Another Agent Carter Promo

ABC has released another promo for the new 10-episode season of Marvel's Agent Carter, which premieres Tuesday, January 5, at 9/8c. And, based on these 30 seconds of footage, it looks like it will be every bit as great as the first season!

Agent Carter Season 2 Premiere Date Set (UPDATED)

Agent Carter returns Tuesday, January 5, 2016 at 9/8c with a 2-hour season premiere, it was announced yesterday. (UPDATE: The premiere has now been pushed back to the 19th because of the State of the Union address.) This is the exciting time of year when ABC's still lackluster contemporary Marvel spy series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (I can't be the only one who thinks getting Inhuman super powers just made Skye more annoying!) yields way to the infinitely better period Marvel spy series Agent Carter, starring the irrepressibly charming Hayley Atwell. This season Peggy Carter relocates to Los Angeles and finds 1949 Tinseltown teeming with noirish plots and conspiracies in the early days of the Cold War. Atwell is joined once again by James D’Arcy as Edwin Jarvis, Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, Bridget Regan as the proto-Black Widow "Dottie," Chad Michael Murray as Agent Jack Thompson and Enver Gjokaj as former agent Daniel Sousa, now serving as chief of S.H.I.E.L.D. precursor SSR. There are also plenty of new cast members this season, including Lotte Verbeek as Ana Jarvis, Ken Marino as mob boss Joseph Manfredi, and Kurtwood Smith as Vernon Masters. Agent Carter will run through March 1, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will return on March 8. Agent Carter: Season 1 is available on Blu-ray and DVD exclusively through Amazon.

Agent Carter Expands in Second Season

Agent Carter star Hayley Atwell appeared at a comic convention in Houston this weekend, and MCU Exchange (via Dark Horizons) has the whole Q&A on video. The big news she revealed is that the second season of Agent Carter will run for ten episodes instead of eight, like Season 1. Asked if Lyndsy Fonseca (Nikita) would be returning for this season as Peggy Carter's actress roommate Angie, Atwell said that she was not yet confirmed, but Fonseca was a pleasure to work with and she hoped she'd be back. She also confirmed what we already knew, that the second season would be switching coasts, relocating from New York to Los Angeles. Once again Agent Carter is expected to bridge the two halves of the season of ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. More Agent Carter is a great thing! The first season was a wonderful period spy show.

New Details on Agent Carter's Upcoming Second Season

Only days ago we learned, happily, that Marvel's excellent period spy series Agent Carter had been renewed for a second season on ABC. EW has more details on that second season. Once more, it will be an 8-episode arc, bridging the fall and spring halves of the contemporary-set Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. But Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell, Restless) will be relocating in her second season from New York to L.A. What this means for the supporting cast from S.H.I.E.L.D. predecessor SSR's Big Apple office remains to be seen. Personally, I would hope to see at least some of Peggy's surviving colleagues return. There were some good characters in the group (particularly Enver Gjokaj and Chad Michael Murray). It might make sense for Peggy's roommate Angie (Nikita's Lynsy Fonseca) to move to the City of Angels with her, pursuing her acting career. I'm sure Howard Stark has West Coast residences, so it's possible his loyal butler Jarvis (James D'Arcy) could continue aiding Peggy, though it's probably unlikely that Stark himself will show up this year as Dominic Cooper (Fleming) has been cast as the lead on the AMC series Preacher. One familiar face I'm fully expecting to see return is Bridget Regan (Legend of the Seeker) as Peggy's Soviet counterpart and presumable forerunner of Black Widow from the USSR's assassin factory the Red Room. But I suspect that with the change of locale will come a pretty big shake-up in the supporting cast. While we might not know the cast, here's what we do know about next season from EW:

Dedicated to the fight against new atomic age threats in the wake of World War II, Peggy must now journey from New York City to Los Angeles for her most dangerous assignment yet. But even as she discovers new friends, a new home — and perhaps even a new love — she’s about to find out that the bright lights of the post-war Hollywood mask a more sinister threat to everyone she is sworn to protect.

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.

Marvel's Period Spy Drama Agent Carter Debuts Tonight on ABC

The new season of spy TV kicks off tonight with the premiere of Marvel's period spy drama Agent Carter on ABC. The 8-part miniseries, a spin-off of sorts from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., stars the incomparable Hayley Atwell (The Prisoner, Any Human Heart) in her second 1940s-set spy saga (following the superior William Boyd adaptation Restless) reprising her role as Agent Peggy Carter from the Captain America films and the Marvel One-Shot short film Agent Carter. (She also appeared in that role in flashbacks on two episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. last fall, and will play the part again on the big screen in Ant-Man later this year.) Besides being a part of the larger juggernaut known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Agent Carter is notable for the period in which it's set. We've seen very few spy series so far set in the nascent days of the Cold War following the conclusion of WWII. It will be interesting to see to what degree the period even plays a role on the show, as geopolitics are less likely to figure into storylines than larger-than-life Marvel comic book plots about alien technology and the like. Either way, I'm expecting the show to be a lot of fun! Atwell is a fantastic actress, and she's supported by a good roster of talent as well including Dominic Cooper (Fleming), Lyndsy Fonseca (Nikita), Bridget Regan (Legend of the Seeker), Shea Whigham (American Hustle), Chad Michael Murray (Fruitvale Station) and Enver Gjokaj (Dollhouse). Behind the scenes, Louis D'Esposito (Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter) directed the pilot, and Joe Russo, co-director of one of the year's best spy movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, helmed the second episode. Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas (Reaper) serve as showrunners. ABC airs the first two episodes tonight (in the usual Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. timeslot while that show is on winter hiatus), starting at 8pm Eastern/Pacific.

Tradecraft: ABC Sets Premiere Date for Agent Carter

ABC's forthcoming period spy drama set in the Marvel Universe, Agent Carter, was commissioned as an 8-episode miniseries designed to bridge the gap between the fall and spring installments of the network's modern-day Marvel spy show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Today, ABC announced when that will happen. Deadline reports that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will air its mid-season finale on December 9, and then, after the holidays, Agent Carter will premiere in its timeslot on January 6, 2015, and air over consecutive weeks. Then Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns on March 3 for an uninterrupted spring run. Agent Carter stars Hayley Atwell (Restless, The Prisoner), reprising her role from Captain America: The First Avenger and (briefly) Captain America: The Winder Soldier as Peggy Carter, agent of S.S.R. (forerunner to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). On the show, Agent Carter must contend with threats both earthly and otherworldly in the nascent days of the Cold War, as well as the systemic sexism in postwar America. Atwell should be well suited to the role, having previously played a secret agent in 1940s America in the miniseries Restless, based on an excellent spy novel by James Bond continuation author William Boyd (Solo). It was also announced this year that Atwell will cameo as Agent Carter in the 2015 Marvel feature film Ant-Man. That movie's prologue is said to take place in the 1960s and feature S.H.I.E.L.D. agents of that era, so presumably Peggy will be among them.

Agent Carter Gets Her Own Comic

We know that Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. precursor SSR, is getting her own TV show this winter, spun off from the Marvel One Shot short film Agent Carter. And we got a brief, tantalizing sneak peek when Atwell made a guest appearance on a 1940s-set prologue to the second season premiere of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Now, appropriately, the Captain America supporting character will finally have a Marvel comic of her own to back it up. Newsarama reports that Marvel announced the five-issue miniseries Operation S.I.N., written by Kathryn Immonen and illustrated by Rich Ellis, at this weekend's New York Comic Con. According to editor Jon Moisan, "People can expect a badass Cold War-era spy story featuring Peggy Carter and Howard Stark.... This series is very much a spy story, but done in a way that only Marvel can. And I don’t want to spill too much, but someone definitely fights a bear." Sounds good to me! I'm always down for more Cold War era spy comics. Operation S.I.N. will also somehow tie in to this past summer's big Nick Fury-centric Marvel crossover event Original Sin. The comic debuts in January 2015, timed to coincide with the eight-episode Agent Carter TV show.

Tradecraft: Hayley Atwell and Michelle Dockery Team Up For BBC Spy Miniseries

Captain America's Hayley Atwell (the best part of that lousy Prisoner remake, which she later disowned) and Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery (seen briefly in Hanna) are teaming up with Michael Gambon (Page Eight), Charlotte Rampling (The Avengers episode "The Superlative Seven") and Rufus Sewell (The Tourist) for a BBC spy thriller based on a novel by future James Bond author William Boyd (Any Human Heart). Wow! I like those elements. (For the record, I'd happily back either Atwell or Dockery as future Bond Girls.) Deadline reports that Boyd has penned the screenplay for Restless, based on his own novel of the same name. He also adapted his novel Any Human Heart in 2010; that miniseries also starred Atwell and featured Tobias Menzies as Ian Fleming. Boyd, who was announced earlier this year as the next James Bond continuation novelist, has written screenplays that ended up starring three different 007 actors: Mister Johnson, with Pierce Brosnan, A Good Man in Africa, with Sean Connery (as well as Diana Rigg!), and Sword of Honor, with Daniel Craig.

I haven't read Boyd's 2006 novel Restless, but it seems to be well-regarded. According to the trade blog, "Dockery plays a young woman in 1979 [in the book, it's '76] who learns that her mother (Rampling) has been living a double life and is really a former spy for the British Secret Service. In flashbacks to 1939 Paris, Atwell plays Rampling’s younger self who’s recruited into the service by and falls in love with Sewell’s spymaster. After a crucial mission collapses, she must go into hiding, but 30 years later wants to resurface and enlists her daughter to track down her former lover, now played by Gambon." Sounds good! The 3-hour drama is co-produced by BBC One, The Sundance Channel (where it will presumably air in the United States) and Endor Productions. Shooting is scheduled to take place this summer in South Africa and the United Kingdom.