[Televisionary]

"I was not really honest with you. I am a serial killer; that's what I am." Showtime has released the action-packed video for the trailer for Season Five of Dexter , which it showed to a packed house in Ballroom 20 on Thursday at San Diego Comic-Con. Missed the panel? No worries as you can check out the full trailer for Season Five of Dexter below. But warning: it contains serious SPOILERS if you haven't seen the fourth season finale... and you might want to lower the volume for the first bit. Season Five of Dexter launches Sunday, September 26th at 9 pm ET/PT on Showtime.

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. A few things to get through before I hit the road for San Diego and Comic-Con. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Olivia Munn (the newly minted Daily Show correspondent) will guest star on NBC's Chuck this fall when the series returns for its fourth season on September 20th. Munn, who is a series regular on NBC's midseason comedy Perfect Couples , will play "an impossibly cool, smart, and pretty CIA agent who intimidates and schools Chuck and Morgan" in the same installment that features Dolph Lundgren. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) In other scoop, Ausiello writes that former Friday Night Lights star Scott Porter will be joining the cast of CBS' The Good Wife this fall. Porter, whose CW pilot Nomads was not ordered to series, will play Blake, described as "Kalinda’s private-eye counterpart at the D.C. firm that’s merging with Lockhart & Gardner" w

"The Newmans will succeed where the Botwins failed. They will find jobs, have hobbies. They will have a normal life." Showtime has released a new trailer for Season Six of Weeds , which returns to the lineup on August 16th. On the run after Shane took a croquet mallet to Pilar's head at the end of last season, the Botwins hit the road in an effort to evade both the long arm of the law and the less than merciful killing hand of the Mexican drug cartel run by Nancy's husband. It's a trip that takes them through the heartland of America as they blow through a number of cities, trailing identities in their wake. But as much as it represents an effort to escape death, it's also a new chance at life for Nancy and the gang. Hence the above quote from Mary-Louise Parker's Nancy, looking at this messed-up road trip as a chance at a clean slate. Sort of, anyway. You can watch the entire three-minute trailer for Season Six below. "You can take the girl out of th

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Another one bites the dust: Melina Kanakaredes is the latest star to leave their CBS drama series, following in the footsteps of A.J. Cook, Eddie Cibrian, and Liz Vassey. Kanakaredes, who has starred on CBS' CSI: NY for six seasons, has announced that she will not be returning for a seventh go-around as Detective Stella Bonasera. "We hoped Melina would return to CSI: NY for another season, but we respect her decision to move on," said CBS Television Network and CBS Television Studios in a joint statement released yesterday. "Her amazing talent and invaluable contribution to the success of the series are greatly appreciated and will not be forgotten. She will forever remain a friend to the network and studio and we wish her the very best." ( E! Online's Watch with Kristin ) Meanwhile, yesterday's rumor appears now to be a fact: Sela Ward is joining CSI: NY , following Kanakaredes' departure. ( Ent

Showtime today announced launch dates for its two newest series Shameless, Episodes and the return of Californication . The absolutely fantastic US adaptation of British drama series Shameless will kick off on Sunday, January 9th at 10 pm ET/PT. The following evening, Showtime will launch the fourth season of Californication at 10 pm ET/PT, immediately followed by the launch of the Matt LeBlanc-led comedy series Episodes . Here's how Showtime is positioning these two new series: SHAMELESS, a new drama series from John Wells (“ER,” “The West Wing,” “Southland”) and Paul Abbott (“State of Play,” “Touching Evil”) is based on the long-running hit UK series and stars Emmy® Award winner and Oscar® nominee William H. Macy (Fargo, Pleasantville, The Cooler) and Emmy Rossum (The Phantom of the Opera, Mystic River). Macy plays a far-from-stellar working class patriarch of an unconventional Chicago brood of six motley kids (headed by eldest sibling Rossum) who keep the home afloat while he

Welcome to your (slightly delayed) Thursday morning television briefing. A few headlines to get through on Emmy nomination day... Score another genre hit for Mark Pellegrino. The former Lost and Supernatural co-star is heading to Syfy's US adaptation of supernatural drama Being Human , where he will play Bishop, described as the "charismatic and menacing mentor" to Sam Witwer's vampire Aidan. Pellegrino's casting nearly rounds out the cast for the American adaptation, though there's still one role outstanding (that would be Josh, the werewolf, though there have been rumblings about several actors auditioning for the role). Elsewhere, Patrick J. Adams ( Friends With Benefits ) has been cast as the lead in USA legal drama A Legal Mind , where he will play Mike Ross, described as "a brilliant but unmotivated college student who gets recruited by a top Manhattan corporate law firm despite not being a lawyer" and who must "use his book and street s

At long last, pay cabler Showtime has revealed its lineup for the 2010 edition of San Diego Comic-Con later this month. Showtime will not only be offering a panel for serial killer drama Dexter on Thursday, July 22nd, but will also offer a "Showtime Anti-Hero" panel that will feature Michael C. Hall ( Dexter ), David Duchovny ( Californication ), Mary-Louise Parker ( Weeds ) and writers from Dexter, Weeds, Californication , and Nurse Jackie . That panel will take place Thursday, July 22nd, from 4:45-5:45 pm in Ballroom 20, while Dexter is set for 6-7 pm that same evening and will feature Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter, Desmond Harrington, and executive producers John Goldwyn, Sara Colleton, Chip Johannessen, and Manny Coto. The full press release from Showtime can be found below. (Meanwhile, the full Thursday schedule for San Diego Comic-Con is now up here .) THE SHOWTIME® ANTI-HEROES TO HEADLINE OPENING DAY OF COMIC-CON 2010 Panel Sessions For DEXTER® And The Anti- H

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. To those of you who celebrated the Fourth of July, welcome back to work after a long weekend. (Sigh.) Javier Bardem ( Vicky Cristina Barcelona ) will guest star next season on FOX's Glee , according to Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello (and Dave Karger), who reports that the Academy Award-winning actor will appear as "a rock star who befriends Artie (Kevin McHale)." In fact, it was Bardem who approached Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy about dropping by the 20th Century Fox Television-produced musical-comedy when they worked together on Eat Pray Love . “We’re going to rock the house,” Bardem told Entertainment Weekly . “We’re going to do some heavy metal — Spanish heavy metal, which is the worst." ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) TV Guide Magazine 's Will Keck writes that Brian Austin Green ( Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ) is weighing a potential role on ABC's Desperate House

"Let's blow this joint." The Botwins are hitting the road. Season Six of Weeds begins next month and Showtime has issued a striking poster image for the sixth season, one that depicts Nancy, Silas, and Shane Botwin (along with Justin Kirk's Andy and Kevin Nealon's Doug) as yesteryear hoods, a la Atlantic City. (Nice touch with Shane holding onto that plot-twist-driven croquet mallet.) A larger version of the poster can be found after the jump, along with the teaser trailer for Season Six of Weeds , just in case you missed it a few weeks back . Season Six of Weeds kicks off on August 16th at 10 pm ET/PT on Showtime.

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Following yesterday's brutal cancellation of Party Down , Hitfix's Alan Sepinwall talks to Party Down executive producer Rob Thomas about the cancellation of the Starz comedy. "No one on our side is particularly shocked by the news," Thomas told Sepinwall about the cancellation. "Frankly, the waiting has been excruciating, and there's a certain amount of relief in knowing and being able to move on." Thomas indicated that the series was heading towards a third season renewal before newly installed entertainment czar Chris Albrecht was brought in. "There's little to no doubt that we were going to get one until Chris came in," said Thomas. "But I do think if we had done better numbers, Chris would've kept us. I don't think Chris wanted to come in and clean house. I just don't think he had quite the emotional attachment that people who had been at Starz through the birth of

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Steve Carell has confirmed that he will leave NBC comedy The Office following the conclusion of next season, the series' seventh. "I just think it's time," Carell told E! Online's Kristina Guerrero while promoting his new film Despicable Me . "I want to fulfill my contract. When I first signed on I had a contract for seven seasons, and this coming year is my seventh. I just thought it was time for my character to go... It doesn't certainly mean the end of the show. I think it's just a dynamic change to the show, which could be a good thing, actually. Add some new life and some new energy... I see it as a positive in general for the show." Carell pointed to the series' ensemble cast and the strength of the writers and didn't seem to feel that his departure would negatively affect The Office at all. ( E! Online's Watch with Kristin ) Wait, what? Entertainment Weekly 's Michael A

It's official: David Nevins will take over for Robert Greenblatt as President of Entertainment at Showtime. The announcement was made this morning by Showtime Chairman/CEO Matthew Blank, who officially confirmed reports late last week that Nevins, a partner at Imagine TV, would take over for Greenblatt, who will leave the pay cabler when his contract ends in July. "I'm thrilled to welcome a creative executive of the caliber of David Nevins to our company,” said Blank in a statement. "David's career has been punctuated by genre-defining programming at every turn and has the perfect creative sensibility for Showtime Networks' next exciting chapter." "At the same time, I have to say that Bob Greenblatt is one of the finest executives in the business and has developed some of the most extraordinary original programming of the past decade," continued Blank. "His legacy has us grateful and well-positioned for the company's future." The

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Showtime's Dexter is on a casting role. Variety 's Stuart Levine is reporting that Jonny Lee Miller ( Eli Stone ) is the latest to board the serial killer drama, signing on to appear in a multiple-episode story arc on Season Five of Dexter . Miller will play "a mysterious man who ends up tangled in a storyline with Julia Stiles, who is beginning her first season on the skein." ( Variety ) Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Jordana Spiro has exited NBC's midseason romantic anthology series Love Bites . Spiro's participation in the series was always in second position to her role on TBS comedy My Boys , which returns for its fourth season next month. "Although the odds appear slim that TBS will renew the show for a fifth season (season 4 premieres July 25), it was a risk NBC apparently wasn’t willing to take," writes Ausiello. "It’s unclear if her role will be recast.

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Cynthia Nixon ( Sex and the City ) has signed on to appear in four episodes of Showtime's upcoming dark comedy The Big C , which stars Laura Linney as Cathy, a suburban teacher whose life is thrown off track by a terminal cancer diagnosis. Nixon will play Rebecca, Cathy's "flaky, long-lost college roommate who re-enters her life and shakes things up in a wild way," according to the official press release from Showtime. Nixon's casting follows on the heels of that of ex- Wire co-star Idris Elba. The series, created by Darlene Hunt, stars Linney, Oliver Platt, and Gabourey Sidibe. (via press release) Wondering why none of the main cast members of FOX's Glee will be heading to Comic-Con next month despite 20th Century Fox Television's announcement that there will be a Glee panel at San Diego Comic-Con? Entertainment Weekly 's Andy Patrick is reporting that half of the Glee cast wasn't asked to

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alanis Morissette will return to Weeds for the Showtime dark comedy's sixth season, set to launch August 16th. Leigh will reprise her role as Nancy's sister Jill in one episode, with Morissette due to appear in two episodes as Andy's girlfriend Audra Kitson, who also happened to be Nancy's doctor. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Deadline's Nellie Andreeva is reporting that Jamie Foxx has shot a trailer for a potential television project entitled Tommy's Little Girl , which features Paul Sorvino, Selma Blair, James Russo, and Tony Sirico. Project would revolve around the relationship between a mobster (Sorvino) and his daughter (Blair) and will be pitched to cable networks. ( Deadline ) Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello has an interview with newly promoted Grey's Anatomy series regular Sarah