Michelle Dockery, Ellen Barkin to star in new TNT dramas

ATLANTA, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- TNT has ordered two new dramas for its 2016 programming slate.

Good Behavior -- starring Downtown Abbey icon Michelle Dockery and Argentine-Spanish actor Juan Diego Botto -- is an adaptation of the Letty Dobesh novels by Blake Crouch. The contemporary thriller will co-star Terry Kinney and Lusia Strus, and is being executive produced by Crouch and Chad Hodge, who worked together on this past summer's small-screen hit Wayward Pines.

Also getting the green light from the cable network is Animal Kingdom starring Sea of Love and Ocean's Thirteen alum Ellen Barkin as the matriarch of a Southern California family with an excessive lifestyle fueled by their criminal activities, with Scott Speedman as her second-in-command. The ensemble will also include Shawn Hatosy, Ben Robson, Jake Weary, Finn Cole and Molly Gordon.

Animal Kingdom also reunites TNT with executive producers John Wells and Jonathan Lisco, who previously collaborated on the network's critically acclaimed Southland.

Production is set to begin on both 10-episode series in early 2016 and TNT said it plans to air them later in the year.

"Good Behavior and Animal Kingdom are muscular, distinct dramas that will define the new direction of TNT," Sarah Aubrey, executive vice president of original programming for TNT, said in a statement Thursday. "We believe audiences will love watching Michelle Dockery trade in her manners for the life of a sexy, complex ex-con in Good Behavior, and Ellen Barkin and Scott Speedman command an unruly family of criminals and adrenaline junkies in Animal Kingdom."