Renewals and Castings: J.K. Rowling, 'Top Chef,' Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Damon Lindelof

By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 28, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 28, 2024 |

After whiffing a little in Wisconsin (granted, I mostly liked the season), Top Chef is moving to Canada for its forthcoming season. They didn’t say where in Canada, which is a large, diverse country with many regional cuisines, but I suspect that maple syrup and poutine will figure heavily.

The Dexter prequel casting additions only make it more intriguing, as Sarah Michelle Gellar joins a cast that already includes Christian Slater, Molly Brown, Patrick Gibson, and Patrick Dempsey. She will play Dexter’s boss in his job as an intern at the Miami police department’s forensics unit.

I’ve heard a number of good things about the French political drama series The Bureau, but I have not sought it out. Clooney is remaking the television series, however, and he’s now found his lead: Michael Fassbender. In the Showtime (on Paramount+) series called The Agency, Fassbender will play “a covert CIA agent ordered to abandon his undercover life and return to London Station. When the love he left behind reappears, romance reignites. His career, his real identity, and his mission are pitted against his heart, hurling them both into a deadly game of international intrigue and espionage.”

Moving from Showtime to HBO, Damon Lindelof and Chris Mundy (Ozark) will tackle Lanterns, a live-action Green Lantern series. The show will follow “Hal Jordan and John Stewart, two members of the Green Lantern Corps, who are also two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.” I can’t believe I’m stoked for a Green Lantern series, but here we are.

Meanwhile, unfortunately, HBO is moving ahead with its Harry Potter series, and it has found its showrunner and executive producers: Succession alums Francesca Gardiner (who will write and executive produce) and Mark Mylod (Game of Thrones), who will direct. It’s going to take a lot more than that to get a lot of people excited about anything involving J.K. Rowling these days.

More on HBO: Richard Gadd’s follow-up to Baby Reindeer will land there, as he will write and produce Lions. Here’s how it is described: “When Niall’s estranged ‘brother’ Ruben shows up at his wedding, it leads to an explosion of violence that catapults us back through their lives. Spanning almost 40 years from the 1980s to the present day, this ambitious series will cover the highs and lows of the brothers’ relationship, from them meeting as teenagers to their falling out as adults — with all the good, bad, terrible, funny, angry, and challenging moments along the way. It will capture the wild energy of a changing city — a changing world, even — and try to get to the bottom of the difficult question, What does it mean to be a man?”

Jonathan Glatzer, a writer on two of the best series of the decade, Succession and Better Call Saul (plus Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters), is writing a new series for AMC. According to Deadline, it is “set inside the bubble of Silicon Valley, amid misguided corporate cultures, moony innovation labs and cutthroat private high schools. It is centered around a rift between a self-appointed “inventor of the future” tech CEO and his self-serving “performance psychologist,” who are engulfed in a scandal sparked by the exploitation of personal data.”

Speaking of AMC, the streamer has renewed Interview with a Vampire for a third season.

Somewhat related: Star of AMC’s The Walking Dead, Andrew Lincoln, is returning to British television in an ITV thriller called Cold Water, with Ewen Bremner, Indira Varma, and Eve Myles. According to Deadline, “Lincoln will play John, a repressed man who is shocked to find himself in middle age, secretly raging at his life as a stay-at-home dad. He moves to a backwater Scottish village and strikes up a friendship with next-door neighbor Tommy (Bremner), who is despised by wife Fiona (Varma). When her husband’s relationship with their enigmatic new neighbor becomes increasingly intense, Fiona’s suspicions are aroused. She is unconvinced Tommy is not all he seems to be.” I look forward to catching that on whatever American streamer picks it up.

The D’Amelio Show has been canceled after three seasons. Maybe the cancellation suggests that it’s difficult for social-media influencers to transition to traditional (streaming) TV? Or maybe the fact that it lasted three seasons suggests the opposite?

Finally, if you didn’t see it earlier this week, MTV News is gone. The entire archives have been zapped from the Internet. Likewise, all but the last two seasons of The Daily Show have been nuked from Paramount+, much to the displeasure of The Daily Show alums like Roy Wood, Jr., who tweeted: “This shit ain’t right.”