The Showtime television channel, which at the beginning of the millennium became a rival to HBO in the search for critical acclaim with adult stories, has a clear strategy for the future: to recapture any popular title in its catalog and resurrect it, either in form of spin-offs or sequels. And, after announcing spin-offs for Billions and Dexter, it’s now Weeds and Nurse Jackie that have sequels in development.
Information published by Deadline indicates that Mary-Louise Parker and Edie Falco, the leads of the two series, have committed to these returns and in addition to acting as lead actresses will also executive produce the resulting series. Their role in contemporary culture is clear: they were part of a wave of television antiheroines with which Showtime took advantage of HBO’s lack of interest in female characters to captivate critics and audiences.
In the case of Weeds, it aired between 2005 and 2012 and centered on Nancy Botwin, a widowed housewife in a suburban area who, to maintain her lifestyle, engages in dealing marijuana. Of course, she increasingly got used to living outside the law, as well as her children played by Hunter Parrish and Alexander Gould. In 2009, she was nominated for an Emmy for best comedy and Mary-Louise Parker was nominated for the award three times, always without a statuette.
Edie Falco did win an Emmy for Nurse Jackie in 2010, the year the series was nominated for best comedy. The actress found in this dramatic comedy a way to return to the fore after her run on The Sopranos, but this time without being in the shadow of a man.
The nurse Jackie of the title was the best professional at her hospital in New York but she also had a problem: she had an addiction and used to work to the top of pills. Among the awards that the series won, the Emmy also stands out for Merritt Wever as Zoey, the nurse with the opposite attitude to Jackie, always being optimistic and with a childish attitude.
Regarding the development of these television resurrections, Nurse Jackie has her future showrunners in Abe Sylvia and Liz Flahive, who had already worked on the original series broadcast between 2009 and 2015. For Weeds, on the other hand, a change of scenery is coming: Lionsgate Television, the studio behind the series, has offered this revival to Christian Torpe, creator of the Danish series Rita, which would place Nancy Botwin in Copenhagen.
Showtime, which in the United States is no longer just a premium television channel but also forms part of Paramount’s offering, is in a clear move to raise the profile of the platform among the public by recovering intellectual properties that have contributed to forge the image of the channel.
Among the projects underway, possible Dexter prequel series around iconic characters from the fictional universe such as Dexter himself or the Trinity Killer played by John Lithgow in the original series. In addition, the story presented in Dexter: New Blood could continue with Harrison (Jack Alcott), Dexter’s son, as the protagonist.
From Billions, Showtime is eyeing the possibility of producing four spinoff series: Billions: Miami focused on the men behind the cryptocurrency rush; Billions: London about Europe’s financial capital; Millions about the promises of the financial sector in Manhattan, and Trillions as a drama about the richest families on the planet.