Don Cheadle, Claire Danes, and Kristen Bell Cast in Greenlit Showtime Shows 'House of Lies' and 'Homeland'

You can't stop Showtime, you can only hope to contain it. The premium channel has been on a roll lately, finding success with a number of original series. "Dexter" and "Weeds" were followed by the comedy success "Californication," and just this year the channel released "Shameless," "Episodes," and "The Borgias," all of which were met with solid ratings and generally positive reviews...enough so, anyway, for "Shameless" and "Episodes" to have been renewed for second seasons.

So naturally, Showtime is looking to release even more original shows for next year, and that's great news for us! Just today, two shows were greenlit by Showtime: "House of Lies" and "Homeland."

"House of Lies," though it sounds very dramatic by the title, is a half-hour comedy. The show will star Don Cheadle as a management consultant who backstabs his way to the top, and Kristen Bell as an Ivy League graduate who begins working at his firm. Both Cheadle and Bell have proven their comedic abilities (Bell in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and Cheadle in the "Ocean's Eleven" series), so both of them should shine in this dark comedy.

"Homeland" is a drama produced by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, who both worked on "24." "Homeland" will be in the same vein: a terrorism-themed thriller in which a CIA agent, played by Claire Danes, becomes suspicious of the intelligence that lead to a U.S. operation. The show should have plenty of action, but it will also rely heavily on psychological themes and revelations.

That's a great thing for Showtime, which often focuses on the psychological aspects of their dramas...if you need proof of that, just watch "Dexter."

Both projects are finalizing their development stages and will begin shooting this summer. We will likely see them in early 2012, though with 12-episode orders of each we could see half of the first season of one of them later this year...in particular, "House of Lies" could be produced faster as it's only a half-hour program.