Starz’s ‘Shining Vale’ returns for Season 2 just in time for spooky season

Marcus James Dixon
·3 min read
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“Shining Vale” fans, mark your calendars for Friday, October 13 as that’s when Season 2 premieres on Starz. (That’s right, Friday the 13th!) The timing is perfect for the horror-comedy show to return because Halloween, aka spooky season, is just around the corner. The entire cast is back for these eight new episodes, which were filmed before the writers’ and actors’ strikes. The season premiere, titled “Homecoming,” is written by showrunner Jeff Astrof and directed by Liz Friedlander (all episodes are directed by women). Watch the video trailer above.

Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear lead “Shining Vale” as Patricia “Pat” Phelps, a raunchy romance novelist with writer’s block, and her husband, Terry Phelps. The couple is struggling in their marriage so they decide to move to a new house (one that just so happens to be haunted), along with their two teenage children, Gus Birney as Gaynor and Dylan Gage as Jake. The main cast is rounded out by Merrin Dungey as Kam and Mira Sorvino as Rosemary Wellingham.

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SEE Courteney Cox is a scream in ‘Shining Vale’

“This is the one that’s just reinvigorated my passion for acting,” Cox told Gold Derby last year. “There’s just so many things to play, I’m thrilled. And then go right to comedy — in one episode you can play so many different things.” The show is the perfect blend of comedy and horror, two genres Cox knows quite well as her most well-known projects are “Friends” and “Scream.” As she explained, “It is hard to find a tone where you’re walking such a fine line of something really serious and it’s also funny, but I think it’s also the situation. I think that’s balancing the tone, but I think [co-creators] Jeff Astrof and Sharon Horgan did a great job at that so you believe it. You just have to play everything really real.”

Here is how Starz teases the new episodes of “Shining Vale”: “Season 2 kicks off four months later, when Pat’s insurance runs out and she is released from the psychiatric hospital early. Pat returns home, determined to pick up the pieces of her broken family, but she quickly finds out her children don’t need her, Terry doesn’t remember her and to make matters worse, Pat’s new neighbor Ruth looks exactly like Rosemary. Meanwhile, the house starts to reveal the shocking secrets of its dark past. Every mother feels like they live in an insane asylum, but Pat may be right!”

The first season of “Shining Vale” aired in March and April of 2022 and competed as a comedy series at the Emmy Awards (though it didn’t net any nominations). It later won the trophy for Best Fantasy Television Series at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Awards, with Cox and Birney receiving acting bids. Cox is an Emmy nominee for producing “Friends: The Reunion” in 2021.

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