Starz (start your free trial!) today revealed the premiere date for Hightown Season 2 and shared the first photos from horror comedy series Shining Vale.
The second season of the critically-acclaimed crime drama Hightown will premiere Sunday, October 17 across all Starz platforms, including at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Starz in the U.S. and Canada, and will air day and date internationally on the STARZPLAY premium streaming platform across Europe, Latin America and Japan.
Starz also released four first-look images from the highly-anticipated Hightown Season 2, from Emmy Award–winner Jerry Bruckheimer and Lionsgate Television and created by Rebecca Cutter (Gotham), who makes her television directorial debut this season.
Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Rachel Morrison (Mudbound, Fruitvale Station) directs two episodes of the ten-episode second season. Lead actress Monica Raymund (Chicago Fire, The Good Wife), Brandon Sonnier (L.A.’s Finest), Radium Cheung (The Sinner), Antonio Negret (Prodigal Son) and Eagle Egilsson (The Wire) also directed this season.
Monica Raymund, James Badge Dale (24, The Kitchen), Riley Voelkel (Roswell, New Mexico, The Originals), Amaury Nolasco (Prison Break, Deception), Atkins Estimond (The Resident, Lodge 49) and Dohn Norwood (Mindhunter, The Sinner) return in their previous roles.
Luis Guzmán (Traffic, Code Black) guest stars as Jorge Cuevas, Frankie’s charmingly hilarious but deadly cousin. Season two guest stars also include Jona Xiao (Gifted, Being Mary Jane) as Daisy, Carlos Gómez (Law & Order True Crime, Madame Secretary) as Rafael Quinones, Mark Boone Junior (Sons of Anarchy, Paradise City) as Petey, Cecil Blutcher (Premature, Random Acts of Flyness) as Vernon and Crystal Lee Brown (Black Lightning, Mindhunter) as Janelle.
In Hightown Season 2, the picture-perfect version of summer on Cape Cod clashes with its off-season reality. Jackie Quinones (Monica Raymund) achieving her dream of becoming a real cop, is out to do some good in this world.
Thrust immediately into the crime wave of deadly carfentanyl flooding the Cape, Jackie is laser-focused on bringing down drug dealer Frankie Cuevas (Amaury Nolasco), the man Jackie holds responsible for the death of her best friend, Junior. For Jackie, it is personal but then again, for Jackie, everything is personal.
When Frankie’s cousin Jorge (Luis Guzmán) joins his operation, he introduces a new level of violence and chaos. With disgraced officer Ray Abruzzo (James Badge Dale) off the force and mired in depression, Jackie finds a new partner in Leslie (Tonya Glanz), the only other female on the force. Through it all, Jackie must walk the tightrope of sobriety as she struggles to stay above an ocean of secrets, betrayal and the shame and failure of her past. Riley Voelkel, Atkin Estimond, and Dohn Norwood also star.
Hightown is created and executive produced by Rebecca Cutter with Gary Lennon executive producing with Jerry Bruckheimer, Jonathan Littman and KristieAnne Reed from Jerry Bruckheimer TV; Ellen H. Schwartz also serves as executive producer.
Shining Vale is a horror comedy about 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 Pat, who’s convinced she’s either depressed or possessed – turns out, the symptoms are exactly the same.
Patricia “Pat” Phelps (Courteney Cox) 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 (Greg Kinnear), 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 move 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.
Cox plays the lead role of Patricia “Pat” Phelps, with Kinnear playing her ever-optimistic husband, Terry Phelps, whose patience and self-control will be tested like never before. Mira Sorvino plays Rosemary, who is either Pat’s alter ego, a split personality, her id, her muse, or a demon trying to possess her.
Dungey plays Kam, Pat’s oldest friend and book editor. Gus Birney and Dylan Gage also star as Pat and Terry’s teenage kids, Gaynor and Jake.
Shining Vale is executive produced by Jeff Astrof from Other Shoe Productions, Sharon Horgan and Clelia Mountford from Merman, Aaron Kaplan and Dana Honor from Kapital Entertainment. Courteney Cox is producer.
Astrof wrote the pilot teleplay, from a story by Horgan & Astrof. The series is produced by Warner Bros. Television and Lionsgate Television in association with Other Shoe Productions, Merman and Kapital Entertainment.