Tradecraft: ARCHER Renewed for Season 11 and a Return to Spying

When FXX ordered 3 additional seasons of the animated spy comedy Archer back in 2016 (taking it up to 10), it was expected that Season 10 would be the show's last. But executive producer Casey Willis surprised fans at today's Comic-Con panel, Deadline reports, with the announcement that the cable network has renewed the show for Season 11. And, after three seasons taking turns parodying other genres (the most recent two through Archer's coma dreams), the program is expected to make a welcome return to the genre it started out spoofing: espionage. Wilson said, “We are incredibly excited for our 11th season and look forward to Archer waking up from his coma and returning to a spy world that has continued without him for the past three years." Personally, I'm also very much looking forward to that return. While I was initially excited by seasons lampooning Magnum PI, Sam Spade, Tales of the Gold Monkey, and Space: 1999 (among other classics of their various genres), the show, which began as a James Bond parody, is simply strongest operating on the familiar ground of international intrigue. In 2014, current events forced the series to abandon its original spy agency, ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service) for obvious reasons. In the last full season of spying, Season 6, the team (including Sterling Archer, voiced by H. John Benjamin, his sometimes wife Lana Kane, voiced by Aisha Tyler, and his mother Mallory, voiced by Jessica Walter) worked for the CIA under the auspices of control Slater (voiced by Christian Slater).

Tradecraft: NBC Renews TAKEN TV Series

Variety reports that NBC has renewed Taken, the TV series based on the hit Liam Neeson movies, for a second season. Though it wasn't a ratings smash, the show proved popular internationally, living up to its neo-Eurospy pedigree. Clive Standen stars as a younger version of Neeson's character, Bryan Mills. A prequel to the films, the first season chronicled Mills' initial recruitment into the CIA. I only saw the pilot and was less than impressed, but if it was popular enough to be renewed, I should probably give it another try. While the first season was only ten episodes (which currently fill up my DVR), the second will be sixteen. Europacorp has a pretty good track record with TV series based on their spy movies. Transporter: The Series (a truly entertaining action show) lasted two seasons, and Luc Besson's 1990 film La Femme Nikita spawned not one but two successful shows to date.

Tradecraft: Agent Carter Renewed for Second Season; S.H.I.E.L.D. Spinoff Not Going Forward

Good news all around for fans of ABC's Marvel Universe spy series! Most importantly, according to Deadline, the network has renewed the terrific Agent Carter, starring Hayley Atwell, for a second season. They've also renewed Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for Season 3. Who knows? If it continues to improve exponentially the way it did from its first to second season, it might earn itself a positive adjective one day as well. And one sign of improvement is the fact that the network has, the trade reports in a separate article, decided not to proceed with the mooted spinoff we heard about a few weeks ago. The proposed series would have neutered the mothership series by spinning off its two best new characters onto a show of their own... and leaving Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with only its far less interesting original cast members. Since there won't be a new spinoff series, Adrianne Palicki and Nick Blood will remain on the original show, now as regulars. Perhaps in another season or two it might make sense to spin them off into a second series, but to do so now would have been premature. It's possible that the ideas for the spinoff concocted by Agents executive producers Jeffrey Bell and Paul Zbyszewski could end up incorporated into storylines on the flagship series next year.

Agent Carter, which ran as a limited, 8-episode series to bridge the fall and spring halves of the season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., is set in the same universe nearly seven decades earlier. The period spy show follows Captain America's wartime girlfriend, Agent Peggy Carter (Atwell), in the early days of the Cold War. In its first season it delivered everything fans could hope for from a period spy series with over-the-top, comic book elements. The blend of history and mild science fiction was perfect, and Atwell made a more compelling lead than any of the contemporary TV Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. While the first season ended in a conclusive enough manner that it could have wrapped things up altogether, I am thrilled that we'll be getting more Carter next winter! (Once again, it's expected to serve as a bridge while Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. goes on its winter hiatus.) Before that happens, Atwell will next be seen in the role of Peggy Carter in this summer's Ant-Man.

The Americans Renewed for Season 4

Happily, we'll be getting more of the best spy series on television! Deadline reports that FX has renewed The Americans for a fourth season with four episodes remaining in the third. And that is fantastic news, because this unbelievably good series just keeps getting better and better and better as it goes along. It started off strong, but has only gotten stronger with each successive season, with each successive episode. The Americans follows Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell), two KGB spies posing as a normal American husband and wife in suburban Washington D.C. as Cold War tensions escalate in the Reagan-era Eighties. It's a brilliant condensation of the East/West spy game boiled down to one very unusual family and the ever-growing spiderweb of people they affect. (It's tough to keep track of how many different women Philip is juggling relationships with—each relationship fraught with impossibly compelling drama. The Americans has yet to be recognized with all the Emmies it deserves, but hopefully this amazing season will change all that. And hopefully the renewals will continue and we'll be able to follow Philip and Elizabeth (and their fascinating wigs) all the way to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Season 3 finale airs on April 22. Welshman Rhys recently appeared on an episode of FX's other great spy show, Archer, where they made a joke about his Americans accent.

Tradecraft: TNT Renews Legends

Well, here's some good TV news to offset Monday's disappointing announcement about the cancellation of Matador. Deadline reports that TNT has picked up Homeland and 24 producer Howard Gordon's latest spy drama Legends for a 10-episode second-season. Based on the Robert Littell novel, Legends stars Sean Bean (GoldenEye) as FBI Special Agent Martin Odum, a deep cover operative who has lived so many legends he can no longer be sure of his own identity. The first season ended with a paradigm-shifting cliffhanger involving MI6, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, an assassination and of course a vast conspiracy, so fans will be relieved to learn of the pickup. I was seriously fearful it wouldn't happen when TNT cancelled Dallas a few months ago, and Sean Bean committed to another TV show. (UK period drama The Frankenstein Chronicles is also a short season show, so the industrious actor can do both.) So this is most welcome news! The first season started off a bit rough, but quickly evolved into the terrific sort of spy TV we expect from Gordon. According to the trade, "there could be some supporting cast changes going into Season 2." That's not surprising considering how radically the events of the first season finale shook up the show's infrastructure.

Nikita Renewed; Missing Cancelled

Good news for Nikita fans! Deadline reports that despite low ratings, the CW has renewed the Maggie Q assassin drama for a third season. I'm very happily surprised. The pick-up comes despite the fact that Nikita has averaged lower ratings than Ringer and Secret Circle, two shows the network did cancel. Additionally (and far less surprisingly), CBS has renewed the hit J.J. Abrams/Jonah Nolan Equalizer-meets-Batman drama Person of Interest, starring Jim Caviezel as a former CIA operative now using his specialized skill set in the private sector (for eccentric billionaire Michael Emerson) to prevent violent crimes and atone for some of the damage he may have caused during his spy career.

Unfortunately, with the good news comes bad news for fans of current spy television: TV Line reports that ABC has cancelled Missing, arguably the best network spy show since Alias. That's really too bad, because Missing has only gotten better since its pilot (reviewed here), and I've been thoroughly enjoying the top-notch action and fabulous European locations week after week. On top of that, Ashley Judd made a much better spy than I ever would have guessed, and the supporting cast is also first rate. Hopefully the first (and only) season will wrap up with a satisfying resolution of some sort. At least the DVDs have already been announced, so spy fans will be able to enjoy this single season for years to come. It's definitely one I'll re-watch from time to time. ABC has also officially cancelled its Sixties-set spying stewardess drama Pan Am. There had been some hope that show might live on despite low ratings in America (which led to it being pulled from the schedule a while ago) because it's very, very popular overseas. (In fact, it just received the coveted Rose d'Or award in Switzerland!) That always seemed like a long shot though.