TV News: NBC Update – NBC Bring Chuck Back For Fifth and Final Season, Orders Four New Comedies, Cancels Three Shows

NBC is already making big decisions regarding its new tv lineup for the fall of 2011. The network has ordered four more comedies, including projects from Chelsea Handler, Hank Azaria and Amanda Peet. As already announced, the network has picked up Chuck for a fifth and final season. Plus, it is the end for some shows as NBC canceled The Event, Law & Order: Los Angeles and Outsourced.

The new shows include (source):

• Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea: Based on Chelsea Handler’s best-selling book, it enters on an outspoken, sexually aggressive young woman (Laura Prepon) who works in a bar, where she drinks away its profits, avoids her eccentric father (Lenny Clarke) and goes home with the clientele.
• Free Agents: It stars Azaria as a recent divorcé who finds love at a talent agency with Kathryn Hahn’s character, who just lost her fiancé.
• Bent: It is a single-camera project from Scrubs producer Tad Quill about a recently divorced single mom (Amanda Peet) who’s fighting her attraction to her hunky contractor (David Walton)
• BFFs (fka the Untitled Parham-St. Clair Project): From actresses Lennon Parham (Accidentally on Purpose) and Jessica St. Clair (Worst Week), about a woman and her live-in boyfriend, who take in her best friend after a divorce.

This brings a total 11 new shows for NBC. Six comedies and five dramas. NBC started its own pickup season on Wednesday May 11^th, with a series order to the untitled Whitney Cummings comedy pilot, now titled Whitney, a romantic comedy created by and starring the racy comedienne; the Broadway-themed Smash, exec produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Debra Messing; and Prime Suspect, a Maria Bello-starring adaptation of the classic British series (source). Also, Up All Night, starring Christina Applegate and written by Parks & Recreation writer Emily Spivey, The Playboy Club; Grimm and Awake.

Chuck’s final season will have 13 episodes. The spy show joins the renewal of Parenthood and Harry’s Law.

Don’t forget for next week when more information about NBC new shows and schedule will be released.