Amazon to Debut Canto’s Pilot “Hysteria” Online for Customer Feedback

Adan Canto will be bringing a little hysteria to Amazon

The electronic ecommerce site will debut its third pilot season on August 28 on Amazon Instant Video in the U.S. and the United Kingdom as well as Amazon’s instant video app.

Adan Canto

And it appears Canto’s latest project Hysteria is one of the five pilots to make the grade, with Amazon posting the pilot episodes online and inviting its customers to give their feedback.

Hysteria takes viewers to Austin, Texas, where social connection has become contagious. In the pilot, members of a girls’ competitive dance team are stricken with a strange, psycho-physiological illness that manifests itself in violent fits and spasms and then begins spreading in the community through technology.

Neurologist Logan Harlen (portrayed by Mena Suvari) returns to her hometown to investigate the cause. Fighting her own demons and the growing manipulation of a brother on death row, Logan develops an uneasy suspicion that the hysteria surrounding the girls might actually be linked to social media and her own tragic past.

The 32-year-old Mexican actor portrays Matt Sanchez in the pilot.

Written by Shaun Cassidy, known for genre thrillers like Invasion and American Gothic, and directed by Otto Bathurst, the show also stars James McDaniel, Josh Stewart, Laura San Giacomo and T.R. Knight.

 

Amazon Studios is collaborating with Universal Television and Alcon Television Group on the production of Hysteria.

Cooking Channel Renews Rocca’s “My Grandmother’s Ravioli” for Third Season

Get ready to spend Mo (Rocca) time in the kitchen…

The Cooking Channel has ordered another season of the 44-year-old half-Colombian comedian and journalist’s series My Grandmother’s Ravioli.

Mo Rocca

The Rocca-created and -hosted show will return for 13 more episodes in late 2014, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The series, inspired by the Sunday family dinners Rocca grew up enjoying at his grandmother’s house, follows him as he visits grandparents across North America who introduce him to their most treasured family recipes.

“Mo Rocca is a deft storyteller, and though he shouldn’t necessarily be left to his own devices in the kitchen, under the watchful eye of America’s grandparents, it makes for a delicious recipe for television,” said Cooking Channel’s general manager and senior vice president Michael Smith.

Rocca, a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, says viewers can expect more diverse dishes, locations and couples in the coming season. After featuring several “sweet, warm grandparents” on the series, Rocca is ready to spice up the cast. “We want cranky, crusty grandparents who will really ride me,” he quipped to THR.

So which grandparents who he most like to spend time with in the kitchen? The stoic farmer couple in the painting “American Gothic.”

“The best grandparents are the ones who probably have never seen the show and are definitely not interested in being on a reality show,” Rocca tells THR. “Usually volunteered by their kids and their grandkids, they’re people who just kind of do their own thing, spend time with their families and cook.”

Casting for season three has just begun, and grandparents can be nominated here.

With three episodes remaining in season two, the show will feature its first gay couple on January 8. The series currently airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m.

Rocca is also a panelist on NPR‘s Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me! and host of Cooking Channel’s Food(ography).