SHOWTIME(R) HEATS UP THE SUMMER WITH THE SEASON PREMIERES OF HIT COMEDIES WEEDS & EPISODES

Season 8 of WEEDS and Season 2 of EPISODES to Debut Sunday, July 1st

LOS ANGELES, CA - (March 14, 2012) - It's going to be a sizzling summer of comedy on SHOWTIME with the season premieres of the hit series WEEDS (10 p.m. ET/PT) and EPISODES (10:30 p.m. ET/PT) on Sunday, July 1st. Thirteen half-hour episodes of WEEDS' eighth season go into production in Los Angeles in April, and nine half-hours of EPISODES' second season recently wrapped production in London and Los Angeles.

WEEDS stars Mary-Louise Parker in her Golden Globe(R) Award-winning performance as Nancy Botwin, a former suburban widow who turned to selling marijuana to make ends meet and has bloomed into a full-fledged queenpin. The series is created by Emmy(R) Award winner Jenji Kohan and produced by Lionsgate.

EPISODES stars Matt LeBlanc, in his recent 2012 Golden Globe Award-winning role as a fictional version of himself. EPISODES is a co-production between SHOWTIME Networks in the U.S. and the BBC in the UK, written and executive produced by David Crane (Friends, The Class) and Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You, The Class). Jimmy Mulville executive produces through his successful Hat Trick production company (Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Worst Week).

The WEEDS season finale was punctuated at a family dinner by a fateful bullet from a lone gunman. Which of our beloved Botwins was the target and who pulled the trigger? Last season jumped ahead three years and picked up with Nancy finishing a stint in federal prison. She, her brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) and sons, Silas (Hunter Parrish) and Shane (Alexander Gould) - with Doug (Kevin Nealon) in tow - were reunited in New York City where she re-launched her pot business, worked at a hedge fund, and fought for custody of her son, little Stevie, from her sister Jill (special guest star Jennifer Jason Leigh).

The second season of EPISODES picks up four months after the finale with Sean (Stephen Mangan) and Beverly (Tamsin Greig) no longer living together, but forced into an awkward working relationship with Matt, as Pucks! goes from a pilot to full-blown series. As Beverly struggles to save her marriage, Matt is determined to save his "bromance" with Sean, and all of them are forced to try to save Pucks! as its ratings start to plummet and the pressure mounts. EPISODES centers around Sean and Beverly, a husband-and-wife producing team who are forced to navigate the many pitfalls of the Hollywood television business when their successful British show is brought to America, and the U.S. network insists on making the show more audience friendly by replacing their venerable thespian lead with... Matt LeBlanc. Season one left off with Beverly and Sean's comedy, Lyman's Boys, mangled beyond recognition by the Hollywood powers-that-be into Pucks!, a sitcom about a high-school hockey coach starring Matt LeBlanc. When Beverly sleeps with Matt in a moment of drunken madness, her marriage is left as battered as the state of their TV show.