Lifetime slate includes Basinger movie

The Lifetime cable channel on Tuesday unveiled a slate of original programming for the fall, including a TV movie starring Academy Award-winning actress Kim Basinger.

“The Mermaid Chair,” based on a novel by Sue Monk Kidd, will feature Basinger as what the network described as “a restless wife and mother consumed with forbidden love for a Benedictine monk.” It is scheduled to premiere Sept. 9.

Also due on Lifetime is “Inspector Mom,” a detective story set in suburbia and starring Danica McKellar, former costar of “The Wonder Years” and more recently of “The West Wing.” It will air as a TV movie in October, followed by a monthly series of online-only episodes and then a second TV movie in March.

Lifetime, which aims its programming primarily at women, also has scheduled a 20-episode serial drama for October, “Bianca,” about a woman who is starting life again after being wrongly imprisoned for murder. It will star Virginia Williams, Rachel Ward and Shirley Jones.