Seven months after giving an eight episode series order to the horror comedy series Shining Vale, starring Courteney Cox, Starz has now announced (via Deadline) when they’re going to start airing those episodes. Shining Vale will premiere on Sunday, March 6th at 10pm across all Starz platforms in the U.S. and Canada, and will air day and date on StarzPlay across Europe, Latin America, and Japan.
Created by Jeff Astrof and Sharon Horgan, the show will follow
a dysfunctional family that moves from the city to a small town into a house in which terrible atrocities have taken place. But no one seems to notice except for Patricia “Pat” Phelps (Cox), who’s convinced she’s either depressed or possessed – turns out, the symptoms are exactly the same. Pat is a former “wild child” who rose to fame by writing a raunchy, drug-and-alcohol-soaked women’s empowerment novel (a.k.a. lady porn). Fast forward 17 years later, Pat is clean and sober but totally unfulfilled. She still hasn’t written her second novel, she can’t remember the last time she had sex with her husband, and her teenage kids are at that stage where they want you dead. She was a faithful wife until her one slip-up: she had a torrid affair with the hot, young handyman who came over to fix the sink while Terry was at work. In a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, she and Terry cash in all their savings and move the family from the “crazy” of the city to a large, old house in the suburbs that has a storied past of its own. Everyone has their demons, but for Pat Phelps, they may be real.
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Cox is joined in the cast by Greg Kinnear as Pat’s husband Terry; Merrin Dungey as Pat’s friend and book editor Kam; Gus Birney and Dylan Gage as Pat and Terry’s teenage kids Gaynor and Jake; Mira Sorvino as Rosemary, “who is either Pat’s alter ego, a split personality, her id, her muse, or a demon trying to possess her”; and Judith Light as Joan, “Pat’s Lithium-infused mother, who has long battled mental illness, and her daughter… (who she blames for her mental illness). Joan is vain and hyper-critical, taking any opportunity to recall her prized youth, or belittle Pat. Of all the horrors that Pat faces, becoming Joan is the most frightening – and most real.”
Shining Vale is being produced by Lionsgate and Warner Bros. Television, in association with Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment, Astrof’s Other Shoe Productions, and Horgan and Clelia Mountford’s Merman. Astrof, Horgan, Mountford, Kaplan, and Dana Honor are all executive producers, while Cox is a producer. The pilot episode was directed and executive produced by Dearbhla Walsh.
Christina Davis of Starz said this will be “a smart, chilling, and funny series” that “blends comedy and horror brilliantly throughout”.
I’m intrigued, so I’ll definitely be checking out Shining Vale when it starts airing next year.
