TV Quick Hits: ‘iZombie’ season 3, ‘Nashville’ season 5 castings; ‘@midnight with Chris Hardwick’ renewed

Let’s start this edition of TV Quick Hits off with “Nashville,” given that it is both a show viewers are very much passionate about, and there is a particular bit of casting news coming out now we find exciting.

Sources confirm that Bridgit Mendler, who was recently a part of awesome-but-canceled-far-too-soon “Undateable,” will be a part of the upcoming fifth season of the show in the role of an up-and-coming music star named Ashley Wilkenson who has tens of millions of internet views and is getting set to release her debut album. She’s confident in her abilities, but at the end of the day, there could be a softer side underneath, and we wonder how much of that could come from finding stardom in a different way than many others out in the music scene.

Want to get some other news on the day? Then read on…

“iZombie” grabs Jason Dohring – Fresh off of his arc on “The Originals,” we’re going to be seeing the former “Veronica Mars” star on a different CW show. Here, he’ll be taking on the role of Chase Graves, a man who has ties to the possible Big Bad Vivian Stoll coming up. Specifically, he’s her brother-in-law.

Having Dohring reunite with “Veronica Mars” creator Rob Thomas for this show seems like something that should have happened years ago, but we’re happy it is now.

“@midnight with Chris Hardwick” coming back – Being that this is one of our favorite late-night shows to watch, especially if we’re just scouring around TV and looking for a good laugh, we’re very much pleased to report that it will have a fourth season of 40 weeks’ worth of episodes airing in 2017. Given that Comedy Central already canceled “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore,” we did have a reason for concern.

Fun connection to the original story in this piece: Our favorite “@midnight” competitor, Ron Funches, was a regular on “Undateable” alongside Mendler. (Photo: CMT.)