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Doux News: March 22, 2015

This week: Sleepy Hollow gets a third season -- Sherlock gets a Christmas special -- Renewals and cancellations -- This week in our corporate overlords -- This week in casts, including X-Files news

So Sleepy Hollow is getting a third season, after all. There's a new showrunner, Clifton Campbell, whose IMdb page doesn't look greatly inspiring, but at least it appears that Fox believes in the show and wants to give it another chance. I sort of do, too, even though I had adjusted my universe to the probability that there would be no more Sleepy Hollow. Yay for Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie, though. They still have jobs!

There's going to be a Sherlock Christmas special. With period costumes. Period costumes, you say? Isn't Sherlock set in the present day? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Is it just that Stephen Moffat wants everything to have a Christmas special?


Renewals and cancellations

-- Bosch, the Amazon series based on Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch books and starring Doux Reviews fave Titus Welliver, has gotten a second season. I wish I could say I'm watching it, but I haven't tried it yet, even though I've read some of the Connelly books and, well, Titus Welliver. Is anyone here watching it? How is it?

-- The Following is apparently in ratings trouble and may get canceled.

-- Downton Abbey has been canceled. Next season will be its last. I think. All this stuff about Downton Abbey being canceled doesn't seem to be official. Is it official now? Frankly, if Maggie Smith says she's done next year, the series should end. I can't imagine them going on without her.

This week in our corporate overlords

-- Canada now has, or will have, a la carte cable. Why can't we? How come Canada gets it and we don't? (Yes, I get that it's a different country and all; it's a rhetorical question. It's an angry rhetorical question.)

-- Apple (which for some reason I keep typing as Applie) is jumping on the streaming bandwagon. The way this is going, cable will be dead really, really soon, a la carte and otherwise. That's okay with me.

-- The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in its infinite wisdom has decided that Orange is the New Black is a drama, not a comedy, and can only get Emmys for drama. I mean, how did they decide that? Did they watch every episode and divide the laughs from the not-laughs? Is it just a case of hey, they're sweeping awards, we're going to make sure they can't do that any more?

This week in casts

Honestly, I'm skipping most of the casting news these days because it's pilot season and there is just too much of it. But here are a few tantalizing tidbits:

-- Michael Biehn, a favorite of mine because of his roles in Terminator and Aliens, has confirmed that he is going to reprise the role of Hicks in the as yet untitled Blomkamp Alien movie. This makes me wildly happy in an "OMG I hope I won't be horribly disappointed" kind of way.

-- Dominic Purcell has joined his Prison Break brother Wentworth Miller in the new Arrow/Flash spinoff. This just gets better and better, doesn't it?

-- Morena Baccarin (Firefly), an actress whose presence makes everything better, will be in the cast of the movie Deadpool, which Dan describes to me as a fourth-wall-breaking, R-rated comic book movie. Huh.

-- Ruth Negga (Agents of SHIELD) has been cast as the female lead in AMC's pilot, Preacher. No, she's not the actual preacher. She's his ex-girlfriend, Tulip. Ian Colletti has also been cast as Arseface. I don't know who Arseface is, either, but I'm reporting it.

-- The X-Files revival is apparently going to actually happen, and Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny are on board. It's looking like it'll be something along the lines of 24: Live Another Day -- sort of a miniseries. It is very likely that whatever it is, we'll be reviewing it.


And that's it for this week, because I am pathetic at finding interesting cat news.
---
Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

5 comments:

  1. Yay for a third season of Sleepy Hollow with a new showrunner. Yay for more Ichabbie!
    Bosch is excellent-Titus Welliver is a great Harry Bosch and Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick from the Wie add good support-plus it's a slowbuilding tense watch. I cannot recommend it enough.

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  2. British shows don't tend to get "cancelled" in the same way as American shows do, they more sort of... stop. Most shows are only ordered one season at a time, e.g. Crime Traveller (which everyone else hated but I loved) wasn't 'cancelled', it was 'not given a second series' (because everyone else hated it). And the writers of really good shows - usually one or two people, not a team - usually call it quits a few years in, or the cast do, which sounds like where Downton is. One of the reasons British actors used to be advised not to do American shows was because of the multi-year contracts you have to sign. British shows never do that (though I sometimes wonder if shows like Doctor Who *should* tie in the leads for at least a year or two!).

    I'm still wondering/hoping if they might do a Downton: The Next Generation set in World War Two. I'd totally watch that.

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  3. I watched the series premiere of Bosch when Amazon previewed all of their pilots, because I had read the books that the show is based on, and because of Trader Joe's solidarity.

    It's good, but it didn't leave me wanting more, perhaps because it felt a bit too much like any other damaged man in a damaged world procedural.

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  4. Juliette, thanks so much for your explanation of how things are "canceled" across the pond. That makes sense.

    There was an official cancellation announcement today, though. I guess considering how many Americans are fans of the show, they had to actually announce it.

    http://deadline.com/2015/03/downton-abbey-ending-season-6-1201399099/

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  5. Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder if the differences between US and UK TV are becoming less and less over the years? I know back in the 1980s Patrick Stewart was advised against doing TNG because of the US contract, but loads of British actors do US TV now, and on the other hand, there are a lot more US series of 12-13 episodes rather than 20-odd, oe it seems so to me. (I was amused how long it took the AV Club's reviewer to work out that Downton only had one writer though!)

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