Rubicon’s small-but-devoted audience mourned the show’s cancellation last month, but it wasn’t all bad news for AMC, since it gives the channel an opportunity to launch a new series at a time when Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead already occupy much of the year’s Sunday slate. The lucky winner will be Hell on Wheels, an 1860s-set drama about a former Confederate soldier (Anson Mount) who seeks vengeance while working on the railroad. (Also, there’s Common!) The internally well-received pilot has been picked up to series; expect a bow sometime late in 2011, unless the network’s other new series, crime drama The Killing, sucks up the available schedule space.