John Landgraf, President and General Manager of FX Networks, kicked-off the net's half-day TCA festivities on Tuesday with a number of announcements regarding its original scripted series.

Landgraf announced that Nip/Tuck has wrapped filming on the first eight of 22 episodes currently ordered for the series’ fifth season, which launches in January 2009. And FX has ordered 19 more episodes, which will be the series’ final episodes, bringing the total number of episodes in the series to 100. The show will end its run in early 2011. Also announced was that Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy will stay with the series through its finale. FX’s signature series The Shield will launch its seventh and final season beginning Sept. 2.

Landgraf said Nip/Tuck's end plan fits into a larger discussion at the network as to the shelf life of cable series in general. “I joined the channel five years ago,” Landgraf told journalists assembled for FX’s executive session.

“At that time The Shield was just airing its third season, and I started to have conversations with [creator] Shawn Ryan, at that time, about the optimal length for a basic cable series. It’s a different model than, say, Law & Order. Theoretically that show could go on indefinitely.”

But many of FX's series are serialized dramas rather than procedurals, Landgraf said, adding, “These are not shows about the case of the week. They are shows that tell large, sweeping, serialized stories about characters who change and grow. They set up conflicts and they need to resolve those conflicts.

So over a series of years, Shawn [Ryan] and I, and others, talked about The Shield, and ultimately came to decisions about what the large interior structure of the show would be, narratively--not just within episodes, but across multiple seasons-- and the notion that we would finish after seven years.

“And I think that decision was a big decision, and kind of a fateful decision for FX and other cable channels that do serialized drama. It’s really hard to find a great show. It’s really hard to find a successful show. To find shows that are both creatively excellent and successful is like searching for a needle in a haystack. And it’s an especially large challenge when you have serialized shows because, I believe they can’t go on forever. I believe they have a diminishing return. I believe they wear out their welcome when they stay longer."

Rescue Me will return in the spring of 2009, with Michael J. Fox guest starring in four episodes beginning with the season premiere. Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden will join the cast of sophomore drama Damages, while season one regular Ted Danson will return for several episodes. And former Sopranos and Joey co-star Drea de Matteo will reprise her role on the pilot of upcoming drama Sons of Anarchy in at least two more episodes.

In addition, the fourth season-premiere of sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will begin on Thursday, Sept. 18, with 13 new episodes. After the season concludes, 39 more original episodes will go into production, bringing the total to 84. FX has also ordered a new scripted sitcom called Testees, which focuses on two friends in their 30s who earn their living as medical guinea pigs. It debuts on Thursday, Oct. 9 at 10:30 p.m. ET.

Landgraf also said he hasn’t made a decision about the fate of the cable net’s struggling sophomore drama The Riches.

Landgraf noted that ratings for the series, starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver, fell 44 percent from season one to season two, saying, “That looks to me like the core audience is much smaller, and that even though the show continued to grow creatively, there was a significant amount of rejection of the show from season one to season two.”

Despite Landgraf’s continued support of the show’s creative accomplishments, he said he feels somewhat torn as to whether or not to renew the series. “One of the things that I’m always struggling to balance is, do I stay with something like The Riches, that I’m really proud of, and that has some real strengths and some real weaknesses, or do I not do that, and do I open up a slot for something that maybe we’ haven’t even heard the pitch for yet?”

Whether or not The Riches makes it to a third season, Landgraf said the show reflects FX’s aggressive development strategy. “When you aim high, it’s really, really challenging, because we’re trying, each time we put a series on the air, or ultimately choose to work with somebody and their idea, not to replicate a tried and true formula…We’re literally trying to put a show on the air that’s quite original and quite different,” he said. “Whether you personally liked The Riches or you liked Dirt or Over There, or any of the shows we put on the air, I think you would agree that each time we put a show on the air, we’ve allowed the writer to almost wholly reinvent the genre...

And I’m really proud of that, and I think it’s inevitable, therefore, that we’re not going to bat a thousand. Nobody in television bats a thousand, and certainly we’re not [going to] with this kind of risk taking and experimentation.”

(to read an updated list of programming from the FX TCA panel, read on)

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On the FX Panel Front:
 
DAMAGES
 
-The Premise:
Season two of the legal drama will continue to follow the turbulent lives of high-stakes litigator Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) and her bright and ambitious young protégé Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne)
 
-Who Was on the Panel:
Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, Tate Donovan, William Hurt, Timothy Olyphant; and executive producers Todd Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman.
 
-The Scoop:
The sophomore year of Damages, according to Daniel Zelman:
 
“Season two will begin with Ellen cooperating with the Feds to try to get dirt on Patty Hewes.  So Ellen is acting as an informant or a corroborating witness when she goes back to work for Patty. In terms of new characters, William Hurt is playing Daniel Purcell, who enters Patty's life in the first episode. He's in trouble. We're not exactly sure why he's in trouble, but he needs some form of protection and legal assistance and he comes to Patty for that. And it appears as though they have some past. What that past is will be uncovered as the season progresses.
 
Then we have a new character named Wes Krulik played by Timothy Olyphant. Ellen meets Wes in grief counseling early in the season and he's sort of a mysterious figure who comes to be a confident of Ellen's. What the future of their relationship will be is something that is left for the audience to guess at and wonder about.
 
We also have Tate Donovan as Tom Shayes, who is still trying in many ways to get out from underneath Patty's shadow, and Marcia Gay Harden is a very high-powered attorney for a company. We're not sure what exactly that company is, but we feel like they're behind some wrongdoing and Marcia will go up against Patty very early in the season.”
 
-The Reality:
While the new characters for season two sound diverse, Damages is an older-skewing drama that is far from a mass appeal hit. Expected Emmy attention has granted it a two-season renewal, but it is not the type of traditional “sexy” FX series that has water-coolers buzzing…at least not yet.
 
-Did You Know?:
Highly touted Glenn Close has been nominated for an Academy Award five times, but has yet to take home the golden statuette.  She has, however, won one Emmy Award to-date (with nine nominations in total) for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special in 1995 for Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story.
 


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SONS OF ANARCHY
 
-The Premise:
Set in Charming, California, an organized crime family and the adult son who has reached a crossroads in his life is the focus of this upcoming drama about a modern day motorcycle club. 
 
-Who Was on the Panel:
Charlie Hunam, Katey Sagal, Ron Perlan, Maggie Siff, and executive producers Kurt Sutter, Art Linson and John Linson.
 
-The Scoop:
According to John Landgraf, Sons of Anarchy has three tiers: generational family drama, crime drama, and an ongoing story laced with social commentary.  It’s unlike anything we have ever seen before. 
 
According to Kurt Sutter:
 
“The thing that attracted me to the world and these guys was this amazing camaraderie. There was this amazing sort of familial "I'd kill for my brother" bond that all of them had that was just somewhat endearing. And that, juxtaposed against the lifestyle, just was really sort of fascinating material.”
 
-The Reality:
Historically, I have no recollection of a series focusing on a motorcycle club. So, I personally am interested to see how Sons of Anarchy unfolds. But my concern about this very topic is the potential audience interest.  Will the Ordinary Joe (or Josephine) really tune in on a regular basis to watch this segment of society? While I would like to think so, Sons of Anarchy could be facing an uphill battle to succeed.
 
-Did You Know?:
In between Married…With Children and 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, the always busy Katey Sagal starred in a short-lived NBC sitcom in the fall of 2000 called Tucker.
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THE SHIELD
 
-The Premise:
The final season of the long-running crime drama will focus on the tension between a group of corrupt but effective cops led by Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and a city councilman with his own political agenda.
 
-Who Was on the Panel:
Michael Chiklis (via satellite), CCH Pounder, Benito Martinez, Catherine Dent, Walton Goggins, Michael Jace, Jay Karnes, David Marciano, Benito Martinez, Cathy Cahlin Ryan, David Rees Snell and executive producer Shawn Ryan.
 
-The Scoop:
While I might sometimes be a bit skeptical when a network executive speaks, I second the following commentary from John Landgraf about The Shield:
 
“I think The Shield has probably been the single most important series in the young history of ad-supported cable television. It's a show that has achieved so many firsts, it would take too long to go through every one of them. Television critics were the first champions of this series, but in spite of the nearly universal acclaim that it received, there were many people in our industry who believed there was no way this show could succeed for a variety of reasons.
 
While Shawn Ryan would be the first to tell you that The Shield owes a debt of gratitude to The Sopranos, Shawn and the cast deserve an incredible amount of credit for doing something unique and distinctive and redefining a cop genre on television that many believe was stale.
 
For the past six seasons, week in and week out, The Shield has delivered episodes as consistently great as any other show on TV and it's my personal belief that 25 years from now people will look back at this show, The Shield, as one of the finest drama series of this era of television.
 
-The Reality:
Although Shawn Ryan was mum on how The Shield will end, he did not rule out a potential theatrical.  But would there really be that much interest in revisiting this crime drama on the big screen?  This is not, after all, the more female-driven, mass appeal Sex and the City.
 
-Did You Know?:
Michael Chiklis has certainly made a name for himself in the world of crime dramas care of The Shield and ABC’s The Commish from 1991 to 1995.  But on NBC in 2000 he failed to convince the audience he was a lovable sitcom Dad in short-lived Daddio (which briefly led into Katey Sagal’s aforementioned Tucker).

--Marc Berman