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What do a woman freed from a religious cult, a crooked lawyer and TV's longest serving late-night host have in common?

That's not the setup to an oddball joke. Instead, they're all part of the hottest trends coming to television in 2015, when a deluge of new shows combined with a boatload of new platforms threatens to transform the TV business over the next year.

And one of the most unique fictional characters among 2015's crop of new shows is Kimmy Schmidt, a bubbly young woman who survived years in a dehumanizing cult that told her the world was destroyed by nuclear fire.

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Ellie Kemper, right, stars with Tituss Burgess in the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Eric Liebowitz/NBC/Netflix hide caption

itoggle caption Eric Liebowitz/NBC/Netflix

Ellie Kemper, right, stars with Tituss Burgess in the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Eric Liebowitz/NBC/Netflix

But surviving her first interview on the Today show after she and her friends were rescued from the cult? Well, that might be even tougher.

"Ladies, you've been given an amazing second chance at life," Today host Matt Lauer tells her in the opening moments of Netflix's comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. "People have donated thousands of dollars to the Mole Women Fund."

"And we are so grateful," Schmidt says, "but, honestly, we don't love that name."

"So, Mole Women, what happens next?" Lauer answers. "What do you do now?"

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a new series from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, who worked together on Fey's NBC series 30 Rock. The program was made for NBC but sold to Netflix, which picked up the canceled show before it even aired on the network.

It's a growing trend: TV shows moving online from more traditional starting points. Yahoo will continue to produce new episodes of NBC's canceled comedy Community. And a show originally developed for FX, the superhero series Powers, will debut not on FX but on The Playstation Network.

Yes, there will be an original TV series made just for a videogame console.

But the biggest sea change in television this year comes courtesy of David Letterman's surprise announcement last year.

"I said when this show stops being fun ... I will retire 10 years later," he joked, just before letting the world know he was retiring in 2015 after more than 30 years in the game.

Television

Dave Letterman Signals He'll Soon Put Down The Microphone

Letterman, TV's longest-serving late-night host, officially retires on May 20. But he's already changing television, prompting Stephen Colbert to leave his Colbert Report to take over Letterman's Late Show, which made room at Comedy Central for a new voice: Larry Wilmore.

"I'm Larry Wilmore, host of the new Nightly Show," he tells a disbelieving senior citizen in one teaser commercial for the show. "Who?" she shoots back, confirming Wilmore's status as a guy who doesn't yet have the profile of the comic he's replacing at 11:30 p.m. weeknights.

Television

Larry Wilmore Knows: Heavy Lies The Late-Night Mantle

Wilmore, best known as The Daily Show's "senior black correspondent," takes over Colbert's timeslot with The Nightly Show on Jan. 19.

Wilmore's show was originally called The Minority Report, but Comedy Central changed it after learning the 2002 film of the same name would be made into — you guessed it — a TV pilot.

Still, Wilmore will be the only African-American hosting a late-night entertainment show in 2015. Along with Colbert and new Late, Late Show host James Corden, he's expected to bring lots of fresh voices to a big block of TV's late-night neighborhood.

And there are some other big goodbyes coming in 2015.

NBC's critically beloved Parks and Recreation begins its final season Jan. 13. It's among several TV shows taking a final lap this year, including CBS' Two and Half Men and AMC's Mad Men.

Monkey See

'Justified' Brings Back Raylan Givens, Another Working-Class Man From FX

But I'm really going to savor the final season this year of FX's show about a gunslinging federal marshal, Justified — mostly because of the way producers bounce hero Marshal Raylan Givens off his bitter rival, bank robber Boyd Crowder.

In one scene from the second episode of this season, Givens is facing down Crowder, who was trying to use stolen documents to blackmail a property seller. Crowder, a silky-tongued charmer, insists he was returning the documents out of the goodness of his heart, "following my instincts, kinda like a higher power slipping me a word."

Givens' response: "Well, I slip a Glock [handgun] in my holster every morning. So when you hand me those items, do it slow. Or I'll shoot ya."

In a TV world filled with Honey Boo Boos and Duck Dynasties, it's a pleasure to watch a show set in the South with sharp, smart characters.

That's not, however, the best description for a guy at the heart of another series, which just happens to be cable TV's most anticipated new show: Better Call Saul.

Saul Goodman, also known as Walter White's shady lawyer from Breaking Bad, gets his own spinoff series on AMC. It debuts over two nights on Feb. 8 and 9, showing how small-time lawyer Jimmy McGill transforms himself into the full-on sleazebag Breaking Bad fans love, with a real talent for recruiting new clients.

"I'm No. 1 on your speed-dial, right next to your weed dealer," he tells one potential client in a teaser ad for the series.

"I think I'd look guilty if I hired a lawyer," another possible client tells him.

"It's getting arrested that makes people look guilty," Goodman replies.

Who could say no to that?

Ultimately, the word which best sums up TV in 2015 is: more.

More new series in unexpected places, more new voices in late-night and more high-quality shows than anyone can keep up with — except maybe a highly motivated TV critic.

So if you thought TV was good last year, you might want to buckle up.

Because the pace only gets faster — and more fun — in 2015.

Donna Douglas, the actress best known for her role as Elly May Clampett on the 1960s television hit comedy The Beverly Hillbillies, has died at age 81, a family member confirms.

Douglas played a scrappy tomboy with a fondness for animals on the CBS sitcom that ran from 1962-1971. The show featured the antics of her family, from the Ozark Mountains, who strikes it rich after a chance discovery of oil on its land. The family proceeds to pack up its meager belongings and "move to Beverly" (Hills, that is), where it assumes the life of millionaires amid the "swimmin' pools and movie stars."

Max Baer describes Donna Douglas as "Elly May until the day she died": http://t.co/x1YHNNVAGR (CBS) pic.twitter.com/Ub1LeJIySz

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 2, 2015

The series, which also starred Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett, the family patriarch; Irene Ryan as the cantankerous "Granny," and Max Baer Jr., as the well-meaning but slow-witted Jethro Bodine, Jed's nephew, became a No. 1 hit for CBS within its first two years on the air.

A niece of Douglas', Charlene Smith, confirms that the actress died on Thursday of pancreatic cancer.

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A photo of Douglas taken in 2008 in Baton Rouge, La. Bill Haber/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Bill Haber/AP

A photo of Douglas taken in 2008 in Baton Rouge, La.

Bill Haber/AP

Hollywood Reporter says Douglas was a native of Pride, La., who won the Miss New Orleans beauty contest in 1957. She "started out making $500 a week on the show. That rose to $3,000 in the ninth and final season of the series," the trade publication says.

Douglas also appeared opposite Elvis Presley in the 1966 film Frankie and Johnny and played in a classic 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone called "The Eye of the Beholder."

The Reporter says: "Douglas didn't appear much onscreen after [The Beverly Hillbillies] ended but reprised her role for the 1981 telefilm The Return of the Beverly Hillbillies. She also appeared in a 1993 TV documentary about the show and made appearances at conventions that celebrated the series."

Correction Jan. 2, 2015

A previous version of this story incorrectly said that Jethro Bodine was Jed Clampett's son. He was actually his nephew.

Television

In the new movie Cake, Jennifer Aniston plays a woman suffering from chronic, debilitating pain. Her pain is both emotional and physical — her anger is so uncontrollable that she has been kicked out of her chronic pain support group. "You really do not know what happened to this woman," Aniston tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "As the story unfolds you slowly start to discover bits of information as to what happened and why she is in this state."

Aniston says that's not the kind of narrative that generally gets approved in Hollywood, and so she's glad this was an independent film. "It's a little bit more risky, but I think the audiences have really been appreciating it," she says.

Aniston talks with Martin about her new film, about the time she spent working on Friends, and about her hopes for the future.

Interview Highlights

On how she played a character who is experiencing pain

It was a lot of studying the back, the leg, the neck. Pretty much every single part of her body was hurt, injured. And you really do start to manifest odd little, you know, cricks and ... pinches in your neck and lower back pain. ... Every week I would have some form of body work, just to make sure, you know, my body didn't kind of lock into any of that permanently....

Talking to women, or men, who are suffering from chronic pain on a daily basis — it is so unimaginable. I mean, I was so grateful for my body at the end of the day.

On whether she is at a point in her career where she can pick her projects.

Well, you can and you can't. The truth is: you can become established in a certain category, and I think you are given, you know, offers and opportunities based on how the industry sees you fitting into that — that job. And sometimes you have to kind of take the reins yourself or take a project on and get it made independently so that you can do that work [that] not necessarily another director or studio would see you, you know, fit for. It is, I've said, such a catch-22. It's like, "I know I can do this, you just have to give me the opportunity" and then what comes back is: "Well, we can't give you the opportunity because we've never seen you do this."

On the time she spent on the sitcom Friends

It was awesome. It was the greatest 10 years. The greatest people to work with every day, the greatest crew, killer writers. Funny. Beloved by people. Not only were we having so much fun ourselves, but the amount of love that people felt for that show, still feel for that show, we tapped into something. I don't know what the hell, but it was something, really kind of struck a nerve that continues to sort of be hit. And I think that's so special to be a part of something like that.

On the way she thinks about the future

I kind of live in the moment. And I don't have a five-year-plan and I don't have, "OK, so what we're going to do now is we're going to go for a character that takes you into a real dark territory ..." It's not a strategy.

On whether she's seeking out dramatic roles

I see what comes to me. I mean, I'd love to play more dramatic roles but I love comedic roles. I love just good material. But honestly, after doing Cake, I feel like I scratched an itch that's been needing to be scratched and I want very much to play really wonderful characters and telling a story, exposing a human experience, comedy or drama or both infused. I mean I think comedy and drama go hand in hand. You know, life isn't one or the other.

Four more bodies and a fifth large piece of debris have been recovered from the Java Sea near the crash site of AirAsia Flight QZ8501, which went down a week ago with 162 people aboard.

The BBC quotes search-and-rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo as saying today that:

"Singapore navy vessel RSS Persistence had recovered one body, while US navy ship USS Sampson had brought three more back to the Indonesian town of Pangkalan Bun.

"Nearly 30 ships are now involved in the search operation, as well as six planes and 14 helicopters."

A Reuters photographer at the scene said bad weather was making the search difficult. He said that four divers in the water had recovered the four additional bodies.

As the search continued, relatives of the victims sang and cried at a tiny Christian chapel in Surabaya, Indonesia, where a quarter of the passengers had been members, The Associated Press said:

"Rev. Philip Mantofa, who heads the congregation at the city's Mawar Sharon Church ... urged those gathered to find comfort in their faith while embracing the reality that no one survived the disaster.

"'If God has called your child, allow me to say this: Your child is not to be pitied,' Mantofa told one Indonesian man seated in the front row. 'Your child is already in God's arms. One day, your family will be reunited in heaven.'"

Only about 10 percent of Indonesia's 250 million people are Christian in a country that is predominately Muslim.

Meanwhile, the English-language Indonesian daily The Jakarta Post writes that "leaked official documents have given rise to allegations that AirAsia Indonesia violated procedures"

The first allegation, the newspaper said, was that "the pilots of the flight had not received a required weather report" from Indonesia's national weather agency. The Post also reports that the airline did not have permission to fly the Surabaya to Singapore route on Sundays.

The newspaper quotes AirAsia Indonesia Safety and Security Director Achmad Sadikin denying that the flight had been unauthorized.

AirAsia flight QZ8501

Indonesia