‘Shameless’ season 7 gets early Showtime premiere; ‘Masters of Sex,’ ‘The Affair’ dates also announced

Today, Showtime confirmed that they are really full of surprises this year! Not only have we learned that “Homeland” season 6 is going to be airing in early 2017 rather than the fall, but they are effectively moving up “Shameless” to take its place.

Let’s start here first and foremost with “Masters of Sex,” given that it has been off the air for a good while now and will be the first of the network’s major hits to be returning. Per a press release, the fourth season will start on Sunday, September 11 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time. This date itself is strange in some ways, given that it is not typically n Showtime’s nature in order to launch series that early in the fall. Usually, they have summer shows still running and they wait until October.

As for the seventh season of “Shameless,” Emmy Rossum and company will be back on the air on Sunday, October 2 at 9:00 p.m., which makes for a rather quick turnaround from when the show wrapped up season 6 in the early spring. There’s no indication that this will be the show’s last, so hopefully there are some more Gallagher adventures coming up after this.

Finally, let’s turn to the third season of “The Affair,” which is going to take over the “Masters of Sex” timeslot on November 20. This is another odd place to have a premiere, since you are effectively setting the show up air over the course of the holidays and into the new year, provided things go as according to schedule. Ultimately, maybe this is just Showtime’s way of persuading subscribers to keep paying them through the year, or evidence that they have a real glut of programming right now.

We’ll have more on all of these shows in due time, so stay tuned!