‘Better Call Saul’ Final Season Gets Premiere Dates for Both Halves

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Hightown” has been renewed for a third season at Starz.The crime drama starring Monica Raymund aired its 10-episode second season between October and December of last year. In the second season of “Hightown,” the picture-perfect version of summer on Cape Cod clashes with its off-season reality.

NEW YORK -- “Better Things” showrunner Pamela Adlon always has a specific vision and message in her work. So when it came to filming the comedy's fifth season there were certain non-negotiables, and one was that Celia Imrie — who plays Adlon’s cheeky mother, Phil — had to be a part of it.But Imrie was stuck in England and couldn’t travel for medical reasons, so Adlon brought the show to her.“I needed Phil in because it’s the final season and it was a Rubik’s Cube of how do I do this?” Adlon said in a recent interview.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterShowtime’s upcoming “The First Lady” anthology series is described as “a revelatory reframing of American leadership, told through the lens of the women at the heart of the White House.” While the first season focuses on icons Michelle Obama (played by Viola Davis), Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson), the executive producers are not opposed to a potential future season including possibly the most divisive first lady: Melania Trump.During a virtual panel promoting the show at the Television Critics Association’s press tour Wednesday, “The First Lady” showrunner Cathy Schulman and director and executive producer Susanne Bier playfully tossed a reporter’s question about featuring President Donald Trump’s wife as subject before Bier answered definitively, but with a laugh: “Look, I do think that the series could do with a fun season — so let’s talk about that.” Star Anderson, who was sitting on the panel alongside co-star Davis, added: “I think the hope is that there’s going to be future seasons and there will be the opportunity to have many, many more first ladies represented. So maybe not just four — but maybe 104.”But Bier says that no matter how many seasons they do, she’d like to keep the number of first ladies to three per installment for a very specific reason.“Three is a great number for a season because you can do in-depth contrasts, but it’s also incredibly interesting how the three ladies reflect upon each other,” Bier said.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Call Me Kat” actress Schuyler Helford’s teen-parenting comedy “Unplanned in Akron” has received a pilot order at CBS.Written by Helford with Emily Wilson (“The Conners”) supervising, the multi-cam project follows two teenagers navigating parenthood in the best way they know how. With a little help from their friends and parents, they’ll learn that mistakes in life don’t have to derail your life – that no matter what age you are, taking care of a child is no joke – but sometimes, you just gotta laugh (or cry) your way through it.Helford is co-executive producing the potential series.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Good News About Hell” and “Half Loop,” the first two episodes of “Severance,” which premiered Friday on Apple TV Plus.The Ben Stiller-directed “Severance” debuted its first two episodes Friday, revealing a fictional world where people, like Adam Scott’s Mark Scout, are able to undergo a procedure that allows them to mentally separate their work and home lives. Why a person would choose to do this and why Lumon, the company that created the process, would require it of some of its employees is just the start of the questions posed by the initial pair of “Severance” episodes.“What we know of them is that they are a med-tech company.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Dave” has been renewed for Season 3 at FX.The show’s second season debuted last summer on FXX.“Dave” is co-created by David Burd (Lil Dicky) and Jeff Schaffer, and executive produced by the pair along with Saladin K. Patterson, Ben Sinclair, Luvh Rakhe, Kevin Hart and Hartbeat Productions, Scooter Braun, Greg Mottola, Marty Bowen, Mike Hertz and SB Projects’ James Shin and Scott Manson.

Stranger Things, a signature show for Netflix since its premiere in 2016, has been renewed for a fifth and final season.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterIna Garten’s new Discovery Plus series, “Be My Guest With Ina Garten,” has been renewed for two additional seasons ahead of its launch on March 26.The show will launch with full episodes on Discovery Plus, to be followed by a “food-centric half-hour” airing on Food Network at 12 p.m. ET, along with the debut of a companion podcast.Season 1 consists of four episodes, rolled out weekly in the same manner as the premiere.“Be My Guest With Ina Garten” features Barefoot Contessa inviting friends old and new to her East Hampton home for a day of conversation, connection, food and fun visits to some of her favorite local spots.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Yellowstone” prequel “1883” has been renewed for Season 2 at Paramount Plus, and the ViacomCBS-owned streaming service has ordered another Taylor Sheridan-created origin-story show following the Dutton Family called “1932.” Yes, you guessed it — the show will follow a new generation of Duttons “during the time of western expansion, Prohibition and the Great Depression.”“1883″ stars Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Billy Bob Thornton, Isabel May, LaMonica Garrett, Marc Rissmann, Audie Rick, Eric Nelsen and James Landry Hébert.The show follows the Dutton family as they embark on a journey west through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of untamed America. It is a stark retelling of western expansion and an intense study of one family fleeing poverty to seek a better future in America’s promised land — Montana.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterAMC Networks dropped a teaser during Super Bowl LVI Sunday featuring the first look at its Anne Rice series “Interview with the Vampire,” along with footage from the sixth and final season of “Better Call Saul,” the middle third of the 11th and final season of “The Walking Dead” and upcoming anthology “Tales of the Walking Dead,” the fourth and final season of “Killing Eve” and several other shows coming to AMC, streaming service AMC Plus or BBC America this year.A longer 60-second version of the TV spot was released online, which teased the upcoming series “61st Street,” “Dark Winds,” “Moonhaven” and “That Dirty Black Bag.”AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire,” adapted from Rice’s iconic novel of the same name, centers on the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (played by Jacob Anderson) as he relates the story of his life to a reporter, in particular how he was turned into a vampire and then mentored by Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). The show is currently in production in New Orleans.

Better Call Saul is set to kick off April 18 with a two episode premiere.Following on from the end of season five in April 2020, the final chapter of the Breaking Bad spin-off will “conclude the complicated journey and transformation of its compromised hero, Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) into criminal lawyer Saul Goodman,” according to the official synopsis.The first half of the season features seven episodes. After a short break, the second half of the season (six episodes) will premiere July 11.The synopsis adds: “From the cartel to the courthouse, from Albuquerque to Omaha, season six tracks Jimmy, Saul and Gene (Jimmy’s post-Breaking Bad identity, hiding away managing a Cinnabon) as well as Jimmy’s complex relationship with Kim (Rhea Seehorn), who is in the midst of her own existential crisis.

Better Call Saul is coming to an end.

Bob Odenkirk) into criminal lawyer Saul Goodman. Season 6 follows Jimmy, Saul and Gene as well as Jimmy’s complex relationship with Kim (Seehorn), who is in the midst of her own existential crisis.

AMC has set the premiere date for the sixth and final season of Emmy-nominated drama series Better Call Saul. The final chapter, from Sony Pictures Television, will premiere with two back-to-back-episodes on Monday, April 18 at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Obi-Wan Kenobi” has received a May 25 premiere date at Disney Plus, Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced on the company’s earnings call Wednesday.Disney Plus ended 2021 with 129.8 million paying customers worldwide, gaining 11.8 million for the quarter ended Jan. 1, 2022 and blowing past expectations.

he had a “small” heart attack in July 2021 on the set of his AMC series “Better Call Saul.”Now Odenkirk, 59, has opened up about the harrowing experience — revealing that he shockingly didn’t have a pulse when he initially collapsed between filming.“We were shooting a scene, we’d been shooting all day, and luckily I didn’t go back to my trailer,” he recently told the New York Times, adding that he was taking a break with costars Patrick Fabian and Rhea Seehorn at the time of the incident — about which he has no memory.“I went to play the Cubs game and ride my workout bike, and I just went down,” Odenkirk said. “Rhea said I started turning bluish-gray right away,” he continued.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNational Geographic announced a slate of more than a dozen upcoming original programs Monday, all of which are produced by the brand but will debut exclusively on Disney Plus — not on the Nat Geo cable channel. But despite the shift, Nat Geo content president Courteney Monroe promised that it’s not a sign that the Disney-owned brand has completely moved away from linear content.“I realize that all of my announcements today were for Disney Plus originals, but that in no way diminishes our focus and investment in National Geographic programming for the linear channel,” Monroe told reporters Monday during Nat Geo’s virtual presentation at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterHulu has delayed “The Orville” Season 3 premiere from March until June, but released the first few minutes of footage from the new season as fans’ conciliation prize while they wait even longer for the return of the former Fox show.“To all The Orville fans: Thanks for being so patient with us as we’ve navigated the production challenges resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” “The Orville” creator and star Seth MacFarlane said in a statement tweeted Friday. “As occasionally happens, our show has been repositioned amidst the ever-changing television schedule landscape, which means that the wait will be just a bit longer, and we’re now preparing for a June 2nd launch on Hulu.