Showtime is stacking its new series back-to-back Sunday nights. The premium cable network announced today “Masters of Sex” and “Ray Donovan” will return July 13th for their second season premieres. “Ray Donovan” is the network’s highest-rated freshman series ever and the first Showtime series to average more than five million viewers a week. “Masters of Sex” almost hit that mark, with 4.8 million weekly viewers on average.
Both series were met with with mostly positive reviews in their first season, with Indiewire TV Editor Alison Willmore seeing potential in “Ray Donovan,” saying it’s “the kind of writing that suggests that ‘Ray Donovan,’ should it balance out its undeniable overload of interesting but jumbled elements, could be a truly smart take on dark underbelly of L.A.’s teeming central industry without resorting to lazy, imprecise cynicism that can color fellow Showtime series ‘Californication.'”
Willmore was even more enthusiastic about “Masters of Sex,” saying it’s the “respect that ‘Masters of Sex’ has for the complexities of human nature and desire [that] makes it one of the smartest new shows of the year, if a slow burn that’s unconcerned with plottiness (making it an appropriate counterweight for Showtime’s recently wrapped other new series, the busy ‘Ray Donovan’).”
Tune in for yourself July 13th to see if these shows improve in season two. “Ray Donovan” airs at 9pm with “Masters of Sex” following at 10pm.
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