Loving the amnesia, ghost dad, and were-panther rape storylines happening in this season of True Blood? HBO thinks so, as they have officially OK’d a fifth season of the vampire-loving series based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris.

This season we have seen some pretty impressive story devices, from villification of our favorite characters to new love triangles to a few dead characters, the hits keep coming in the fourth season of this popular HBO series. Here’s what HBO has to say about bringing it back for another 12 episodes.

“I am thrilled that True Blood continues to enjoy a phenomenal reception from both subscribers and critics,” says HBO Programming President Michael Lombardo. “Alan Ball and his gifted team have devised the greatest thrill ride on TV.”

Ball adds, “I remain amazed and delighted by the enthusiasm of our viewers. I can’t imagine having more fun than this.”

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Apparently, the Christian Slater TV curse is starting to affect shows he’s not even on. Although, I guess we can’t really blame him for these latest Fox cancellations.

After all, the writing was pretty much on the wall for Human Target already, what with the eleventh-hour renewal last year. That’s right folks, late yesterday Fox announced the cancellation of Human Target, Breaking In and The Chicago Code.

Even though Human Target had been given a second season, the show had continually struggled in the ratings and I was actually surprised it came back for season two at all. It’s sad, though, as the show was really finding just the right blend of action, drama and humor with a cast that was clicking very well.

Same with Chicago Code. It was an interesting show that really seemed to be finding its way.

Oh well. I though the same thing about Firefly, Dollhouse and a lot of other shows and look where that got me.

As for Slater’s show, even though it started strong with a good lead in from American Idol, it was just a matter of time. Apparently, audiences don’t want to see Slater on TV. Perhaps he should go back to making movies?

With Human Target gone, Smallville ending this week and Chuck currently on the bubble for next year, there’s only a few genre shows left on network TV. What to watch?

At least we still have Fringe — for now.

It must be nice not to have to worry so much about ratings and instead focus primarily on quality. Oh, to have those kinds of problems like premiere cable netwrok HBO. What have they done this time?

Much like they did previously with shows such as Boardwalk Empire and Treme, HBO has given the greenlight for another season to its new drama Game of Thrones after only airing the premiere episode — even though its rating didin’t set any records. The ratings were solid, coming in between other premieres such as True Blood and Boardwalk Empire, but it’s the show itself that earned another season.

“We are delighted by the way David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have brought George R.R. Martin’s amazing book series to the screen, and thrilled by the support of the media and our viewers,” HBO’s head of programming Michael Lombardo said.

For its debut at 9 PM on Sunday, the show drew 2.2 million viewers, down 54% from the September premiere of Boardwalk Empire but up 57% from the 1.4 million who tuned in for the debut of True Blood 3 years ago. Overall, the premiere of Game of Thrones averaged 4.2 million viewers on Sunday for its 3 airings vs. 7.1 million for Boardwalk Empire in September.

So far HBO seems to be doing very well with most of its original programming, especially lately. With True Blood and Treme returning soon and the solid performance of Game of Thrones it looks like DVRs across the country are going to remain full of HBO programming for the foreseeable future. As fans of the new Game of Thrones as well as Treme, Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, Bored to Death and most of the other current HBO series, we’re going to be there too.

Game of Thrones stars Mark Addy, Sean Bean, Emilia Clarke, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey. It airs Sundays at 9/8C on HBO.

Who says good news doesn’t come at the end of the week? On the heels of their Q&A at PaleyFest this week, NBC’s newest hit show, Community, has been given more life as the network has renewed the show for another season. Also to get another season are Parks and Recreation and the new Steve Carell-less Office.

It seems that though the shows weren’t performing up to expectations, they managed to get a stay of execution. THR spells it out with math. We hate math.

Veteran comedy The Office is delivering a 4.0 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic and averaging 7.7 million viewers for its current seventh season. Steve Carell‘s farewell episode is scheduled to air at the end of April, with Will Ferrell coming on for a multi-episode guest arc.

In the ratings, Amy Poehler‘s Parks and Rec, currently in its third season, is averaging a 2.8 in the key demo and 5.5 million viewers. With its move to the 9:30 p.m. time slot, the series is up 17 percent in the 18-49 demo (2.8 vs. 2.4) and up 9 percent in total viewers (5.5 million vs. 5.1 million).

Critical favorite Community, which has anchored the competitive 8 p.m. time slot on Thursdays for NBC and is led by The Soup host Joel McHale, has averaged a 2.1 in the 18-49 demo and 4.7 million viewers so far in its sophomore season.

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If you needed a more clear example of TV-based original superhero shows, there is none more showing than this. NBC has decided to pull their two-part Cape finale from TV and only air the episodes online.

The series was on a steep decline in ratings since it’s start back in January, and NBC had even cut it’s original order of 13 episodes for the season down to 10. Now they have pulled this past week’s episode and have decided to air both parts of the finale online only. From TV Line:

The disappointing performance of both The Cape (which early last month saw its 13-episode order cut to 10) and The Event has caused much shuffling of NBC’s midseason schedule. At first, The Event‘s return from a winter hiatus was pushed back a week so that The Cape could wrap its run on February 28 with a pair of episodes. Instead, NBC made way for Chuck (no argument there!), leaving The Cape‘s finale unaired.

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There you have it. Sunday night’s finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead may have had us in a tight little ball of tension for an hour, but it was one of the highest rated cable programs in history. This can only mean great things for Frank Darabont, Robert Kirkman, and the whole team at AMC. Here’s the breakdown:

Six million viewers tuned in for the show’s sixth episode, including four million adults 18-49. That’s up 9% from last week — which was also a series high.

If you include the show’s 11 p.m. encore, the finale delivered a whopping 8.1 million viewers.

All told, Walking Dead has become, according to AMC, the most-watched basic cable series of all time in the young adult demo.

Who would’ve thought that zombies in Atlanta would be the one uniting factor for people across the country? Apparently AMC did, as they’re already excited for a new 14-episode season to pick back up in October of next year.

The Blu-Ray and DVD release is currently set to hit shelves on March 8th of next year, so be prepared.

In what could be definitely be considered a bad news/good news situation there’s been some developments among shows that we like here at The Flickcast. First off, FX has decided not to give freshmen series Terriers a second season due to, it would seem, the show’s continued mediocre ratings.

But with every cloud often comes a silver lining. This time that lining comes in the form of Showtime’s announcement that it will be renewing Dexter for a sixth season given that the show remains very popular and series star Michael C. Hall continues to be healthy.

While I’m happy about Dexter, I’m pretty disappointed in FX and their decision about Terriers. The show as very well done and told an interesting story with compelling characters you actually cared about. Obviously, that’s not something FX was interested in. Of course, the low ratings didn’t help either.

When considering the show I have to wonder why it never found and audience. Was the story too much of a downer? Were people not interested in a flawed protagonist who worked at the fringes of the law? Was the name confusing or off-putting in some way? Or do people just not like Donal Logue?

If you watched the show and are disappointed at its cancellation what do you think was the reason? Sound off in the comments.

This undead body still has life! For those who caught the amazing premiere of AMC’s newest show, The Walking Dead, we salute you. The show broke records for the network, bringing in the highest ratings ever for a premiere, surpassing the ratings of some of the network’s most popular shows.

The Walking Dead premiered Sunday night (Halloween) at the tail-end of a zombie and horror movie marathon hosted by director Frank Darabont. Not only did the 90-minute episode break network records, but cable-wide networks as well. From THR:

AMC’s The Walking Dead premiere ratings are enormous: The 90-minute Halloween night debut delivered 5.3 million viewers and a 3.3 adults 18-49 rating. That’s the largest demo audience for any series premiere on any cable network this year.

It’s also the highest numbers for any series in AMC’s history, and beat most non-sports programs on broadcast Sunday night.

At this rate, you had better believe the network is planning a second-and maybe even third season. With a story as rich as the one laid out in Robert Kirkman’s comic series, there’s no ceiling on what Darabont, producer Gale Anne Hurd, and the rest of the crew can do with this live action series.

Be sure to keep the momentum going and watch episode 2 of The Walking Dead next Sunday night at 10/9C.

While shows like My Generation and Lone Star may be suffering on the bigger networks, cable network FX seems to be doing just fine with their  lineup. As an example, they have just ordered a whole new season of Sons of Anarchy, rounding it up to a total of four years. An FX press release gives us the full details.

FX has renewed its critically acclaimed hit drama Sons of Anarchy for a fourth season, placing a 13-episode order from Fox 21 and FX Productions, announced John Landgraf, President and General Manager, FX Networks.

Eight all-new episodes remain in SOA’s current third season airing Tuesdays at 10pm et/pt, and beginning in two weeks the encore runs will air Tuesdays at 11pm and 1am, Fridays at 10pm and Sundays at 10pm. The third season finale will air on Tuesday, November 30.

In 2010, Sons of Anarchy ranks as basic cable’s number one scripted series in delivery of Adults 18-49. On a weekly, multi-telecast basis, Sons of Anarchy delivers 8.6 million Total Viewers and 5.9 million Adults 18-49. On a first-run, primary telecast basis, Sons averages 4.9 million Total Viewers and 3.4 million Adults 18-49. It is the highest rated series ever for FX.

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After airing only two episodes the extremely low rated Fox series Lone Star has met its demise and been canceled by the network. Starting next Monday, Lone Star will be replaced by the surprise (at least to me) hit Lie to Me, which is having its premiere moved up to fill the gap left by Lone Star.

This shouldn’t come as any surprise given the ratings disaster that was Lone Star. Even with strong critical praise, It opened with a 1.3 rating. Not great for a show with as much press around it. Fox gave it one more chance but in its second airing the show actually slipped further in the ratings delivering a dismal 1.0 for the second outing. That pretty much closed the door on the show for good.

In the fallout of the Lone Star cancellation, Fox will move Human Target from Fridays to Wednesdays, taking over the slot originally given to Lie To Me which will now be on Monday. Lie to Me was to premiere on November 10 and run on Wednesday at 8 PM, leading into an one-hour Hell’s Kitchen.

Human Target will now premiere on November 17. A two-hour Hell’s Kitchen will air on November 10. Do you follow all that? We hope so. Are you sad to see Lone Star go? What do you think will be the next casualty of the Fall season?

It feels like only yesterday when we were cursing the names of Jay Leno and NBC for what happened to Conan O’Brien and the entire Tonight Show fiasco. Here we are, 8 months later and Conan is already getting prepped for his new home on TBS.

The late night comedian signed a deal back in April to be the host of his very own show over on the cable network. The show pushes George Lopez’s show to midnight every night, but Lopez was more than happy with the deal as long as it meant O’Brien got to be his lead-in.

While the show is set to start as early as November, TBS has already started prepping their audience with a new 10 second spot. It may only be 10 seconds, but it manages to promote Conan in a bizarre Monty Python-esque way, which seems to be right down our alley.

O’Brien has already stated that he’s bringing his sidekick Andy Richter along for the show, as well as many of his writers that came with him from Late Night and even The Tonight Show. You can expect to see an official premiere date to draw closer, but as for now, we’ll just have to take our Conan dose in the form of a 10 second ad.

Check it out after the jump.

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ABC may have given the axe to a few big shows this past season, and lost (no pun intended) one of their biggest draws, but it seems that a sparkle can still be seen on the network, in the form of the police cadet drama Rookie Blue. ABC recently renewed the series for a second season, after it scored the network’s highest-scripted debut ratings in six years only three episodes in.

From Variety:

It now ranks second in its Thursday timeslot behind “So You Think You Can Dance,” among adults 18-49 and 18-34.”We’re very pleased that the show has connected with viewers, especially considering the challenge of finding an audience in the summer,” said Quinn Taylor, ABC Entertainment Group’s senior VP of movies, minis and acquisitions.

While the premise is the same, the show is somewhat different than the first of the Police Academy films, sans Guttenberg. Peregrym leads the charge alongside Gregory Smith, Charlotte Sullivan, Enuka Okuma and Travis Milne as rookie cops who work through their freshman year as cops. One could consider this show to be the police version of the networks already-popular Grey’s Anatomy.

The show also marks the star Missy Peregrym’s first show since Reaper to get a second season, but we all know how that ended before. Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself.

The fourth episode in the season, entitled “Signals Crossed”, involves Andy (Peregrym) going undercover as a prostitute to impress the Sergeant and airs tomorrow night at 9/8C on ABC.