TV news roundup for Week 6 of 2019
Welcome to the weekly TV news round-up, where we go into the latest TV news regarding renewals, cancellations, and pick-ups. This week we have renewals, pickups and pilots.
Renewed
US broadcast network NBC has renewed its new medical drama New Amsterdam for a second season. The series stars Ryan Eggold (The Blacklist) as a medical director who turns the management of the oldest public hospital in America around from profit to patient-centric.
To the surprise of no-one, AMC has renewed its adaption of Robert Kirkman’s comic series The Walking Dead for a tenth season. AMC is going hard with The Walking Dead, already airing spin-off Fear the Walking Dead and having multiple other projects in development, including character-centric TV movies.
US cable channel FX has renewed Marvel’s X-Men comics based Legion for a third and final season. According to the channel, it was always showrunner Noah Hawley’s intent for the series to run for three seasons and they are sticking to that. With this news also comes the casting of Harry Lloyd (Game of Thrones) and Stephanie Corneliussen (Mr Robot) in rather spoilerific roles we will not go into further.
Long-running comedy series Modern Family has been renewed by American broadcast network ABC for an 11th and final season. The family series follows an ensemble cast led by Ed O’Neill (Married… With Children) and Sofía Vergara (The Emoji Movie). At the end of its 11 season run more than 200 episodes will have aired.
ABC also renewed medical and autism drama starring Freddy Highmore (Bates Motel) The Good Doctor for a third season and family drama A Million Little Things for a second season.
Meanwhile, ABC’s cable sister channel Freeform has renewed their college set Black-ish spin-off Grown-ish for a third season. They also renewed post-college The Fosters spin-off Good Trouble for a second season.
US broadcasting network CBS has renewed Chuck Lorre’s comedy Mom for a seventh and eight season. The comedy stars Allison Janney (The Addams Family (2019)) and Anna Faris (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) as a mother-daughter duo dealing with all kinds of issues.
While parent company 21st Century Fox is in the middle of the Disney acquisition, Fox Broadcasting has renewed animated comedy The Simpsons for a 31st and 32nd season. This means the series will at least run for a whopping 713 episodes! With the Disney acquisition of Fox Television Animation, the series will go from an owned series to a licensed series at Fox.
Cancelled
Disney Channel’s animated series Star vs. the Forces of Evil will come to an end with Season 4. The final season starts with two episodes on Sunday, March 10.
Picked up
FX has picked up the TV series adaption of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s comic book series Y: The Last Man. The series, simply called Y, follows the last surviving human male Yorick and his pet monkey in a world now completely run by women. The series will star Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk) as Yorick Brown, Diane Lane (House of Cards) as his mother Senator Jennifer Brown, Amber Tamblyn (Two and a Half Men) as Mariette Callows, Imogen Poots (I Kill Giants) as Hero Brown, Lashana Lynch (Captain Marvel) as Agent 355, Juliana Canfield (Succession) as Beth, and Marin Ireland (Hell or High Water) as Nora. Michael Green (American Gods) and Aïda Mashaka Croal (Marvel’s Luke Cage) will be showrunners. The first season is expected somewhere in 2020.
Variety has learned that Netflix has teamed-up with Gwyneth Paltrow (Avengers: Infinity War) lifestyle and wellness company for a currently unnamed series of documentaries. What is Goop? Well, we will let Stephen Colbert explain…
Freeform has ordered a first season of ten episodes of a rebooted Party of Five series. The original series aired for six seasons on Fox, between 1994 and 2000. The series starred Matthew Fox (Lost), Neve Campbell (Scream), and Jennifer Love Hewitt (Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit) who also starred in a short-lived spin-off called Time of Your Life. Originally the series followed five siblings who needed to fend for themselves after their parents are killed in a car accident, but in the reboot, the kids will lose their parents when they are deported back to Mexico.
Other developments
HBO, Lionsgate and Power creator Courtney Kemp are developing Dirty Thirty. The series will be inspired by the real-life rogue cops of the NYPD, who in the 1990s were investigated and arrested for drug dealing, extortion and corruption.
ABC has ordered two comedy pilots. The first, Nana, stars Katey Sagal (Married… With Children, Sons of Anarchy) in the titular role as a mother-in-law who is brought in by her widowed son-in-law to help raise her two granddaughters she barely knows. The second as-of-yet untitled pilot stars Tony Award-winning Leslie Odom Jr. (Murder on the Orient Express (2017)) in a comedy inspired by real-life pastors Touré and Sarah Jake Roberts.
US cable channel Freeform has released a new poster for and has announced that Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger Season 2 will start on Thursday, April 4 with two episodes. The Marvel Cinematic Universe set series follows teens Tandy Bowen/Dagger and Tyrone Johnson/Cloak as they battle to reveal the evil of the Roxxon Corporation in New Orleans. The series has a connection to Marvel’s Luke Cage as that series referenced Detective Brigid O’Reilly and Cloak and Dagger referenced Detective Misty Knight.
Fox Broadcasting has a TV series adaption of Boom! Studios comic Talent in development. The four issue 2006 comic written by Christopher Golden and Tom Sniegoski and drawn by Paul Azaceta. In the comic a college professor is the sole survivor of a plane crash, killing 148 people. Unable to explain how he survived the crash, it is soon revealed the talents of all 148 victims are now joined into this one person. Graham Yost (Justified) will write the pilot and serve as executive producer.
Paramount Network International (still named Spike in some markets), Artists Studios and Westward Studios are developing a reboot of BBC detective series Bergerac, starring John Nettles (Midsomer Murders). The original ran for nine series on BBC One between 1981 and 1991 and followed detective sergeant Jim Bergerac’s investigations on Channel Island Jersey. Initially it was a straight forward police procedural, but later on, in the series, some supernatural elements were introduced.
Trailers
FX has released a trailer for its TV remake of Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi‘s vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows. The first episode will on Wednesday, March 27. Meanwhile, back in New Zealand, home of the original movie, TV spin-off series Wellington Paranormal is getting a second season of thirteen episodes.
Freeform has released a trailer for their new Pretty Little Liars sequel/spin-off series The Perfectionists. Just like the original series, The Perfectionists is based on a novel series by Sara Shepard. Freeform probably is hoping this spin-off will be more successful than their first attempt, the short-lived supernatural themed Ravenswood. The first season of The Perfectionists will start Wednesday, March 20.
Bad Boys TV spin-off L.A.’s Finest, in which Gabrielle Union reprises her role from Bad Boys II and is joined by Jessica Alba, has released its first snippet of footage. The series premieres with three episodes, Monday, May 13, on US streaming service Spectrum On Demand.
US streaming service DC Universe is waiting until the last moment to release a new promo for Titans spin-off Doom Patrol, starting Friday, February 15.
A number of TV trailers, like for The Handmaid’s Tale and The Twilight Zone, aired during Super Bowl LIII, and you can find those in our article here.
That’s it for this week, but join us next time when we round-up the TV news of that week.
