Before you know it, the summer will be upon us. For viewers, this is both bad and good news. The bad: The major networks resort to schedules filled with reality programming. The good: The cable networks rev up their schedules with original scripted programming. By the time July rolls around, AMC, FX, TNT and USA will be chock full of fan favorites.

For TNT, that means a new season of 'The Closer.' The network has just announced that season 6 will premiere on Mon., Jul. 12 at 9PM. Joining 'The Closer' on that evening will be the new drama 'Rizzoli & Isles.' Based on a series of Tess Gerritsen's novels, the show casts Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander as a Boston detective and medical examiner, respectively, who team up to solve cases. The series also stars Lorraine Bracco as Harmon's mother.

TNT has always excelled with shows featuring strong female leads. As long as the acting and writing is up to par on 'Rizzoli & Isles' it should have a long life on the network.

It's always intriguing when a cable network has two or three original shows they're working on. But TNT has gone project crazy this year, with a whopping 14 shows in development.

It's an interesting mix of shows too. You have your dramas, including a mystery series set in Boston, based on the novels of Tess Gerritsen; a drama about a family in 1950s Indiana; an espionage drama titled Leverage; a drama from Robert Redford titled Generations, which focuses on several families who have lived in the same house over the decades; and Truth In Advertising, which sounds a lot like a modern-day Mad Men (not that I'm complaining) and stars Eric McCormack, Tom Cavanagh, and Monica Potter. Comedies include a show about a single, middle-aged woman, from Betty Thomas and Elaine Pope.