in October 2011, Grimm has been a continuous surprise with an average of 6.4 million viewers and a respectable rating—for a show on Friday night—in the demographic of adults aged 18-49.
CBS has announced the renewal of 15 of its primetime shows. The move brings the total list of returning evening programs to 18, including everything from comedy, to drama, to reality and even a news magazine.
This just keeps getting better and better! Frank Darabont’s L.A. Noir, a TNT pilot recently greenlit by the network, has added another familiar face to its cast. Neal McDonough, who is currently knocking our socks off with his portrayal of Robert Quarles on FX’s Justified, is the most recent addition to the cast of the series. The project, which is written and directed by Frank Darabont (formerly showrunner for The Walking Dead) is about the power struggle between the LAPD and the Los Angeles underworld in the 1940s and 1950s. McDonough joins The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal, who has already signed on for the pilot.
It’s really happening! British theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking will finally make an appearance on an episode of The Big Bang Theory. According to TV Guide Canada, Hawking filmed a scene with the show’s star Jim Parsons (Sheldon Cooper) on Friday and the episode is expected to air on April 5. This is exciting news for fans of the show since Hawking had previously been invited to guest star but then declined due to health reasons. The specifics of his role on the show are unclear, except that Sheldon has a run-in with Hawking, which subsequently leads to a hilarious back-and-forth between the two.
It only took a couple of days for 20th Century Fox TV to find a prospective home for its sci-fi series Terra Nova, cancelled by Fox Network on Monday. Deadline Hollywood reports that Netflix is in preliminary talks with the producing studio to rescue the show from the abyss of cancellation.
Amidst the avalanche of pilot casting news this week, CBS has quietly lost its police procedural pilot Quean to a legal standoff between the show producing studio (Warner Bros. TV) and a third party (Sony Pictures).
Quean would have centered on “an edgy and independent millennial hacker girl [who] teams up with an Oakland police detective to solve crimes.” Deadline Hollywood reports that the project was getting to the casting stage when Warner Bros. TV received a formal threat of a lawsuit from Sony Pictures over “alleged similarities to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”
Spring is almost here and many shows will be premiering or returning from a hiatus. Below are the shows that will grace our small screens with their presence in March – including returning shows and new additions.
The pilot season is moving ahead in full swing with casting underway for projects lucky enough to have received a pilot order. We have selected the week’s casting news that might be of interest to you. Fox’s untitled Karyn Usher spy drama has found its lead. Newcomer Saxon Sharbino will play Jane Forsythe, the orphaned 14-year-old daughter of a CIA operative who encounters a mysterious rogue agent/assassin who serves as her surrogate father and professional mentor in the spy world. If the logline is any indication, the lead could make or break the pilot.
Veteran actor and all-round nice guy Giancarlo Esposito has been cast in J.J Abrams’ new pilot Revolution. The Breaking Bad star, who captivated audiences with his ridiculously awesome portrayal of Gustavo “Gus” Fring, will co-star in the project along with Tracy Spiradakos, Graham Rogers, and Anna Lise Phillips. Revolution is described as an action-packed sci-fi drama (how’s that for a genre cocktail?) that follows the lives of a group of individuals struggling to survive and re-unite with their loved ones in a world where all forms of energy have mysteriously ceased to exist. The pilot, which was greenlit by NBC about a month ago, will be written by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke and directed by Iron Man‘s Jon Favreau, with Abrams & Fringe‘s Bryan Burk serving as executive producers. Esposito will play a character named Captain Neville in the pilot, who is described as a “hard-as-steel military man with a genteel southern manner who may not always be what he seems.”
