Was Game Change a hit? You betcha!
The Sarah Palin-centric TV-movie was HBO’s most watched original film in nearly eight years, with the premiere showing alone bringing in an average audience of 2.1 million viewers. A total of 3.6 million viewers tuned in to watch one of the weekend’s four airings.
Game Change delivered the pay cabler’s best TV-movie audience 2004’s Something the Lord Made, which premiered to 2.6 million viewers.
Ready for more of today’s TV dish? Well…
• Enrique Murciano is set to return to CSI, EW.com reports. The Without a Trace alum will reprise his role as Detective Carlos Moreno for multiple episodes later this season. Murciano was last seen in the CBS cop drama’s tenth season.
• Lifetime has ordered 20 additional episodes of John Walsh’s crime-fighting series America’s Most Wanted, which currently airs Fridays at 9:00/8:00c.
• ABC has renewed Bachelor Pad for a third season (to air this summer), and this time around the battle is being opened up to fans as well as alumni of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.
• The Closer‘s Raymond Cruz will play a corrupt sheriff in a Season 4 episode of White Collar, per TVGuide.com.
• Spartacus has found its Julius Caesar and Marcus Crassus for Season 3 in Australian actor Todd Lasance and British star Simon Merrells, respectively, EW.com reports.
• Season 2 of Melissa & Joey will kick off ABC Family’s summer lineup with back-to-back new episodes on Wednesday, May 30.
• New Zealand-born actor Antony Starr has been cast as the lead in Alan Ball’s new Cinemax series Banshee, per Deadline. The drama centers on an ex-convict and master thief (Starr) who assumes the identity of a Pennsylvania sheriff and continues to carry out his criminal activities.
• A&E is developing an unscripted reality series from big-screen producer Michael Bay, Deadline reports. Little is known about the potential series, other than it promises to “test the strength of the family unit like never before.”
• SOAPnet will air a Make It or Break It marathon on Sunday, March 25 from 9 am to 7 pm, leading up to the ABC Family drama’s Season 3 premiere March 26. The cabler will also begin broadcasting episodes of Veronica Mars on Saturday, April 7.
• Sofia Vergara will take the stage April 7 as host of Saturday Night Live. Tweeny boppers One Direction are set to join the Modern Family star as musical guests.
• VH1 has given the green light to Ev and Ocho, a new eight-episode docu-series starring NFL star Chad Ochocinco and his fiancée, Basketball Wives star Evelyn Lozada, slated to premiere in Sept. 2012.
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