TVLine Items: My Brilliant Friend Final Season Date, Bob Newhart Special and More

Elena and Lila will say goodbye this fall: My Brilliant Friend will return for its 10-episode fourth and final season on Monday, Sept. 9, at 9/8c on HBO.

The final collection of episodes will be based on The Story of the Lost Child, which is the fourth book in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend quadrilogy.

For the uninitiated, My Brilliant Friend tells the story of “Elena Greco and the most important friend in her life,” according to the official logline. “She met Raffaella Cerullo, whom she has always called Lila, in the first year of primary school in 1950. Set in a dangerous and fascinating Naples, their story goes on to cover more than 60 years of their lives and explores the mystery of Lila, Elena’s brilliant friend and — in a way — both her best friend and her worst enemy.”

The fourth season — starring Alba Rohrwacher as Elena Greco, Irene Maiorino as Lila Cerullo and Fabrizio Gifuni as Nino Sarratore — finds adult Elena and Lila “entangled in the turmoil of Italy in the late 80s, nearing the end of decades of political violence and social unrest. Amid motherhood and career demands, amid betrayals, threats, disappearances, and natural disasters, Elena and Lila once again reside in the same neighborhood.”

Ready for some more recent newsy nuggets? Well…

* The new Entertainment Tonight special Bob Newhart: A Legacy of Laughter, celebrating the late actor, will air Monday, July 22 at 8 pm on CBS.

* Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl, Single Parents) will guest star in Rachel Sennott’s HBO comedy pilot about a codependent friend group that reunites and then has to navigate “how the time apart, ambition, and new relationships have changed them,” our sister site Variety reports.

* Cory Michael Smith (Gotham) and Michael Dorman (For All Mankind) have joined Tatiana Maslany in the Prime Video dark comedy pilot The Nightbeast, per Variety. Smith will play the titular Nightbeast, while Dorman will portray the husband of Maslany’s character.

* Li Jun Li (Wu Assassins, Quantico) has boarded MGM+ and Prime Video’s live-action series based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir, starring Nicolas Cage and Lamorne Morris, our sister site Deadline reports. The actress will play the series-regular role of a singer at a New York nightclub.

Which of today’s TVLine Items pique your interest?