By now you’ve heard the great news: Arrested Development is coming back. We have Netflix to thank for the returin of one of the funniest shows to grace our TV screens in a long time and that day of return is fast approaching.

To get things started off on the right foot, there’s a brand new teaser for the new, 15-episode, season of the show. In it you’ll see the entire Bluth family is back (as well as a host of other famous faces) and still, thank goodness, just as quirky and funny as ever.

As with House of Cards, Netflix will release all of the new episodes simultaneously on May 26. In the meantime, check out the teaser after the break.

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Well, well, how things are changing. Not to be left behind as the paradigm shifts from traditional cable and satellite networks towards what paid subscription services like Apple, Hulu and Netflix are doing, YouTube today announced the first channels that it will offer via monthly subscriptions.

Following a 14-day free trial period, channels such as Sesame Street, Baby First Plus, Cars.tv, HD Net, Coreman’s Drive-In and UFC Select will be available for monthly fees raging from $2.99/Month to as little as $.99/Month. Payment will be accepted via credit card or Google Wallet.

According to the announcement, some of the programs will feature ads, but a majority won’t, with most of the content being available as on-demand. Google will reportedly collect about 45% of the subscription ad revenue.

While this list of channels and programming is not that extensive yet, Google expects other channels and networks to launch subscription services on YouTube soon and will roll them out over the coming months. For the full list of content available now, go here.

With the current amount and diversity of content, it will be very interesting to see if people actually decide to subscribe to some of these channels or wait until there’s more to choose from. Will this development end up being the digital straw that breaks the virtual camels back and starts the mass exodus from more traditional cable and satellite providers? It just might be.

We’re just so happy to see Gillian Anderson coming back to TV. No, she’s not returning to her iconic role of Agent Dana Scully of X-Files fame. At least not yet.

What she is doing is playing another investigator, this time in a BBC series called The Fall. The psychological thriller debuts on BBC Two on May 13 and all five episodes will be available in the U.S. and Latin America exclusively on Netflix starting May 28.

The series follows the lives of Anderson’s highly driven detective Stella Gibson and the sexually motivated serial killer she’s tracking in Belfast. Once Upon A Time‘s Jamie Dornan also stars along with The Good Wife‘s Archie Panjabi.

Looks pretty interesting. Judge for yourself by watching the new promo for The Fall after the break. Guess the truth is in Belfast.

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Many TV series deserve to be canceled. Some don’t resonate with audiences or have unappealing characters or a ridiculous premise. Or, they just plain suck. Arrested Development is not one of those series.

Fortunately, even though it was initially canceled by Fox, the series has found a new lease on life at Netflix. And now, that lease is about to pay off for fans as Netflix has official announced the premiere date of Sunday, May 26th for all-new episodes of the show.

But wait, there’s more. Not only has the official premiere date been announced, Netflix has also decided to increase the number of episodes (which had started at 10 and was raised to 14 in January) to a new number: 15. All episodes of the new season will be available simultaneously on launch day, which is the same thing Netflix did with House of Cards.

“Arrested Development is now widely viewed as one of the top TV comedies of all time and Mitch Hurwitz is bringing it to Netflix in a brand new way, crafted for the on-demand generation that has come to discover the show in the years since it last appeared on TV,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix. “The highly anticipated return of this show is sure to make history all over again.”

Said Hurwitz, “Ted said that? Wow. Well don’t print this obviously, but he’s going to be immensely disappointed”. He then added that “in truth we are doing something very ambitious that can only be done with Netflix as partners and on their platform. Finally my simple wish for the show is coming true: that it be broadcast every second around the clock to every television, computer or mobile device in existence.”

I sense an Arrested Development binge session coming soon. Can’t Wait.

There is new Arrested Development coming, it is safe to say the world has moved past jubilant bewilderment and now are fully engaged in eager anticipation. With the new season debuting on Netflix in the spring we are starting to enter the advanced promotion corridor that gives us gems like this.

Entertainment Weekly has a couple of cast photos to promote the upcoming season and they are at least two-thirds as funny as the show itself, which is a complement if you know the hilarity the show reaches. The publicity pics are of the family Bluth decked out in some very dapper duds. With the popularity of shows like The Tudors and The Borgias, maybe they producers are hedging their bets and leaving open the possibility of resurrecting the show back in time should the next season under perform*.

The cast looks great, and it is great to see them all together again in a context that is not lamenting its premature cancellation. You can take a look at the full images after the jump.

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Netflix has had a rather rough year, and today’s news only adds a bit more salt into some open wounds. Just days after their exclusivity deal with up and coming premium movie channel Epix expires, one of their biggest competitors has signed on, greatly enhancing their instant library.

Deadline reports that Epix has just reached a deal with Amazon to provide their content through their Prime Instant Video service:

The arrangement more than doubles Amazon Prime Instant Video’s offerings, and knocks some of the wind out of its chief competitor: Netflix. The streaming video company’s shares were down about 10% shortly after the market opened this morning… “We think customers will really enjoy watching new titles like The Avengers, Iron Man 2 and The Hunger Games on their Kindle Fire, PlayStation 3, Xbox, iPad or any of the other of the Amazon Instant Video compatible devices,” says Amazon VP Bill Carr.

While it doesn’t appear that Netflix will be losing any of this content, it is certainly a blow to see Amazon now offer more and more first run, popular content on their streaming service. It is also said that now that Epix is free from the exclusivity contracts it had with Netflix it is looking at other services to partner with as well. A move that is a boon to the public, but just another body blow to the company that changed how we digest film.

Until today, if you used Apple’s Apple TV device, you were pretty much limited to programming via iTunes or Netflix. One other service that was conspicuously absent was Hulu Plus.

No longer. AS of today, according to a mention over at Hulu’s blog, the Hulu Plus service is now available to users using the new Apple TV. It also features detailed instructions on how to enable the service on the device including a way to set up the charge for the service using your iTunes account.

Hulu Plus streams a variety of TV shows including current and old series from ABC, NBC, FOX, The CW and Univision. It’s not as great for movies but the selection has been improving over the last few months. Perhaps it’s time to give it a try again?

If you’re a fan of Fox’s Terra Nova, were disappointed the show has been cancelled but were holding out hope it would find a new lease on life at Netflix, get ready to be disappointed again. Sadly, a deal could not be reached between Netflix and 20th Century Fox TV and, to put it directly, Terra Nova is now extinct.

Well, almost. In one bit of interesting news, Fox has not yet released the show’s cast so that could mean they are still looking for a way to bring the show back. Or, they’re going to shop it to others.

Although, some of the show’s cast, including star Jason O’Mara, have already booked new gigs, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Even if O’Mara does get on another show, he could still be required to come back to Terra Nova if it ends up going somewhere else. He would have to honor his contract with Fox for the show.

Still, with Terra Nova costing a lot per episode and it not doing very well in the ratings, it’s very unlikely we will ever see the show again. . . except in reruns. It’s too bad, the show was actually starting to get interesting.

Netflix has its eye on ABC’s freshman drama The River, which is facing cancellation. Netflix is already in talks with 20th Century Fox TV about possibly picking up Terra Nova, which was recently cancelled by Fox, for a second season.

It’s being reported that the push for original content by the streaming giant is making them more willing to take risks on what they see as quality programming.  Netflix is currently negotiating with The River producer ABC Studios about the possibility of continuing the thriller/horror series.

It is being stressed that the talks are merely exploratory at this point and that the show has not officially been cancelled by ABC. Even though The River has not been officially canceled by ABC, it is widly considered a foregone conclusion.The talks are also part of a larger conversation between ABC Studios and Netflix for other undisclosed properties.

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Netflix has secured another original series with Hemlock Grove, a thrilling tale of murder and mystery adapted by Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever), is set to star Famke Janssen (X-Men, Nip/Tuck) and Bill Skarsgard (Anna Karenina, Simon and the Oaks). The series is set to be available for Netflix members to watch instantly, beginning early in 2013.

Set in a ravaged Pennsylvania steel town, Hemlock Grove starts with the body of a young girl, mangled and murdered in the shadow of the former Godfrey steel mill. There are a multitude of suspects from an escapee from the White Tower, a biotech facility owned by the former steel magnates, to a 17-year-old Gypsy kid named Peter from the wrong side of the tracks, who tells his classmates he’s a werewolf. 

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Starting today, Netflix members can check out Lilyhammer, which is the first original series available only on Netflix Instant. Lilyhammer features former Sopranos star and E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt in this fish-out-of-water dramedy. Van Zant is also a writer and producer for the show.

The show centers on a New York mobster, who after testifying against a mob boss, who enters witness protection and chooses Lillehammer, Norway. He chooses Lillehammer as his hiding place due to his love of the 1994 Lillehammer winter olympics. As one might expect, hijinks do ensue.

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Even though they seem to, at times, be mostly in the business of making their customers angry, Netflix is still one of the best places to get your movie and TV content from. In fact, their streaming service is one of the most popular available.

One of the ways Netflix is going to keep that service popular, and growing, is with updates to it and the applications that make it possible. That’s just what they’ve done this week with the user interface for their Android application.

The company explained that the revamped UI now displays twice as many movie and TV titles, with larger cover art, and that users can easily swipe through titles to find additional content.

“In the last 12 months we have seen a threefold increase in how long Netflix members are watching on their tablets,” Netflix chief product officer Neil Hunt said. The company also said they wanted to introduce the redesigned UI in time for the release of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet.

Netflix said the update will be available for iPad users “in a few weeks.” The update is free and is available now in the Android Market.

Click through for the full press release from Netflix.

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The internet business is a pretty tricky thing to keep one’s thumb on. Especially when you are in charge of hundreds of thousands consumers ready for their on-demand entertainment. That’s why it was especially puzzling when Netflix CEO Reed Hastings decided to belly up to the DVD/VOD war and claim Qwikster would be his champion.

That’s when things got tricky, as Netflix subscribers were fleeing the scene, hoping this meant they wouldn’t have to spend double the amount they were spending to get the same DVD and streaming service. Now that Qwikster is dead and gone, it seems that the original company is still suffering from its mistake. From Variety:

While investors were disappointed with the reported decline of 810,000 streaming subscribers in the second quarter, some equally depressing projections for the final months of 2011 also contributed to a 27% drop in after-hours trading, sending the stock to $85. It had opened the day at $119.37.

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Arrested Development is one of those series not really appreciated in its time. When it was on the air originally, it had rather low ratings and was cancelled by Fox after three seasons. It was a great show but sadly, a lot of people just didn’t “get it.”

Since its original run, the show has enjoyed newfound success in reruns as well as on DVD and Netflix and has attained cult status among those who appreciate great TV. There’s also been talk of a movie version of the series for years as well and now it seems those plans are finally coming to fruition.

But wait, there’s more. According to reports the show’s creator, Mitch Hurtwitz, plans to bring the Emmy-winning series back to television for 9 or 10 episodes before making movie. That’s right, a new series and a movie. Awesome.

Hurwitz didn’t say where the potential series would air but reportedly the two front runners are Netflix, which is looking for original programming, and Showtime, whose new entertainment president David Nevins used to work at Imagine TV and served as an executive producer on the original series.

Original series star Jason Bateman also confirmed the news on Twitter. “It’s true,” he posted. “We will do 10 episodes and the movie. Probably shoot them all together next summer for a release in early ’13. VERY excited!”

Pretty sure he’s not the only one.

• Alec Baldwin is very excited to be the first host of this season of SNL, so excited he felt the need to hump Bill Heder.

• Netflix had a pretty big week, between splitting off into 2 companies and pissing off their clientele. This song pretty much explains it all.

• What happens when the world’s biggest game of dodgeball starts on a football field? Complete pandemonium.

• One of the wrongest-yet-funniest comedies on TV started back up this week as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia returned to FX. In order to prep for the season, here is the blooper reel from last season.

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