You might not know the name H. Jon Benjamin, though you should, but you have probably heard his voice. The star of the FX animated series Archer has been a staple of primetime and late night animation for years. From Adult Swim to FX and even Fox, Benjamin has been almost anywhere animation is aimed at teens and adults.

TheFlickcast recently had the opportunity to hear insights on all things H. Jon Benjamin from the man himself. He discusses the process of Archer as well as the new season, how he is just like Sterling Archer and even the fate of his Comedy Central show.

On ad-libbing in the Archer recording booth 

Very little.  There is not a lot of room.  The scripts are tightly written and he encourages sometimes on occasion, he’ll be like do you want to add anything, and I’ll say no.  So it’s not the same kind of production as Bob’s Burgers, which is a lot improvising all the time, but the scripts don’t really require it.

On Archer‘s popularity with the masses

Well, the masses are idiots, so they don’t know any better.  They’re too busy just staring at the light and cartoons are colorful.  So don’t get me started about the masses.  I’m really not a fan.

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With NBC leaving us in shock after their midseason schedule change up, TV fans are a bit weary to hear about news of their favorite shows. Good news comes to those with cable, however, as FX announces their plans for Archer and Justified.

Not only will both shows be returning to prominent spots in the primetime lineup, Archer on Thursday, January 19th at 10pm and Justified on Tuesday, January 17th at 10pm, but they’ve got a brand new show to add to their ever-rising chunk of original content with the animated series Unsupervised.

“Unsupervised” is a comedy about optimistic best friends Gary and Joel, who navigate the harsh landscape of teenage life and trying to do what’s right without any parental guidance.

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When AMC’s The Walking Dead hit it big last year, we knew that TV studios and management companies would be capitalizing on the trend and pushing as many of their horror TV projects they have to the top of the greenlight list. The true test, however, is whether any of those shows would turn out to be decent.

Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story has proven that fact with only a handful of episodes, and FX has taken notice as well. The cable network has just announced a second season for the show. THR has the official word from the network.

“It’s one thing to have the ambition and guts to reinvent a genre in a way that makes it captivatingly fresh for a broad audience — it’s something else entirely to have the craft to back that ambition up,” said FX president and GM Jon Landgraf. “Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk have hit the trifecta withNip/Tuck, Glee and now American Horror Story, which will be scaring FX’s viewers to death for many years to come.”

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Now that FX has made a name for itself in the world of dramatic TV with Justified, The Shield, and Rescue Me, as well as comedic TV with Louie, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Archer, it’s time to take on horror with American Horror Story.

Network veteran Ryan Murphy (creator of Nip/Tuck and Glee) is taking to the raunchy cable channel for a bit of the old fashioned bump in the night. Here’s a synopsis for those still in the dark.

American Horror Story revolves around The Harmons, a family of three who move from Boston to Los Angeles as a means to reconcile past anguish. The All Star cast features Dylan McDermott (The Practice) as “Ben Harmon,” a psychiatrist; Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) as “Vivien Harmon,” Ben’s wife; Taissa Farmiga as “Violet,” the Harmon’s teenage daughter; Jessica Lange (Tootsie, Blue Sky, Grey Gardens) in her first-ever regular series TV role as “Constance,” the Harmon’s neighbor; Evan Peters (One Tree Hill) as “Tate Langdon,” one of Ben’s patients; and Denis O’Hare (The Good Wife) as “Larry Harvey.”

We’ve got a brand new sneak peek of the show, titled “Belly” in which we get a pretty intense cover of “Tainted Love”. Check it out after the jump, like the show on Facebook, and catch it on FX on October 5th.

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Just when you thought FX’s hit comedy about a group of guys and their fantasy football league couldn’t get any more uproarious and funny, they’re adding one of the bigger names in comedy today to the mix for the season 3 premiere, as Seth Rogen gets cast as the infamous Dirty Randy.

The character is pretty famous to those who watch the show, and we’re finally getting a face to the name this season. TV Guide has the full scoop.

Creators and executive producers Jackie and Jeff Schaffer promised fans last year that they would reveal the oft-mentioned, but never-seen friend of Rafic(Jason Mantzoukas)if the comedy was picked up for a third season.

“As the legend of Dirty Randy grew among our fans — is that Dirty Randy? Is that a shot of Dirty Randy? — we realized we really have to step up here,” Jeff Schaffer told TVGuide.com Saturday. “We started talking about who the funniest people we know who aren’t on the show already, and [Rogen] was at the top of the list.”

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While he’s obviously more of a household name for creating and running 3 years of Fox’s hit high school musical series Glee, before that Ryan Murphy was known as the man who created Nip/Tuck. That series, obviously very different than Glee, was his real masterpiece, bringing 100 episodes of drama, horror, and intrigue.

Now that things look to be settling down for his series on Fox, their raunchier network sister station, FX, has picked up 13 episodes of Murphy and his co-creator Brad Falchuk’s American Horror Story. THR has the scoop on the premise and who we can expect to see on the show:

From 20th Television, the mysterious drama revolves around Ben and Vivien Harmon (The Practice’s Dylan McDermott, Friday Night Lights’ Connie Britton) who move their family from Boston to a haunted San Francisco home in an attempt to rebuild their family after a miscarriage and affair.

Murphy is said to be revising the initial script to increase the role of the nosy neighbor once Jessica Lange (Grey Gardens) signed on to the project in April. Denis O’Hare (True Blood) co-stars as Larry the Burn Guy, a former resident of the haunted estate; with Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) and Alexandra Breckenridge (Life Unexpected) both playing Moira O’Hara, a housekeeper who has worked at the home for years and appears as a young woman to Ben and an older woman to Vivien.

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Okay, here’s the deal. If you’re not watching Sons of Anarchy on FX you are missing out on one of the best shows on TV. It’s really just that simple.

The show has everything you could want: action, drama, great acting, compelling stories, sex, drugs, bikers, biker chicks and all the other essential elements that go into an entertaining and eminently watchable TV program.

The show is about to begin its fourth season and to get things started off right, we’ve got a promo for that season for you right here. In it you can get a sense of what I’m taling about. However, as cool as the promo is, it doesn’t nearly do the show justice. You’ll just have to watch it.

Check out the promo after the jump. Sons of Anarchy, which features Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Maggie Siff and Ron Perlman, returns to FX with an all-new season in September.

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For what feels like years (and probably is), the idea of a TV series based on the popular dark comic Powers was that of a myth. In the last few months, that idea has become more concrete, as Brian Michal Bendis has pushed to get his famed crime fiction adapted into an ongoing series on the FX network.

Now, things are getting more real as British comedian Lucy Punch (Dinner for Schmucks) has been cast as the lead in the upcoming series. From Deadline.

Lucy Punch has been tapped as the female lead in the FX drama pilot Powers. Based on the graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming, the project, written by Charles H. Eglee and to be directed by Michael Dinner, is a police procedural set in a world where superpowers are relatively common. It centers on two detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim (Punch), in a Homicide department that deals with cases involving “powers” (people with superpowers).

Super 8 star Kyle Chandler is currently being pursued to play opposite Punch as Christian Walker, a detective who is put on “powers” cases because he himself was once a superhero.

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It’s nice when good, quality shows get the treatment they deserve. In this case the show in question is Justified, which airs on FX.

Today, the network announced it is renewing the series, which features Timothy Olyphant as a crusading yet morally ambiguous U.S. Marshall, and giving it a third season on the network. According to the report, FX bosses were pleased with the show’s performance overall, even though its taken a little ratings dip this season.

In spite of the dip, the series is still ahead of Season 1 and has emerged as a DVR winner, getting a 55%-60% ratings bump from time-shifted viewing. Season-to-date, the drama has averaged 4 million viewers for its original Wednesday 10 PM telecasts.

Great news for a great show. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, you should.

In related news, FX is also reportedly close to a renewal for another cool show you should be watching: the animated spy comedy Archer. More on that as it comes to us. In the meantime, kudos to FX for recognizing quality and for sticking with it.

We may have football just out of our systems after Super Bowl Sunday, but that doesn’t mean FX isn’t going ahead with their hit fantasy football comedy, The League. After a successful first and second season, it looks like we can sit back with a beer and bowl of chips for a whole new third season. From THR:

The network has ordered 13 episodes of the show, which is set against the backdrop of a fantasy football league. Production will get under way in the summer for a fall premiere.

“We love the show, and the reaction the cast received across the country during their recent comedy tour is a sign the show is really building momentum,” FX executive vp original programming Nick Grad said.

Aside from being a relatively cheap show to make for the network, the season averaged roughly 1.4 million viewers in the 18-49 demo, which is the exact age range that FX reaches for with their original and syndicated programming.

No word on what we can expect to see in the upcoming season, but you can expect to see Nick Kroll, Jeremy Cowart, Katie Aselton, Jon Lajoie, Stephen Rannazzisi, Mark Duplass, and Paul Scheer to all return this Fall on FX.

It’s a new year, and a new month, which means that Cortney’s TV Digest is here to tell you everything you need to watch. And since it’s a new year, I figured we’d try something a little different, and talk about some shows I’ve never discussed here until now! January’s a big month for tv, with some new shows bursting on the scene, but also some old favorites of mine returning for a new season.

V

With shows like Caprica getting the axe, it’s great to still have some decent sci-fi on television these days. Which is why I’m super psyched that V has returned for its second season.

V is a re imagining of the 1983 mini-series of the same name, in which an alien race arrives on Earth, claiming they come in peace and bringing with them both technology and medical knowledge, as well as some ulterior motives.

V premiered on Tuesday, but that’s plenty of time to catch up on the series in time for the next episode, which airs January 11th on ABC.

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A staple of the classic sitcom is that, by the end of the episode, everything has to return to normal. Within the 20-or-so minutes of each week’s installment, the characters are free to travel to Beijing, adopt a koala, or make a big sandwich so long as that somewhere around the 18-minute mark, the status quo is maintained. From the ‘50s and on up to the ‘80s there wasn’t anything wrong with having normal, decent people thrown into far-fetched situations and coming out relatively unaffected—or, if they did learn some life-altering lesson, they’d forget it by next week.

Then, along came Seinfeld in the ‘90s, which broke ground by calling BS on the idea that any normal person would function like that—that’s the behavior of a sociopath, and hence Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer, and Larry David’s “no learning, no hugging” rule. More than any other contemporary sitcom, Sunny lives by Seinfeld’s example.

It even goes a step further with its characters’ depravity (cheerfully paraded in ‘Dee Gives Birth’s opening when Dennis and Mac learn of Frank and Charlie’s naked, sewer-scouring hi-jinx), which is why this season’s running joke of everyone’s lack of concern regarding Dee’s pregnancy has worked so well—it threatens The Gang’s self-centered complacency. So, instead of facing the fact that Dee’s baby will force them to take responsibility for someone other than themselves, they chose to ignore it…maybe then it’d go away.

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