Due to relatively new Turner leadership by Kevin Reilly, who aims to bring edgier fare to networks TNT and TBS, there has been a palpable lack of certainty about what series would continue to have life on the two networks. Thankfully for fans of Murder in the First, that show definitely has a future and we can all look forward to seeing it next year for Season 3.
You can never tell when networks are going to get renewal fever, as some cable channels renew shows before they even debut. Murder in the First got the Season 3 order a little under three months after Season 2 came to its conclusion. Because of the way this show’s narrative works out, audiences haven’t been dealing with any huge cliffhangers, so it was basically just an offseason spent hoping for it to return.
A mixture of serialized and procedural storytelling, Murder in the First dedicates each season to one case, with each episode dealing with the ins and the outs of clues and suspects. It stars Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson as San Francisco homicide detectives Terry English and Hildy Mulligan, respectively, with other cast members that include A.J. Buckley, Ian Anthony Dale, Raphael Strange, Laila Robins and more. Season 1 centered on two initially disparate murders that ended up both dealing with the same person, while Season 2 was a more complicated story and took on a school bus massacre, a cop’s murder and a police force conspiracy. The show has been well received by critics, although some found the second season wasn’t written to handle the subject matter as sharply as it could have been.
This marks yet another success story for co-creator Steven Bochco, whose son Jesse served as a director for both seasons. The elder Bochco has been responsible for such classic series as Hill Street Blues, Doogie Howser, M.D., L.A. Law and NYPD Blue, to name but a few. Yeah, you can throw Capital Critters in there, too. Oddly enough, he also created the 1996 comedy Public Morals, which has nothing to do with the current TNT drama of the same name.
Kevin Reilly has definitely shaken things up for TNT and TBS since he took the job a year ago. Series such as Perception, Proof, King of the Nerds, and Clipped have all come to an end under his reign, and the Sean Bean drama Legends was completely retooled for its Season 2. We’re still waiting to see what happens with the Teen Titans show.
While there’s no specific date set just yet for when Murder in the First Season 3 will premiere, according to Deadline, if TNT execs follow the same pattern of what they’ve done in the past, we can look forward to seeing it pop up in June 2016.
