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.

With X-men: First Class scheduled to start filming next week, 20th Century Fox has turned their focus to the their next Marvel film. That film? A reboot of Fantastic Four.

Rumors about the films casting have started with news that The Thing will be completely CGI and Sue Storm being played by Alice Eve or Amber Heard, and it seems the film’s star power will be stemming from the group leader Mr. Fantastic. The two actors in the running for Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards are Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Adrien Brody.

While Jonathan Rhys Meyers is probably best known for his starring role in the Showtime series The Tudors, he also has From Paris With Love in which he starred opposite John Travolta under his belt. He’s also been seen in film such as Mission Impossible III, Match Point and Bend It Like Beckham.

The bigger get would obviously be Adrien Brody, who is quietly growing into an action film with the recent releases of Predators and Splice. Brody is also the forerunner for Edgar Wright’s Ant-man for Marvel Studios. Having the Oscar winning actor attached to the film would add some credibility to the project.

The title of the film will not be Fantastic Four Reborn as previously report, but the actual title has not been released. Now that Chiklis is moving on to No Ordinary Family on ABC and Evans is headed over to work on that other Marvel movie, who would YOU cast as The Thing and Human Torch in the upcoming reboot?

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt dive into a whole bunch of topics for your listening pleasure. Among these are the new Netflix movie deal, the first pictures of Green Lantern’s mentor, the awesomeness of Gamefly, the original Star Trek pilots, the leaked final episode of Lost, the last season of Entourage, new True Blood info, Fringe season three and much more.

The boys also made some new picks this week including Matt’s pick of Rob Corddry’s Children’s Hospital and Chris’ pick of the Showtime series Dexter, featuring Michael C. Hall, Julie Benz and James Remar.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

While the Summer might be ending, great television for the year is just beginning. That’s why Cortney’s TV Digest returns to The Flickcast this month, where we’ll be bringing you some great shows from our favorite networks, including Showtime and MTV.

Mad Men

AMC might not have a lot of television shows, but what they lack in quantity they certainly make up for in quality. Breaking Bad just finished up a fabulous third season over the Summer, and that means it’s time for Mad Men. Season 4 started last month but continues on this month, as Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce begin to establish their new, but struggling, ad firm.

Mad Men is on every Sunday at 10/9C on AMC.

Weeds

Our favorite pot-dealing, crime-scheming Nancy Botwin is back, as Weeds enters its sixth season. It’s so hard to write about this show without absolutely spoiling everything, but to be discrete, this episode picks up right after the last one left off, and looks like this season is going to be a doozy as everyone in the Botwin pack deals with the implications of Shane’s actions.

If you’re a new-comer to Weeds, you’ve got about two weeks to catch up on all five of the previous seasons, but the episodes are so good (and, luckily, short) that it won’t take you much time at all to see what all the fuss is about. Weeds begins its new season on August 17th on Showtime.

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Oh Nancy Botwin, what have you gotten yourself into now? Oh wait, I already know. First, your husband dies and you have to turn to selling pot to make ends meet.

Then, you risk everything for a relationship with a known drug dealer and also have his illegitimate child. Oh, your youngest son also manages to bump off your baby daddy’s chief handler so she won’t be in the way. Too much to imagine? Nope, just another day for the folks over at Weeds.

With last season’s great cliff hanger ending still fresh in our memories this new season of the show, its sixth, promises to be even more fun. In this new trailer for it we see that although Nancy and the gang are in different surroundings, they are still the same awesome band of lovable misfits we’ve come to know and watch every week.

Click through for the trailer. Weeds begins its new season on August 16th only on Showtime.

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The list of TV networks, studios and comic book companies attending San Diego Comic-Con keeps on growing. This time around it’s premiere cable network Showtime and their announcement of all they will be bringing to the show this year. The networks panels this year will include Dexter by itself as well as a special Anti-Hero panel featuring series star Michael C. Hall, Californication’s David Duchovny and Weeds’ Mary-Louise Parker.

Both panels will be on the first day of the con, Thursday, July 22.  In addition to the cast mentioned previously, the panels will feature producers and writers from Dexter, Weeds, Californication and Nurse Jackie. Okay, I like most of these shows and also are fans of their stars. However, I’m not really sure what these particular shows have to do with Comic-Con.

Granted, the con has become way more about movies, TV and such and less about comics, but I think the panels should have at least something to do with comics or the geek community in order to be included in the con. I can see what a show like The Big Bang Theory or Fringe, for example, are doing coming to San Diego but Weeds and Nurse Jackie? Not sure. At least Californiacation’s David Duchovny used to be in The X-Files so that, at least, makes a little sense.

Oh well, if you like these shows (and I do like most of them) and are going to Comic-Con, I guess you’re probably pretty happy now so I’ll just be quiet. Click through for a full description of all the panels and be sure to check back right here for more info than you can handle on this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

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It’s Emmy time and the nominations were announced this morning in LA at the Academy of Arts & Sciences for the 62nd annual awards show. It was a big day for HBO as it’s show The Pacific received the most nominations with 24.

Other shows nominated for several awards include Fox’s Glee with 19 nominations, AMC’s Mad Men with 17, NBC’s 30 Rock and HBO’s Temple Grandin and You Don’t Know Jack with 15 each, ABC’s Modern Family with 14 and NBC’s Saturday Night Live with 12.

Also nominated in a big way was ABC’s Dancing With The Stars with 9, Showtime’s Nurse Jackie with 8, CBS’ Two And A Half Men with 6, CBS’ Big Bang Theory with 5. HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, CBS’ How I Met Your Mother and NBC’s The Office all tied with 4.

As it often does, HBO led with 101 nominations total. ABC, with 63 nominations, received the most for any broadcast network followed by CBS with 57, NBC with 48, FOX with 47, and mighty PBS with 32.

All in all it seems like quite a diverse group of shows were nominated this year and we congratulate all of the nominees. Plus, it’s nice to see people finally get recognized for their work including Kyle Chandler of Friday Night Lights as well as Betty White with her 20th nomination for hosting Saturday Night Live.

Click through for more nominees and be sure to check out the official Emmy site for more. The 62nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards air on August 29, 2010 on NBC.

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In news that will most likely be met with meh by the major cable outlets, production company Relativity Media announced that it will make a deal with movie rental giant Netflix to stream its content via the service. While that may not sound impressive, the other part of this deal will see Relativity bypassing traditional home video routs and cable stations like HBO or Showtime and going directly to Neflix’s streaming movie service.

With the backing of backing larger companies like Lions Gate Entertainment, Sony Pictures, and Universal Studios, Relativity will grant Netflix first rights to stream popular movies that are typically sent to premium cable channels like Starz, HBO, and Showtime following the movie’s DVD release. This arrangement is seen as a major development because it’s the first time a major movie producer has turned to online distribution for its movies and not gone the traditional route.

Could this be the start of a trend? We’ll see. It would probably seem like more of a big deal (at least to me) if the movies were a bit more impressive and if HBO and Showtime didn’t seem more concerned with creating original programming than showing movies. Still, it is an interesting development to be sure. Time will tell if it has an impact on other companies and if they join in.

The deal is set to launch with movies Skyline and The Fighter, featuring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, with more titles to follow soon.

We’re about 3 months away from the August 16th premiere of Weeds Season 6, yet Showtime is already ramping up their marketing for the newest season with a brand new teaser showing Mary-Louise Parker rocking out to an indie track by April Smith & The Great Picture Show.

Last we left the family Botwin, things got pretty heavy when Shane (Alexander Gould) committed the unthinkable. There hasn’t been much speculation on where the series is headed this season, aside from the fact that Linda Hamilton will be joining the cast in the short-term.

From what we can gather in the cryptic teaser, Nancy seems to be burying everything that has to do with Esteban (Demian Bichir) including a gun, cell phone, and the infamous croquet bat.

Check out the teaser after the jump, and join Weeds on Showtime as “The plot deepens” on August 16th.

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Even though Showtime’s Nurse Jackie and The United States of Tara have recently had their new season premieres, the network must be so impressed that they’ve already given the green light to another new season for both shows. The pickups come after both shows returned strong for their second debuts in the ratings.

Nurse Jackie had it’s most-watched episode ever with Tara close behind. All of which must have impressed Showtime execs very much indeed. In fact, here’s what they said about the shows, according to The Hollywood Reporter:

“Showtime is enormously proud of these two series starring two of the best actresses working today,” said Robert Greenblatt, president of entertainment, Showtime. “Both are iconic shows for our brand and our thanks to the dedicated producers, cast, and crews who work so hard to make them so great. Edie Falco’s portrayal of the fierce ‘Jackie’ is another extraordinary example of her range and brilliance, and recent Emmy and Golden Globe wins for Toni Collette in her tour de force role as a woman with multiple personalities put her in a class by herself. Strong women will continue to rule on this network for a long time to come.”

Well, there you have it. A network that rewards quality and stands by its shows is nice to see. Maybe Joss Whedon should do a show for Showtime?

When you say the word “history” out loud, it’s usually met with a chorus of groans. “I hated history in school! All those dates and crap! So boring.” It’s depressing.

History, if taught right, is a story.  (That’s why it has “story” embedded into it. No joke.) It’s not names, dates, and places. It’s blood and sex, with a dash of art and higher aspirations. It’s the stuff you pay to watch in theaters or on HBO but with the kicker that it actually happened.

I couldn’t be happier that television has decided to take that idea and run crazy with it. The new trend on cable is taking finding some notorious era of history, populated with sex and swearing, and spin a few seasons out of it. HBO kicked off the trend with Rome and Deadwood (and promptly broke our hearts in the process), and now Showtime and Starz have taken up the gauntlet.

Showtime has been happily running around Renaissance England with The Tudors, which is about to wrap up in its fourth season now that Henry VIII is coming to the end of his wives. While it’s played a little fast and loose with history, it’s been a sumptuous watch, and fans won’t have to look far for a replacement.

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We’re all pretty big fans of the original Showtime series Weeds around The Flickcast offices. The show has managed to stay strong and innovative since it’s launch back in 2005, with plenty of plot twists and fan favorite cameos. One of the main reasons we love the show so much is the use of the ensemble cast, especially any major story arcs with Andy Botwin, played by Justin Kirk.

We recently got a chance to sit down with Justin about the show, his work on the recently released season five DVD, and where he sees the upcoming season going. One cool feature on the DVD is a collection of the University of Andy web shorts. We asked Justin where the idea came from, and he knew that it was already going to be a success.

The writers had done various web-based content over the years. I don’t know if you remember ‘Good Morning, Agrestic’, which was a faux public access channel, but it was all meant to be for the web and DVD’s, which inevitably turned into a big hit. There’s also a new round out right now. We are only 3 episodes deep into round 2, which is going on right now.

One of the biggest events of this past season was the jump ahead six months and the story progressed. Justin was more than excited about that idea when he first heard about it.

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