'Rita Rocks' On at Lifetime

By Rick Porter, Zap2It.com | November 11, 2008

Nicole Sullivan of 'Rita Rocks'

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The comedy series gets a full-season order

Lifetime's "Rita Rocks" will keep on rolling through a full season.

The cable channel has ordered seven more episodes of the sitcom, its first original prime-time comedy in a decade. That brings the total order to 20 episodes for "Rita," which stars Nicole Sullivan as a wife and mom who forms a garage band with a couple of friends.

The show is averaging just under a million viewers per episode, which isn't a world-beating number for cable series. "Rita" has, however, held or improved on the audience from its lead-in, "Reba," in five of its first six episodes.

"Having a nearly 100 percent audience retention rate is unheard of when launching a new comedy, but 'Rita Rocks' has achieved that feat," Lifetime's JoAnn Alfano says. "We are extremely happy with this early success."

The "Rita Rocks" cast also includes Tisha Campbell-Martin ("My Wife and Kids") and Ian Gomez ("Felicity") as Rita's bandmates, Richard Ruccolo ("Two Guys and a Girl") as her husband, and Natalie Dreyfuss and Kelly Gould as her kids. James Berg and Stan Zimmerman, veterans of "Gilmore Girls" and "Roseanne," created the show.