Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for today, few though they may be:

TELEVISION

A&E has renewed Bates Motel for a third season. (Twitter)

HBO has ordered a 5th and 6th season of Game of Thrones. (Whitney Friedlander at Variety)

The CW has ordered 10 half-hour episodes of their digital studio’s comedic web series Backpackers for this summer. Backpackers follows a pair of twentysomething friends (one of whom is actor Dillon Casey of Nikita fame) on their misadventures traveling the world. The web series will be “reconstituted” into the first four episodes with six more episodes that were shot but not seen online making up the episode order. (Andrew Wallenstein at Variety)

Actors Tom Riley (Da Vinci’s Demons) and Ben Miller (Primeval) will guest star in upcoming episodes of Doctor Who. Details on who the actors will play have been clouded in mystery for now. (Doctor Who TV)

Actor Enver Gjokaj (Dollhouse and Witches of East End) will guest star in an upcoming episode of Rizzoli & Isles, playing Jack Keystone, a charming Boston University professor who enters the lives of Jane (series lead Angie Harmon) and Maura (series lead Sasha Alexander). Rizzoli & Isles will be back for a new season on TNT starting on June 17. (Vlada Gelman at TV Line)

ONLINE SERIES NEWS

The folks at Geek & Sundry (run by fan favorite Felicia Day, among others) has lined up their next new web series: Morganville: The Series. The web series is based on the Morganville Vampires novels by author Rachel Caine that follows college student Claire Danvers who discovers that her rural college town is home to the last remaining vampires. Back in July of 2013, Caine raised $82,000 on Kickstarter to adapt the novels into a web series and now they will have a home at Geek & Sundry. The cast of Morganville: The Series will include among its cast Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Robert Picardo (China Beach and Star Trek: Voyager) as well as newcomers Lindsay Seidel, Ben Easter, Haileigh Todd and Jordan Tanner Farris. The web series will premiere this summer. (Natalie Jarvey at The Hollywood Reporter)

That’s it. Enjoy!