The network re-upped the Edie Falco dark comedy with a quickness after Season 1 got great reviews this summer. Now it’s pairing Season 2 with another phenomenal female-led series.

United States of Tara, which earned Toni Collette an Emmy for best comedic actress, will premiere just after Jackie starting on Monday, March 22, 2010.

We say bravo, programming peeps! This is almost as good a matchup as when the early seasons of Weeds and Dexter were paired together.

What do you think, Showtime Fans? What would your dream lineup be for Monday nights?

Image: Courtesy of Showtime

Post from: Showtime Fan

The production won’t put her in the couture outfits or compromising positions she often found herself in on the L Word set. The holiday film is about the mishaps Santa Claus encounters when he leaves the North Pole a day early and crash-lands on a family’s roof.

It is currently shooting in Toronto and will premiere on Hallmark Channel for the holidays in 2010.

Since The L Word wrapped in February, Beals has kept busy playing Assistant U.S. Attorney Zoe Landau on the Fox drama Lie to Me. She also will appear in the upcoming sci-fi film The Book of Eli.

Image: Zuma Press

Post from: Showtime Fan

The actor and his wife (shown here arriving at the Staples Center for a Lakers game this spring) planned to travel the Mediterranean after their son’s wedding this summer, Lithgow told the Associated Press in a recent interview. If he took the part of Arthur Mitchell on the Showtime series, he wouldn’t be able to make the cruise.

Lucky for us, Lithgow’s wife told him to skip the vacay and he became Dexter Morgan’s new foe, The Trinity Killer.

We’re in for a big plot twist involving Trinity this Sunday, according to Internet scuttlebutt.

Says Lithgow: “This man is very two-faced, like Dexter. A serial killer by definition is a man who presents himself in a very different way to the world. So it’s an actor’s field day figuring out what you reveal and what you don’t.”

For that, he’s turned to news stories about real-life murderers.

“Every one of these stories, you read it and think, ‘My God, how could this possibly happen? How could a human being behave this way?’—which in a way is really liberating,” he said. “You can’t outdo the truth.”

He sure comes close as Trinity, though. Want proof? Check out how two-faced Lithgow can be in the clip from Sunday’s episode, “Slack Tide,” after the jump.

Image: Fame Pictures

Post from: Showtime Fan

In a recent interview with Heeb magazine, Gould went along with a stoner-themed photo shoot, humoring it with an “it’s all acting” shrug, while his manager mom fretted about his image.

Gould has been acting since he was a tot, so he’s pretty nonchalant about the process. Weeds is now on hiatus after Season 5. The series wrapped up with a season finale that found Gould’s character, Shane Botwin, fatally bopping his mom’s nemesis on the head.

Gould’s own pursuits are, natch, a little less dramatic. A homeschooler, he’ll spend the break from Weeds playing video games, skateboarding and working with a Jewish youth group in his hometown of Santa Clarita (an Agrestic-like planned community near L.A.). He’s also signed on for Hairbrain, an as-yet-unfunded movie about a young egghead.

“It’s a crazy story about a genius kid that goes to college and his roommate is this 37-year-old, and there’s this weird friendship,” Gould said in the interview.

Apparently, the boy who once voiced Nemo in a long-ago Disney film has no qualms playing to his new type. “Usually my, what I would say, forte is weird stuff, offbeat kids,” he said.

Season 6 of Weeds will drop in 2010.

Image: Sonja Flemming for Showtime

Post from: Showtime Fan

According to the Playbill blog, Platt will play Linney’s self-involved but lovable husband in the pilot, which follows Linney’s suburban mom character through her diagnosis with cancer.

Playbill notes that Platt, whose face may be more recognizable to some viewers than his name, is among a long list of stage actors who Showtime has cast in successful series. Such Broadway vets include Weeds‘ Mary-Louise Parker, Nurse Jackie’s Edie Falco, Dexter’s Michael C. Hall and The United States of Tara’s Toni Collette.

Platt’s recent TV credits include guest roles on Bored to Death and Nip/Tuck. From 2004 to 2006, he co-starred with Hank Azaria in the Showtime dramedy Huff.

Image: Fame Pictures

Post from: Showtime Fan

Collette took charge of daughter Sage Florence’s stroller at the Sydney airport, while her musician husband, Dave Galafassi, handled the family’s luggage. The long flight likely meant that Collette, who turned 37 on Saturday, spent her birthday in the air.

Here, she looks every inch the travel-weary, harried mom. It must be tough to juggle motherhood and an intercontinental career, yet Collette makes it look easy on screen. More pics are after the jump.

Images: Pacific Coast News

Post from: Showtime Fan

Check out this report of Springfield’s antics earlier this week, at a performance in Montgomery, Ala.:

The Australian-born Springfield has performed for millions of fans over the last three decades and he entertained hundreds … with hits like “Jessie’s Girl,” “I’ve Done Everything for You,” and “Human Touch,” and songs from his 2008 CD, “Venus in Overdrive.”

The 60-year-old singer/songwriter also mentioned his recurring role on the Showtime hit, Californication, and the fact that he exposes his fully-nude backside.

“What was that movie I was in a long time ago?” he asked the audience. “Oh yeah, Hard to Hold … I showed my butt in that one and now 25 years later in Californication I’m still showing my butt!”

Springfield literally brought down the house when he jumped off the stage and body surfed from one side of the auditorium to the other.

During the encore to end the night’s performance, the sex symbol emerged wearing only his trousers, much to the delight of his female fans.

Source: Our Prattville (emphasis added)

In an interview Springfield granted before the Season 3 premiere, the rocker took pains to clarify that the fictionalized version of himself he plays on Californication is an homage to his wild younger days — not a reflection of how he acts in real life. Um, Rick, were you in character at the concert? Just sayin’.

Image: Fame Pictures

Post from: Showtime Fan

“If you look at the Tudor diet, I’m surprised anyone lasted longer than six months,” JRM told the Edmonton Sun (Season 3 of The Tudors recently premiered on Canadian TV).

For instance, take the royal recipe for poultry:

“They would take a chicken, tear the top off, giblets on the top, and they would take giblets from the bottom, they would take the throat, and the head, and the feet, and they would clip the wings, and they would cook those,” Rhys Meyers said. ” The breast would go to the poor.”

Peasants’ diets were more like what we prefer today, he added. “The poor were mostly rural, agricultural, so they would eat vegetables, they would drink water, they would eat roast beef, whatever they had at the time. Whereas if you went into the city, you’re having jowl of salmon, jowl of chicken.”

Hang on — salmon has jowls? Not exactly, say those familiar with the Oxford English Dictionary. In this case, jowl means the head and shoulders of the fish, which was likely poached.

Henry and others at court probably would’ve had a hoppy brew to wash down that fish head, JRM said. “When you’re inside the kingdom itself, sanitation goes out the window. Clean water was not a possibility. What they used to drink as water had a good percentage of ale in it.”

On average, men would drink nearly six gallons of alcohol a week, he said, while women would consume about four gallons.

“When you see portraits from that time and everybody looks a little worn? That’s why they look worn,” added the Irish actor, who is no stranger to binge drinking himself.

Image: Courtesy of Showtime

Post from: Showtime Fan

As Adlon tools around the studio, she’ll introduce you to the props department, the rubber band guy, the head of the costume department and other key personnel. Adlon is quite funny in her scripted role as long-suffering wife Marcy Runkle, but her improv skills are in fine form for the video diary. Take a look at Video No. 1:

Video No. 2, in which Adlon and the writers re-record her dialogue with clean words instead of curse words, is after the jump. High comedy, my friends.

Post from: Showtime Fan

Showtime reports that the fifth episode of the season was the highest single-telecast on the network since 2004, besting the Season 4 premiere.

According to Showtime, more than 2 million people tuned into watch Michael C. Hall, John Lithgow and the other Dexter stars do their thing. The Hollywood Reporter puts the number at more like 1.7 million, due to some differences in accounting. But either way you slice it (sorry, couldn’t resist!), the show is a hit.

Tune in this Sunday for more suspense as Dexter tracks the Trinity Killer and Rita decides whether the Morgans’ fledgling marriage can be saved.

Image: Courtesy of Showtime

Post from: Showtime Fan