‘The Orville’ Season 3 Delayed Until June, Hulu Releases Opening Footage From Premiere

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 WriterReese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine has acquired lifestyle brand The Home Edit, the company announced on Wednesday.Founded by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, The Home Edit offers “full service organizing” in Washington, D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, NYC, Nashville, Orange County, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, as well as “travel and DIY services” globally. Shearer and Teplin are the authors of New York Times bestseller “The Home Edit Life” and the creators of multiple product lines, including a recently announced exclusive Walmart collection.Shearer and Teplin are also the stars of Netflix’s Emmy-nominated “Get Organized with the Home Edit,” which is produced by Hello Sunshine and will debut its second season this year.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterCBS has ordered comedy pilots from “Jane the Virgin” creator Jennie Snyder Urman and Lonely Island crew Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.The Urman-produced multi-cam project is called “Sober Companion” and follows Eliza, a hot-mess alcoholic who owns a bar with her uncle in New Orleans. She is forced to get her life together when the court appoints her an exhaustingly upbeat sober companion with whom she has to live 24/7.The potential series is based on a story by Urman, Gracie Glassmeyer and David Rosenthal.

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.

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 WriterMelissa Joan Hart will star in multiple new “It’s a Wonderful Lifetime” holiday movies, as well as the made-for-TV hoarder film “Dirty Little Secret” at Lifetime, as part of a new multi-year deal with the cable channel, Variety has learned exclusively.Under her new pact, Hart will star in, direct and executive produce several movies for Lifetime. For the “Ripped From The Headlines” movie “Dirty Little Secret” (working title), which is set to debut this summer, Hart stars as a mother hiding her extreme hoarding tendencies that are destroying her family.Additionally, Hart will star in and executive produce new movies for Lifetime’s 2022 and 2023 Christmas slates, having previously starred in six holiday films for the cabler, including “Mistletoe in Montana,” “Dear Christmas” and “A Very Merry Toy Store.” Hart has previously executive produced eight Lifetime films with her production company Hartbreak Films, including the recent “Christmas in Tune” starring Reba McEntire.

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.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNBC briefly misidentified singer Mickey Guyton as Jhene Aiko during a preshow performance at Super Bowl LVI on Sunday.As seen in the video below, the broadcast network first panned over Guyton with a chyron that labeled her as “Jhene Aiko” during Aiko’s performance of “America the Beautiful.” A few seconds later, the incorrect name disappeared under Guyton and cameras shifted to Aiko, who was singing, and a new chyron correctly identified her as “Jhene Aiko.”When Aiko concluded her performance of “America the Beauitful,” Guyton sang the National Anthem ahead of the kickoff for the big game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals.Representatives for NBC Sports did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment on the error Sunday. More to come…@NBCNews #SuperBowlLVI ummm… who confused Jhene Aiko and Mickey Guyton? Its tone deaf….

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterAMC has finally set the premiere for the sixth and final season of “Better Call Saul” — as well as the second half of the sixth and final season of “Better Call Saul” — after teasing fans mercilessly with the information earlier this week. As an added bonus, the cable channel also revealed first-look images from the sixth season (see above) and unveiled upcoming digital series set in the “Breaking Bad” prequel’s universe.On Thursday, AMC announced that the seven-episode Part 1 of “Better Call Saul” Season 6 will premiere on April 18 at 9 p.m. ET.

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.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNBC Sports says 16 million viewers tuned in to watch the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony on Friday, an all-time low for Olympic ceremonies on linear television.That’s around 43% down compared to the 28.3 million viewers that watched the PyeongChang Winter Olympics opening ceremony in February 2018.Friday’s torch-lighting in Beijing aired live on NBC and the streaming service Peacock beginning at 6:30 a.m. ET yesterday morning and was replayed again in primetime.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNBC has placed drama pilot orders for “The Brave” creator Dean Georgaris’ “Blank Slate” and an adaptation of the novel “Predictably Irrational.”Written by Georgaris, “Blank Slate” follows Special Agent Alexander McCoy, a legend in law enforcement, the agent we all hope is out there, the agent we’d all like to be, per the project’s official logline. The only issue is … he doesn’t actually exist.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterThe Pearson family will be hitting the bench for a few weeks as the final season of “This Is Us” is bumped from NBC’s primetime schedule — along with all of the network’s other regularly slated comedies and dramas —  to bring in the Beijing Winter Olympics.While many “This Is Us” fans may not want to part with new episodes of the show in favor of figure-skating, curling and bobsledding competitions from Feb. 2-20, those viewers should know they were going to lose the Pearsons for three weeks this season, with or without the 2022 Olympics.“We don’t love having it off for two weeks [during the Olympics], but those two weeks would have been repeats or preempts anyway, because there’s 18 episodes and 21 weeks,” Steve Kern, head of scheduling for NBC, told Variety. “And so it actually helps us.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterStarz dropped the first teaser for its Sean Penn and Julia Roberts-led Watergate limited series “Gaslit” on Wednesday, revealing the actors’ on-screen transformations into Attorney General John Mitchell, President Richard Nixon’s most trusted advisor and best friend, and his whistleblower wife Martha Mitchell.Also announced was the show’s premiere date, which Starz has set for Sunday, April 24 at 9 p.m., the pay TV channel said during its Wednesday presentation at the virtual Television Critics Association press tour.Executive produced by Sam Esmail, “Gaslit” is a modern take on Watergate that focuses on the untold stories and forgotten characters of the scandal — from Nixon’s bumbling and opportunistic subordinates, to the deranged zealots aiding and abetting their crimes, to the tragic whistleblowers who would eventually bring the whole rotten enterprise crashing down, per Starz. Along with Penn (who rattled production with his insistence on strict enforcement of COVID-19 vaccine mandates on set) and Roberts, “Gaslit” also stars Dan Stevens (who replaced Armie Hammer on the series) as John Dean, Betty Gilpin as Mo Dean, Shea Whigham as G.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Lucifer” star Tom Ellis has joined the cast of Hulu’s Sterling K. Brown-led “Washington Black” limited series in the role of steam-punk inventor Christopher “Titch” Wilde.Described as an epic nine-episode adventure series based on Esi Edugyan’s novel of the same name, “Washington Black” follows the extraordinary 19th-century adventures of George Washington “Wash” Black, an 11-year-old boy on a Barbados sugar plantation who must flee after a shocking death threatens to upend his life.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterThe second season of “Euphoria” is a dream for HBO. Over the first three installments of its second season, the Zendaya-led drama has nearly doubled its Season 1 per-episode viewership, Variety has learned exclusively.The “Euphoria” Season 2 premiere, which first aired Jan. 9, has drawn 13.1 million viewers across multiple HBO and HBO Max to date, with Episodes 2 and 3 tracking similarly, per HBO.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“9-1-1” and spinoff “9-1-1: Lone Star” will be reunited on Fox’s Monday primetime lineup when the O.G. show comes back from hiatus in March. When the two are once again airing in the back-to-back 8 and 9 p.m.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterParamount Plus has renewed its revival of “The Game” for Season 2.Starring Wendy Raquel Robinson and Hosea Chanchez, the show is a continuation of the-CW-network-and-later-BET-show of the same name. “A modern-day examination of Black culture through the prism of pro football,” “The Game” follows the team as they face racism, classism and more, all while fighting for fame, fortune, respect and love.“The Game” revival also stars Adriyan Rae, Vaughn Hebron, Analisa Velez and Toby Sandeman.The first iteration of “The Game” debuted on The CW in 2006.