Showtime Orders One, Renews Two
By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 11/19/2001 8:30:00 AM MT
Showtime Networks Inc. is shaking up its series lineup, ordering a new drama, Street Time, renewing Soul Food and Resurrection Blvd. and cutting Going to California and Leap Years after their rookie campaigns.
Showtime has made a 20-episode commitment to Street Time from Columbia TriStar Domestic Television, president of programming Jerry Offsay said. The order includes the two-hour pilot.
Street Time follows the intertwined lives of parole officers and their struggles to keep on the straight and narrow.
Rob Morrow (Quiz Show, Northern Exposure and Showtime's The Thin Blue Lie) portrays Kevin Hunter, a former drug smuggler trying to reconnect with his wife and son after five years in prison.
Scott Cohen (NYPD Blue, Gilmore Girls) plays James Liberti, a parole officer who still believes he can make a difference but discovers he often cannot.
Erika Alexander (Living Single) portrays Dee Mulhern, a tough-talking parole officer who has her own share of problems.
Offsay also announced that Showtime has ordered 40 episodes of Soul Food, ensuring a third and fourth season for the series, based on the 1997 film of the same name.
The skein follows the struggles, rivalries and triumphs of a multigenerational African-American family in Chicago, centering on the three Joseph sisters.
He added that Showtime will order at least 15 more episodes of Resurrection Blvd., the story of a Hispanic family in Los Angeles with a boxing heritage.
'It is enormously gratifying that Soul Food has become the second-highest-rated original series on Showtime. Similarly, Resurrection Blvd. has generated a great deal of support within both the Latin creative community and among Hispanic audiences,' Offsay said in a prepared statement.
'We look forward to their third seasons on our air,' he added. 'We also believe the grit, style and substance of our newest series, Street Time, together with a terrific cast, will make it a series that people will be talking about. We are thrilled that our strategy of offering distinctive, as well as diverse, programming is working so well.'
Those series will join the returning Queer as Folk and The Chris Isaak Show, both of which will begin their second seasons Jan. 6.
Showtime also previously announced that science-fiction series Jeremiah will bow on the network next year.
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