TV News Wrap Up: ‘Fargo’ S2 Casting, ‘Marco Polo’ Renewed, and More

Fargo season 2 casts Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring), Ted Danson (CSI) and Jean Smart (Frasier); Netflix renews Marco Polo for season 2; HBO gives Girls a season 5 renewal; Netflix greenlights a Wet Hot American Summer series; ITV’s Jekyll and Hyde unveils its cast; and MTV’s Shannara casts Ivana Baquero (Pan’s Labyrinth).

FX’s Fargo added some big names to its season 2 roster, casting Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring), Ted Danson (CSI) and Jean Smart (Frasier).

Wilson will star in the anthology series’ second installment as Lou Solverson, a clean-cut Minnesota State Patrolman, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Keith Carradine portrayed an older version of the character in season 1 in a smaller role.

Meanwhile, Danson will play Solverson’s father-in-law, Hank Larsson, the sheriff of Rock County, Minnesota. Smart will play Floyd Gerhardt, the matriarch of the Gerhardt crime family, which comes under investigation by Lou and Hank.

The trio of actors join a talented cast that already includes Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man), Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad), Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation), Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond), Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice) and Kieran Culken (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World).

Season 1 of the acclaimed series nabbed a Golden Globe win for Best TV miniseries, so many viewers will enter Fargo season 2 with high expectations, especially considering the performers involved.

Fargo season 2 begins production later this month. Look for the series to return to FX next fall.

Netflix renewed period adventure drama Marco Polo for season 2.

The renewal from the streaming content giant comes in spite of an overall poor critical response to the series. While some praised the series for its costume and set designs, many critics named a weak narrative and emotionally hollow characters as Marco‘s biggest drawbacks. Still, the audience response was apparently strong enough to warrant a second season that, like the first, will consist of 10 episodes.

No details on season 2 have been released at this point, so we’ll have to wait and see where the series picks up with the titular adventurer in Kublai Khan’s 13th century China when Netflix unveils Marco Polo‘s next batch of episodes.

Marco Polo season 1 is available on Netflix streaming now. We’ll let you know when the streaming service releases season 2.

Girls also earned a renewal, as HBO announced a fifth season for the veteran series.

Networking programming president Michael Lombardo announced the news at Girls‘ New York City season 4 premiere, just days before the season kicked off for HBO audiences last night (Sunday, Jan. 11) – the same night that the series was up for a 2015 Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series.

Girls may not have taken home the Golden Globe in 2015 (see the list of winners here), but with the show being a perennial award-season darling, we’re likely to see the dramedy in contention again this time next year.

The 10-episode fourth season of Girls continues next Sunday on HBO. Season 5 should debut sometime in 2016.

Netflix has officially greenlit a Wet Hot American Summer series and confirmed it will be a prequel to the 2001 cult comedy film.

Netflix made the announcement on Twitter, writing “It’s true, camp is back in session. #WetHotAmericanSummer will return for 8 all new episodes.” Although the streaming service didn’t provide any additional details, most of the cast from the film – including Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Paul Rudd, Molly Shannon, Christopher Meloni, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Ian Black, Bradley Cooper and Amy Poehler – is expected to return. The series comes to Netflix via David Wain and Michael Showalter, who wrote the original film. Wain will direct the series.

News about a potential revival emerged as early as 2012, but the project actually started to pick up steam once Netflix got involved last year. Interestingly, the series has always been envisioned as a prequel with the original cast, meaning that the actors – now more than a decade older – will be playing even younger versions of their teenage and twenty-something characters. The prequel is expected to be set just months before the events of the film at the beginning of summer camp in 1981.

Considering the schedules of the cast – made up of mostly unknowns in 2001 – is extremely hectic now, it’s a small miracle that the project finally came together. We’ll just have to see how much screen time each actor gets over the course of their eight-episode adventure.

We’ll let you know when Netflix announces a premiere date for its Wet Hot American Summer series.

ITV’s Jekyll and Hyde adaptation announced its cast, which will be led by Tom Bateman (Da Vinci’s Demons) as Dr. Robert Jekyll and his superpowered alter ego.

The series, which takes a superhero twist on the classic Robert Louis Stevenson story, also stars Richard E. Grant (Downton Abbey) as the head of a secret government department and Natalie Gumede (Coronation Street) as Jekyll’s love interest, Bella. The rest of the cast includes Stephanie Hyam (Murdered By My Boyfriend), Donald Sumpter (Game of Thrones), Amit Shah (The Smoke), Phil McKee (Dracula), Christian McKay (The Theory of Everything), Ruby Bentall (Lark Rise to Candleford), Enzo Cilenti (Game of Thrones), Lolita Chakrabarti (The Smoke), Michael Karim (Inspector Lewis) and Ace Bhatti (Silk).

For those unfamiliar with the upcoming U.K. series, here is the synopsis:

“Jekyll is a young, sensitive and naïve man of intellect and morality, a well meaning if slightly repressed character who slips between his two personas unwillingly. Hyde is a totally different person; a superhero with super powers, great strength, speed and invulnerability. He is confident, risk-taking and lives life on the edge. His self-destructive nature gets him into trouble, and yet he is an incredibly powerful force. He is a man of action who gets things done despite the consequences! Throughout the series we will witness Jekyll wrestling with the dark, brooding personality of Hyde as he struggles to come to terms with his superhero alter ego.”

There is no premiere date yet for ITV’s Jekyll and Hyde, but production is set to begin later this month.

MTV’s fantasy series Shannara added Spanish actress Ivana Baquero (Pan’s Labyrinth) to its cast.

In the series adapted from Terry Brooks’ novels about a magical family thousands of years after civilization’s destruction, Baquero will play Eretria, a human who has been raised in a den of thieves and later becomes involved in a quest to save the Four Lands. She joins previously-cast leads Poppy Drayton (Downton Abbey) and Austin Butler (The Carrie Diaries) as the elven princess Amberle Elessedil and half-elf hero Wil Ohmsford, respectively.

The show was ordered straight to series for a 10-episode first season by MTV last summer. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles director Jonathan Liebesman will helm the first two of those episodes.

We’ll let you know when MTV announces a premiere date for Shannara.