According to The Hollywood Reporter, Industry has officially been renewed for a fourth season.

The news comes as no surprise, as the British investment banking drama enjoyed explosive ratings growth in recent weeks.

In fact, THR reports that Industry is up a whopping 40 percent over its season two performance and is now averaging 1.6 million viewers cross-platform.

Obviously, its audience is still on the smaller side, but if you’ve been reading our Industry reviews, you know we couldn’t be happier about this renewal!

And if you’ve been sleeping on this show, it’s official time to wake up. There’s no better way to fill the Succession-shaped hole in your heart!

Black Mirror Season 7 Cast Revealed

Speaking of returning British favorites, it’s almost time to delve back into the dark side of modern technology with a new season of Black Mirror.

The show’s seventh season is currently filming, and while it won’t arrive on Netflix until 2025, we just got our first glimpse at the cast, and it is an embarrassment of riches. Check it out:

• Awkwafina (Jackpot)
• Milanka Brooks (Mum And I Don’t Talk Anymore)
• Peter Capaldi (Criminal Record)
• Emma Corrin (Deadpool and Wolverine)
• Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
• Rashida Jones (Sunny)

• Billy Magnussen (Road House)
• Cristin Milioti (The Penguin)
• Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids)
• Issa Rae (Barbie)
• Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish)
• Jimmi Simpson (Westworld)
• Harriet Walter (Succession)

See what we’re saying?

It’s like a freakin’ TV all-star game. You’ve got a good mix of living legends (Giamatti, Capaldi, Ross Walter) and exciting up-and-comers (Magnussen, Simpson, Corrin).

Issa Rae, Rashida Jones, and Cristin Milioti are all on the verge of earning “I’ll watch anything with her in it” status, with the latter appearing in two of the anticipated genre projects in recent memory (the buzz surrounding Max’s The Penguin couldn’t be bigger).

In other words, the cast for Black Mirror’s seventh outing has us fully psyched.

Here’s hoping showrunner Charlie Brooker and his writing staff can rise to the occasion!

Beyond the Gates Gets New Title, Logline, Cast

And finally, we’ve got big news regarding CBS‘ first Black soap opera in 35 years.

The show formerly known as The Gates is now titled Beyond the Gates. Perhaps the network didn’t want to create the impression that the series would center around the messy divorce between Bill and Melinda.

Anyway, today’s title change came with the show’s first casting announcement.

Three daytime vets lead the way, as Tamra Tunie (Law & Order: SVU, As the World Turns), Daphnee Duplaix (One Life to Live), and Karla Mosley (The Bold and the Beautiful) will anchor this historic project.

We also got our first official description of the show’s premise:

“Beyond the Gates is set in a leafy Maryland suburb just outside of Washington D.C., and in one the most affluent African American counties in the United States,” reads the logline.

“Here you’ll find a posh gated community with winding tree-lined streets and luxurious mansions to call home.

“At the center of this community are the Duprees, a powerful and prestigious multi-generational family that is the very definition of Black royalty.”

The show is produced by CBS Studios and the NAACP.

And while there’s sure to be plenty of soapy scandal, the series’ goal is to provide a positive portrayal of Black families — something that’s too seldom seen on television these days.

Over to you, TV fanatics! Are you excited about this new addition to the daytime landscape?

Or maybe you’re pumped about another thrilling season of Industry?

Hit the comments section below to share your thoughts!

The post Fanatic Feed: Industry Renewed For Season 4, Black Mirror Season 7 Cast Revealed, and More appeared first on TV Fanatic.

On the other hand, too many shows have fallen into the trap of celebrity worship with their cameos.

Having cast members gawk and gape at their celebrity crush as if to reinforce the celebrity's prestige while doing nothing for the universe we enjoy is a waste of talent.

For this list of the top TV cameos worth celebrating, we will focus on iconic cameo appearances that gave the show some unforgettable moments that made TV history.

Seinfeld Cast, Curb Your Enthusiasm

What better way to give Seinfeld the better ending many feel it deserved than by bringing back the cast and the original set and doing a bit of self-parody?

Bonus points for Larry David reuniting with Jerry once more on the series finale of Curb to repackage the heinous jail "Finale."

Only this time, it was done with a sarcastic commentary on the show's ode to misery.

Matt Berry, Fallout

It's hard to pinpoint just one memorable cameo appearance in Fallout since the post-apocalyptic tragicomedy is filled with bizarre cameos.

With roles that are disconcertingly absurd (comparable to all the heads in Futurama), Matt Berry of The IT Crowd and What We Do in the Shadows fame makes the most impact.

Celebrity Sebastian Leslie has sold the rights to his voice likeness to General Atomics International to use it for their Mr. Handy line of robots.

Leslie was underpaid for his voiceover work, and robots used his voice to do the most unspeaking things! What a nightmare for a voiceover actor.

Ricky Gervais, The Office

It's hard to imagine the egos of Michael Scott and David Brent coexisting in the same company and on the same show.

No wonder The Office fans geeked out when the unthinkable happened, and both Dundler Mifflin and Wernham Hogg bosses finally met — and got along.

It was the culmination of cringe-worthy British and American comedies finally being awkward together.

John Lithgow, Dexter

Long after he masticated scenery as the alien-man Dick Solomon (doing comedy as subtle as ALF on a binger), John Lithgow did the unthinkable – and for a moment was no doubt the envy of every typecasted actor.

He outperformed his best comedy work by taking on the irredeemable and psychopathic role of Arthur Mitchell, The Trinity Killer.

The brilliance of Lithgow's work here is that he doesn't entirely play Mitchell straight.

He uses comedy and menace to keep the audience watching and grimacing at what he would do next.

Tom Baker, Doctor Who

Dr. Who is such a multi-decade institution.

It's hard to imagine the show ever pulling these wide-reaching parts together for any reunion.

Yet, when Tom Baker returned to Dr. Who on the 50th-anniversary episode, that's what we got.

We saw a cameo from one of the most famous doctors, along with some other cameos, including Matt Smith, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy.

David Duchovny, The Larry Sanders Show

Long before celebrities became demonic versions of themselves in the 2010 era, The Larry Sanders Show of the 1990s was the first to introduce us to celebrity caricature appearances.

This was back at a time when reality TV was ghettoized to daytime trash television, and celebrities paid millions to avoid any bad press.

Therefore, to see celebrities walking the line between reality and fiction and parodying their narcissism and psychosis was ahead-of-its-time comedy.

David Duchovny developing an aggressive crush on Larry is the standout 1990s cameo.

Peter Boyle, The X-Files, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"

Speaking of David Duchovny and The X-Files, Peter Boyle (before coming to modern fame in Everybody Loves Raymond) was the talk of the town after playing Clyde Bruckman.

Bruckman is a real psychic who is cursed with the ability to see people's deaths in advance.

The episode's mix of comedy, horror, and tragedy received some of the show's best reviews, highest ratings, and an Emmy win for writer Darin Morgan and guest star Peter Boyle.

Frank Vincent, The Sopranos

The Sopranos was another show that whacked and buried the shark when it came to cameo appearances.

It was a very 2000s prestige thing – to be cast as a bad guy in The Sopranos and meet an untimely death.

While many came and went, including Steve Buscemi and Joe Pantoliano, who can argue that Frank Vincent as Phil Leotardo was one of the most hated Sopranos villains?

The fact that he was also one of Goodfellas' most memorable loudmouths only legitimized The Sopranos as gangster show canon.

Brendan Fraser, Scrubs

Brendan Fraser plays Ben Sullivan.

He was Perry Cox's brother-in-law and gave a tour-de-force performance eliciting laughs and cries as the story arc progressed over a few seasons.

The final goodbye in Scrubs: "My Screw Up" is TV comedy at its most ruthlessly painful, and we finally see a chink in Dr. Cox's armor of cynicism.

Miley Cyrus, Black Mirror

Black Mirror is just a virtual rolodex for movie studios that are all out of original ideas.

Before the horror comedy M3gan came out, we had the delightful "Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too" episode, which told the same story of an out-of-control Chucky-esque doll who malfunctions and goes on a killing spree.

Miley Cyrus plays herself as well as the voice of the Ashley Too robot.

While the episode pokes fun at celebrity culture, AI, and Cyrus's overexposure, what's groundbreaking is that it's arguably the first Black Mirror episode with a happy ending.

While the episode might be polarizing to fans now, when it first debuted in 2019, it was a knockout — all the more so for predicting the triumph of AI in a pre-COVID world of coddled avatars.

James Spader, The Practice

James Spader has been freaking people out for decades, but it took a star-making role on The Practice for him to shine on mainstream television.

As Alan Shore, a verbose, self-important, but ultimately chaotic moral authority, he survived the wreckage of The Practice's final season.

He used his cameo as a pilot launch for Boston Legal.

The repercussions of James Spader's first TV performance can still be felt in subsequent shows like Blacklist.

The Boys

Two moments made Eric Kripke's superhero farce, The Boys, rise above the mediocrity of just another superhuman soap opera.

The outstanding performance by Antony Starr as Homelander and the madcap anti-cameo appearance by Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy in season 2.

Jensen Ackles shines as a WWII-era hero who can't fathom modern culture.

But his parody of toxic masculinity stabs at the heart of every Supernatural fan who still recognizes some of Dean's boyish mannerisms in the empty-headed and emotionally decayed face of Soldier Boy.

Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman, The Last of Us

It took The Last of Us just a few episodes to pick up on one of The Walking Dead's most blatant flaws.

Namely, the recurring theme that survivalism was all that mattered in a doomed world.

With Bill and Frank's romantic comedy/tragedy side quest, The Last of Us reminded viewers that love can win in the end, and life is all about building good memories before the inevitable.

Amazingly, the show transcends politics and finds the humanity in all of us, even in a world where every man is for himself.

How unfortunate people still see it as a "woke" episode when it's a timeless and genderless contemplation of life.

Leighton Meester, The Orville

How strange and upsetting that The Orville, a successful and nostalgic tribute to Trekkie low-conflict storytelling, still hasn't returned from the black hole that is "on hiatus."

Still, one of the show's best storylines was the interdimensional romance between the simulated Laura Huggins and Lt. Gordon Malloy, who fell in love with an AI based on a time capsule.

The romance's ending is bleak but perfectly logical.

This is a testament to Leigton and Scott Grimes's acting ability, which adds pathos to an utterly trippy writing experiment.

Cast of Twin Peaks, Psych

Psych may not have won Emmys, but there was no Emmy for silly old-school TV reunions.

While reuniting the cast of Twin Peaks in a reincarnated "Dual Spires" existence wasn't the only reunion the show tried (Clue, anybody?), it perfectly reflects the show's spirit—one half bickering bromance, the other half homages to much better shows and movies.

It's very much the spirit of 2006-2014.

Liza Minnelli, Arrested Development

Liza Minnelli was so good in Arrested Development, and in the early 2000s, she hardly stood out among an ensemble cast and spectacular alums guest stars.

However, playing the main rival of Lucille Bluth, Lucille Austero, Liza Minnelli gave one of her career-best performances.

She managed to play Lucille 2 as a bumbling, heart-on-her-sleeve yutz, one who stubbornly resisted sinking to the depths of Hell that was Lucille Bluth's morals and who found a silver lining in what very little anybody gave her.

While in the end, that cost her everything (the series finale was surprisingly dark), Liza channeled her mother and walked the yellow brick road to find and keep Lucille 2's sanity.

Bebe Neuwirth, Frasier

Very few shows utilize guest stars to their fullest potential, and in the case of Frasier, Bebe Neuwirth shows up as Lilith (Frasier's ex-wife) solely as chaotic energy.

She also lives up to her Hellish name, as every appearance brings conflict, conflagration, and then exhausted resolution.

She couldn't help but shape the Frasier universe every time she appeared.

If only more shows treated cameo guest appearances as wild cards instead of stunt casting.

Sammy Davis Jr., All in the Family

Sammy Davis Jr.'s appearance on All in the Family was a historical event, not only because of Sammy's fame but also because it was one of the first sitcoms to mock the stupidity of racism and get huge laughs doing it.

Norman Lear, as a liberal, was so beyond the snark of closeted racists.

He had heard it all and was bored of hammering the same points he had already made and that other sitcoms had begun riffing on.

He created Archie Bunker as a parody of old-world values, the laughing stock of a generation long gone.

With Sammy's Visit, he simultaneously denounced racism while also finding vulnerability in Archie's character and enough humor to record the most extended and loudest studio audience laugh in history.

Suzanne Pleshette, Newhart

It was a stroke of genius for Walter White (Bryan Cranston) to "wake up" as Hal Wilkerson of Malcolm in the Middle in a YouTube comedy short following the end of Breaking Bad.

At the time, however, many millennials didn't realize this was an homage to Bob Newhart's gag from his second show, Newhart.

In the series finale, Bob wakes up in another universe — the first one he created in The Bob Newhart Show with Suzanne Pleshette.

You might think only a man as psychologically adept as Bob could create a mind-blowing concept and make it funny.

You'd be wrong, though, because famously, his real-life wife first suggested the idea, as she said so much about the second universe was "inexplicable."

Why not just combine universes when all logic has been lost?

Michael Jackson, "The Simpsons"

How can we explain to Gen Zers the cultural significance of Michael Jackson appearing on The Simpsons at the peak of his career and the creative peak of one of television's all-time greats?

It was an event that predated celebrity stunt casting, at least in animation, and that predicted all gratuitous cartoon cameos ever after.

It was also right in the middle of a Boomer vs. Gen X culture war, which saw President George H.W. Bush lambasting The Simpsons for bringing down Americans' morals.

But what we remember most about "Stark Raving Dad" was how Jackson's song (written by Jackson but performed by Kipp Lennon) was only a catalyst for exploring the mutual respect and love that Bart and Lisa were slowly developing for each other.

People will unlikely remember how the episode eschewed Michael Jackson's fame and even parodied celebrity worship with the Leon Kompowsky character, who pretended to be Michael Jackson because it made people happy.

Unfortunately, people won't remember that the point was making music and being kind to family – and Jackson's overhyped Springfield appearance was a bust.

"Stark Raving Dad" is one of the brilliant milestones of television that aged like milk because of Jackson's sex scandals and the new lens of ethical restraint that now shapes our memories of the past.

It's also bound to be remembered someday as one of television's "lost media" stories since Disney has censored the episode from The Simpsons streaming.

Matt Groening has seconded the decision, stating that he believes Jackson's intention of appearing on the show was for "grooming" purposes.

The decision has outraged TV historians, with some media, like Isaac Butler of The Slate, stating, "It's a growing trend of corporations using their consolidated power and the death of physical media to do damage control by destroying works by troublesome artists."

However, what I will remember most about Michael Jackson's appearance on The Simpsons was what the show asked me to do.

That is to consider the character of Leon Kompowsky, a mentally ill man who was angry about himself and his life until he started playing Michael Jackson, which earned him respect.

The story arc was prophetic of our time while also casting a shadow on Jackson's damaged and perhaps insatiable ego.

At the end of the day, do you sing for fame and money, or do you do it for the art, for the joy of the experience?

That's what "Stark Raving Dad" meant to me, and it was a lesson some Simpsons fans may only understand as they age.

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A black mirror is the reflective black screen you stare into whenever your TV, phone, or laptop is turned off. It's whatever is left of the dream, the fantasy, that technology feeds you after you turn the mechanism off.

In other words, nothing.

The show's creator, Charlie Brooker, seems fascinated by the nightmare of our technologically driven society.

Since the show debuted in 2011, when AI was merely a speck on the horizon, we have transcended Brooker's nightmares of what we might become.

We have embraced AI to the point that we find human interaction boring, stressful, and anti-climactic compared to hyperbolic simulations of the human experience.

To watch Black Mirror's earlier seasons and to enter its universe is to see the worst aspects of ourselves reflected — to experience the dark side of our progress and to see the absence of rationality in our greatest triumphs.

Black Mirror is the devolution of a great free society, the point where leisure technology has overpowered the practicality of our government.

If Rod Serling's Twilight Zone represented humankind's fear of technology, Black Mirror represents us as a society embracing the poison that kills us.

With its early seasons, Black Mirror introduced us to elementary sci-fi concepts that had never made their way onto television.

The TV horror genre was still developing as a continuing, intellectually driven genre. Brilliant writing, for sure. But the show was merely picking at the surface of our greatest fears, which were still far into the future.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch hit the showrunner's creative peak.

It is not just a show analyzing our fears and mass hallucinations but a trippy adventure into multiple universes and the non-linear nature of consciousness. How could you tell this story within a story without making it a Choose Your Own Adventure sitcom?

The lack of a better medium to share this mushroom-induced existential panic attack turned some of the show's biggest fans off.

Black Mirror was supposed to be about us, where we were going, where we are, and what we are leaving behind.

In contrast, Bandersnatch was punching low, as if to shame us because of our nostalgia and remind us that life is only a dream — nothing is comprehensible when you think about it.

The creative high of Black Mirror was surpassed, and the shark officially "jumped" within the same special.

How much higher-minded could Black Mirror go before it became a meta parody of itself?

Black Mirror Season 6

Now, in 2024, at the point of surfeit when it comes to accessible TV horror, the Black Mirror episodes for Season 6 feel totally out of sync with the rest of the series.

"Joan is Awful" was another foray into self-parody, with a woman discovering that a streaming platform has stolen her ordinary life and used it as dramatic fodder for an AI-produced TV show.

The second episode, "Loch Henry," was a Memento-esque mind screw, rethinking the true crime genre into a found-footage horror stunt.

"Beyond the Sea" almost reached the same level as previous episodes, with a glimpse into cloud consciousness.

Then we had "Mazey Day," a lazy Hollywood gripe lamenting the bullying behavior of paparazzi with werewolf cliches, and "Demon 79," which featured literal demons overseeing the end of the world.

The whole season felt like a kick in the shin as if the writers were beating our collective minds down with social media posturing.

"This is all you are worth, you terrible humans, werewolves, and demons! This is where our society is right now and for shame!"

Black Mirror Suffers The Twilight Zone's Fate

Perhaps all of this is prophetic, though, in some odd way.

Many people remember the peak years of The Twilight Zone but need to remember its final days, which were less than glorious.

Showrunner Serling said he felt exhausted creatively and had "begun to lose perspective on what was good and bad."

Behind-the-scenes drama and creative clashes only contributed to the show's loss of momentum.

Then, by 1964, CBS had grown tired of the show and threatened it with cancellation, stating in no uncertain terms that it was over budget and not earning the ratings necessary to justify the expense.

Serling said he decided to "cancel the network" and wanted to go to ABC to write a new and more explicit horror series.

However, when the network pitched to him "Witches, Warlocks, and Werewolves," Serling backtracked.

Serling was never in the business of writing monster fiction. While he said he didn't mind occasionally visiting paranormal storylines, he didn't want "to be booked into a graveyard every week."

Indeed, sadly, the network confused The Twilight Zone's psychological horror for monster-of-the-week shlock.

By 1969, Sterling would be working with NBC on Night Gallery, another "ghoul show" that stressed traditional horror over the science fiction creepiness that gave Twilight Show its fame.

Perhaps Rod Serling just ran out of tech prophecies to give us, which parallels the current Black Mirror conundrum very well. When we reach the pinnacle of self-awareness and descend to a self-parody of kitsch culture, where do we go from here?

Only garishness, the most tawdry of fears, is left to explore. Nothing scares us about technology anymore since we're already living the nightmare and are ironically labeling it as a dream.

Black Mirror became in Season 6 what happened to The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery: a passe vision of the future that's no longer relevant to our escalating neuroses.

It's rather disappointing that Black Mirror, an incredibly "British" anthology series, is making the same mistake that American shows tend to make. It's going on too long, stretching out characters that don't need it, and trying too hard to "brand" itself at the expense of new stories.

What I've always admired about British TV is that showrunners know when to exit early. Black Mirror has been Americanized and become the "Night Gallery" of the modern age.

Maybe we just stared into that black mirror so long, waiting for new seasons and uncomfortably realizing the emptiness of our unbridled tech ambitions, that we finally scared ourselves straight.

Can Black Mirror Season 7 Return the Show to Its Former Glory?

However, it's good to know that Black Mirror is attempting to come back and reclaim some of that earlier glory.

Season 7 is in development and is scheduled to be released in 2025.

The show's creative team is working hard to bring back fans. What better way to reach out than to focus on creating an interconnected "universe" of characters?

They will revisit the famous "USS Callister" episode in future seasons. At the same time, Robert Downey Jr., of all people, optioned the episode "The Entire History of You" as a movie pitch to Warner Bros.

Brooker also expressed interest in revisiting characters from "White Bear," "Be Right Back," and even (shudder) "Demon 79."

Sure. What better way to stall writing more brilliant episodes of an ahead-of-its-time series than to revisit various stock characters that no one thought about beyond the plot?

Don't get me wrong; Black Mirror has already earned its place as one of the most remarkable series ever on modern television, and everything past Season 5 is a nice collection of bonus clips.

However, the only way the show can reclaim its peak creativity is to avoid the same mistakes made by Rod Serling and ditch the monster of the week story arcs.

Return to concepts that predict the future, even if our future seems "predictable" as of late. Maybe everything else on television has predicted a coming apocalypse, but what happens before we reach the Fallout stage?

Be generous with satire, showing what we are, what we're becoming, and where our neurotic species is going.

A few more original episodes like "San Junipero," "Hang the DJ," and "The Entire History of You" would put the show back on track.

Don't revisit old ideas — tell new anthology stories and occasionally scrape the humanity of our technology as something more than just a disastrous affair.

Imagine that. What if Black Mirror manages to excavate something beautiful rather than shining more light on the darkest reflections?

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