Today season two of Heels premieres on Starz. The series is set in a close-knit Georgia community and follows a family-owned wrestling promotion and the men and women wrestlers as they try to make it. The series stars Stephen Amell and Alexander Ludwig as brothers and wrestling rivals Jack and Ace. Season two picks up after the success of the Duffy Wrestling League at the South Georgia State fair as they prepare to make a deal with a streaming service and take it national. Meanwhile, rival promotion Florida Wrestling Dystopia’s Gully seeks revenge.

Amell and Ludwig recently spoke with the press about what fans could expect this season. The two talked about their characters’ relationship as brothers in season two with SciFi Vision. “For Jack, I think it's become a little bit less about worrying about Ace or worrying about Staci or worrying about Thomas or the DWL,” Amell told the site. “He's more focusing on handling his own business and taking accountability for his actions, and the way that he's behaved since his father killed himself, which has been, I think, well intentioned, but misguided, and has hurt people. So, this is very much about him just not trying to wave a magic wand [to] make everything better with everyone all at once, but just taking accountability for his actions, specifically with Ace and Staci…which is a fun thing to play.”

“Ace is trying to pick up the pieces,” Ludwig told SciFi Vision. “He's still a complete mess after what happened. There's a huge rift between the brothers. This show [is] not just a wrestling show. It's about family, and it's about identity. Ace is trying to find his identity in the ring and outside of the ring. What I love about this season so much is not only do the women lead the charge, and you get to see that on a whole other front, which is, I think, really exciting with this backdrop, but you get to see the inklings of what this could be with Jack and Ace, how big this actually could be.”

Based on the classic PlayStation game series, the new live-action tv series, Twisted Metal, comes to Peacock starting today. The action comedy stars Anthony Mackie as John Doe, who is given the task of driving a package across the post-apocalyptic wasteland in exchange for the chance at a better life. Along the way he meets Quiet, played by Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Encanto), when she tries to steal his car, and they must work together when they encounter other dangers on the road, including a psycho clown killer who drives an ice cream truck (Joe Seanoa). 

Recently, star Beatriz spoke with SciFi Vision about working on the series, including her familiarity with the game, Quiet’s antagonistic relationship with Doe, working with Mackie on the series, the difficulties in not using her voice for many of the scenes, and more.

“Doma Smo,” the title of The Walking Dead: Dead City’s final episode, means “We are home” in Croatian, and the episode finds all the characters back home, either literally or figuratively. Hershel (Logan Kim) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) return to the Bricks, Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) goes back to New Babylon, and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) becomes, for the second time in his life, the leader of a group of survivors. The Croat (Željko Ivanek), introducing the Dama (Lisa Emery) and Negan to each other, says it is like “mommy and daddy coming together,” and thus he, too, finds himself “home.”

At San Diego Comic Con on July 21, a second season of Dead City was announced, and when I watched the finale some weeks ago, there was no mistaking the creator’s intention that the series continue. The episode is a collection of open ends, the season itself revealed as a kind of prologue to a show in which Negan becomes the swaggering, sarcastic king of New York, giving Morgan the opportunity to do what he does best in the role. But the character’s redemption, systematically and at times clumsily reinforced during Dead City’s first season, remains intact. Negan is visibly repelled by the Croat’s recollections of their days together in the Saviors, and he responds uncooperatively to the Dama when they meet…until she gives him the keys to a box containing one of Hershel’s toes, sliced off by the Croat on her command. The boy grew close to her during his captivity, it seems, and he told her about Negan killing his father. “I could sense in the rest of this story,” she informs Negan, “what he himself couldn’t: that his father’s killer might feel remorseful, responsible, for the boy whose family he destroyed.” If Negan will not work for her running New York, she indicates, she will further harm the boy. She has read him correctly: unable to tolerate that idea, he appears to concede to her demand.

Freeform’s hotly anticipated animated series Praise Petey premieres tonight on Freeform. The new show stars Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek) as Petey, an “it” girl whose well-curated life comes crashing down, forcing her to take on a new challenge and learn what it truly means to be a leader. 

Prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Murphy chatted with journalists about the quirky new series and its hilarious premise.

“When we meet Petey,” Murphy told SciFi Vision, “she's a real New Yorker, a real city girl who thinks she has it all figured out. But unfortunately, she loses her job, her apartment burns down, she breaks up with her boyfriend, and her dead dad bestows a cult upon her. So, she has to move from New York to the south and try to figure out how to be the leader of a cult with no previous experience.”

What Murphy loves most is creator/writer/EP Anna Drezen (Saturday Night Live)’s no-holds-barred approach. “It's so uncensored and so outrageous. It's very, very funny,” she enthused, “but it's also a very smart show, and it's touching on a lot of different relevant themes. So, I think if you have a quirkier sensibility, then this show is going to be very, very, very up your alley.”

***The following contains spoilers for 1.05***

Tonight, AMC aired the penultimate episode of season one of The Walking Dead: Dead City. Karina Ortiz plays the character of Amaia on the series. She, along with her partner Tommaso (Jonathan Higginbotham), were co-leaders of the Manhattan Tribespeople. In tonight’s episode, she discovered that Tommaso was actually the one to betray them to the Croat (Željko Ivanek), although he did it hoping to save them. The events of the episode lead to the deaths of both characters.

Recently, the actress spoke with SciFi Vision about working on the show, including how she got the part, creating her own backstory, working with Higginbotham, what it was like filming her death scene, and much more.

“Let’s face it, the ending is all that matters.” Taken at face value, this line from the penultimate episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City, “Stories We Tell Ourselves,” might suggest a certain cynicism on the part of creator Eli Jorné for his own genre. And indeed, given the pacing of this episode, and the lack of narrative energy in the show thus far, one hopes that the finale next week might go some way to salvaging an otherwise frustratingly stodgy series.

For much of “Stories We Tell Ourselves,” nothing really happens. People walk around - limping, tiptoeing, lurching - and they also run. Two characters we’ve had no reason to care about are lost. Another character we don’t care about tells, unprompted, a personal story to Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), because, one assumes, Jorné couldn’t be bothered to find a more organic way to make the character sympathetic. Regrettably, this unexpected overshare still fails to make us care about him.

The episode deals, at a thematic level, with the “stories we tell ourselves to sleep easier,” as Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) describes them. Those stories, he implies, are essentially falsehoods, and we are prompted to consider the ways in which each character lies to themselves. The Croat (Željko Ivanek)’s lie - to us and to himself - is that he is a villainous mastermind, when in fact he is a fawning, subservient lackey to the Dama (Lisa Emery). Maggie (Lauren Cohan)’s lie appears to be that Negan is a monster who deserves to have his life traded to the Croat for Hershel (Logan Kim)’s, as her real plan is revealed in the closing moments of the episode. Armstrong’s lie is that his work for the Babylon Federation is noble and just: “tranquility and order” are worth achieving at any cost. Tommaso (Jonathan Higginbotham) deceives himself with the belief that betraying his people to the Croat was for their own good. And the lie Negan tells himself? There doesn’t seem to be one, because Negan 2.0 is intended to be a self-aware and emotionally intelligent man who is unafraid to confront his weaknesses. Dead City should try to emulate those qualities if it gets a second season.

Foundation returns today to Apple TV Plus. The series is an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's acclaimed stories and follows a group of exiles as they embark on a journey to rebuild civilization during the collapse of the Galactic Empire where the fate of humanity is at stake.

In the second season, set over a century later, tensions rise throughout the galaxy. As the Cleons, the ruling dynasty, begin to unravel, a vengeful queen secretly plots to bring down the Empire from within. Meanwhile, Hari, Gaal, and Salvor encounter a colony of mentalics with psionic abilities that could profoundly alter psychohistory. Additionally, the Foundation has entered its religious phase, bringing about the Second Crisis: a war against the Empire.

Nobody wins anything in this week’s episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City. Maggie (Lauren Cohan) tries and fails to locate Hershel (Logan Kim), Amaia (Karina Ortiz) and Tommaso (Jonathan Higginbotham) lose a number of their people to walkers because they don’t use an obvious means of escape, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) saves Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) only to be arrested by him moments later, and the Croat (Željko Ivanek) - like the viewers - finds his old mentor a bewilderingly changed man. The episode positions everyone for how the season will ultimately play out, and there is a lot of movement, including a dramatic fight scene in an arena filling rapidly with walkers. There are explosions and haunting choral numbers, lots of jaw clenching and many charged stares. Children, and parenthood, are central to the episode’s themes.

“Kids,” Simon (Steven Ogg) barks at the Croat during the opening flashback, “is a line we do not cross. We all know that.” I sighed, while also wincing at his grammar. Kids are a line the Saviors crossed at Hillside when they beat a sixteen-year-old to death, a line Simon himself crossed, slaughtering the boys at Oceanside without repercussion, and a line Negan crossed when he tried to crush Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs)’ skull like an eggshell in the season 7 finale of The Walking Dead. The opening scene of “Everybody Wins a Prize” is vigorously, determinedly revisionist. To be fair, the franchise has worked hard at Negan’s redemption for years and thrown unfortunates such as his now-abandoned wife Annie (Medhina Senghore) into the mix, purely in the interests of softening his character. Annie’s brutal beating and gang rape were written to allow Negan a sorrowful sigh, a flicker of the lashes that might imply tears as he told Maggie the fate of his wife. If nothing else, The Walking Dead’s sheer doggedness in their quest for his redemption should be acknowledged.

Recently Acorn TV premiered the new romantic crime procedural Cannes Confidential. The six-part international detective series stars French actress Lucie Lucas as Detective Camille Delmasse, who struggles to accept the arrest and sentencing of her ex-Chief of Police father for corruption charges. The series also stars Jamie Bamber as international conman Harry King who teams up with Camille to solve crimes (regardless of whether she wants the help) and may have information that could exonerate her father. Their chemistry becomes complicated by Camille’s colleague Lea Robert (Tamara Marthe), who has a secret crush on Camille.

Bamber recently spoke with SciFi Vision about working on the series, which is now available to stream on Acorn TV.

In the Dead City premiere, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) tells Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) that, for her, there is no moving on from Glenn (Steven Yeun)’s death - the horror, one gathers, as well as the loss. The psychological realism of this is, on the one hand, self-evident. Grief and bereavement are not transient states, but permanent ones. There is no “getting over it” for anyone who has lost someone close to them. Neither, however, is grief static: it evolves, becomes familiar and more manageable. The Walking Dead gave one of Dead City’s main characters a remarkable redemption arc, a development from one of the flagship show’s worst villains to a repentant family man. But it trapped Dead City’s other protagonist in a state of unchanging rage and trauma - as difficult to watch as it is, in some moments, to believe - of which her reaction to Hershel (Logan Kim)’s kidnapping is just the most recent iteration. 

For that reason, among others, Dead City is indubitably, by its halfway point, The Negan Show. Maggie, struggling to cope with misery and fear over her missing son, is so tightly wound as to be robotic at times, even during her most vulnerable moments. By contrast, Negan continues to be sentimental and self-aware - finding a gift for the kidnapped teenager, offering a listening ear to Maggie, and sharing a scene with Ginny (Mahina Napoleon) that will make your teeth ache with its sweetness.