Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

RENEWALS/CANCELLATIONS/PICK UP NEWS

Nashville is being cancelled, again. The show aired for four season on ABC before being cancelled. But it was saved by CMT; except the cable network has announced that the musical drama will come to an end after its upcoming sixth season. (TV Line)

CBS has given a full season order to freshman drama S.W.A.T. (Variety)

The new Stana Katic (Castle) series Absentia has found its U.S. home: Amazon. The series is slated to debut in 2018. The show centers on FBI agent Emily Byrne (Katic), who – while hunting one of Boston’s most notorious serial killers – disappears without a trace and is declared dead. Six years later, Emily is found in a cabin in the woods, barely alive, and with no memory of the years she was missing. Returning home to learn her husband has remarried and her son is being raised by another woman, she soon finds herself implicated in a new series of murders. (Deadline)

Amazon is also moving forward with a Lord of the Rings TV series, which will explore new storylines preceding “The Fellowship of the Ring.” (Variety)

CASTING NEWS

Actress Skyler Samuels (Scream Queens and The Nine Lives of Chloe King) has landed a recurring role in The Gifted. She will play a refugee mutant with telepathic abilities and a mysterious past. (Deadline)

Actress Carmen Ejogo (The Girlfriend Experience) will star opposite actor Mahershala Ali (Luke Cage and The 4400) in the new installment of the HBO anthology drama True Detective. She will play Amelia Reardon, an Arkansas schoolteacher with a connection to two missing children in 1980. Ali will play Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas. The new season tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks, and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. (Variety)

Actor Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge (Leverage and Underground) will star in the Showtime pilot City on a Hill, a fictional account of a real time in Boston history that came to be called the “Boston Miracle.” District Attorney Decourcy Ward (Hodge) comes from Brooklyn and forms an unlikely alliance with a corrupt yet venerated FBI veteran Jackie Rhodes (Bacon), who is deeply invested in maintaining the status quo. Together they take on a family of armored car robbers from Charlestown in a case that grows to encompass and eventually upend Boston’s city-wide criminal justice system. (Variety)

Actresses Marlee Matlin (Switched at Birth) and Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and actors Zach Gilford (Kingdom and Friday Night Lights) and Colt Prattes (the Dirty Dancing small-screen remake) will star in the Sundance Now upcoming series This Close, which is based on a series of shorts featured at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival’s Short Form Episodic Showcase, created, written and starring actress Shoshannah Stern (Jericho and Supernatural) and Josh Feldman, both of whom are deaf. The show will explore the relationship between best friends Kate (Stern), who is newly engaged, and Michael (Feldman), who is attempting to move on from his ex-fiancé. Gilford will play Danny, Kate’s fiancé; Hines will play Stella, a PR maven and Kate’s boss; Prattes will play Ryan, Michael’s (Feldman) ex and Matlin will play Michael’s mother, Annie, a recovering alcoholic trying to reconnect with her son. (The Futon Critic)

Actor Nathan Lane will appear in the 100th episode of The Blacklist, playing criminal Abraham Stern, who manipulates the desperate into committing illegal and immoral acts so that he can claim his birthright fortune. (TV Line)

Actor Garret Dillahunt (Raising Hope and currently recurring on The Gifted) and actress Jenna Elfman (Dharma & Greg) have both landed series regular roles in the fourth season of Fear the Walking Dead. Details on the roles they will play are being kept under wraps though. (The Hollywood Reporter)

That’s it. Enjoy!