You’ve got to hand it to that plucky Nashville show: Cancelled by ABC at the end of its fourth season last year, it got picked up by an appropriate new home at CMT. Then its leading lady, Connie Britton, decides she wants out, so her character dies midway through season five. But Variety reports today that even these hurdles didn’t stop the show from getting renewed for its upcoming sixth season on CMT.
It helps that Nashville is currently being run by Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, the vets of shows like Thirtysomething and Once And Again, who are used to juggling multiple characters through a series of interlocking dramas. And drama is something that Nashville has in spades, as Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettierre) fights to get her career back after her life-changing plane crash; grieving single dad Deacon (Charles Esten) attempts to raise Maddie and Daphne, Rayna’s daughters (Lennon and Maisie Stella); Will (Chris Carmack) is now an out gay country star but still has dating woes; and Gunnar (Sam Palladio) and Scarlett (Clare Bowen) continue their relationship merry-go-around because that is how these two will always be, forever and ever, amen. Well, at least it inspires a lot of country songs.
The second half of season five will premiere on June 1, and will include some new cast members, like Hart Of Dixie’s Rachel Bilson, Empire’s Kaitlin Doubleday, and Jeffrey Nordling, fresh off of a very successful turn on Big Little Lies. We only hope he still has that Elvis suit.