In Reference to Murder

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Australian actor Jason Clarke has joined the cast of writer-director Stephen Gaghan's crime drama Candy Store, about a former deep-cover operative working a beat cop in Brooklyn who discovers the organization he once infiltrated is infesting his new neighborhood.

Total Film Studios released a trailer for the upcoming crime film Welcome to the Punch, which opens in U.S. theaters on March 27. The plot follows Detective Max Lewisky (played by James McAvoy), a man dedicated to taking down notorious criminal Jacob Sternwood, played by Mark Strong. 

According to producer David Hoberman, the next Muppets movie, The Muppets…Again!, will find Kermit and Miss Piggy embarking on a worldwide tour and apparently running into all kinds of trouble in Europe, with Tina Fey playing a Russian prison guard and Ty Burrell playing an Interpol agent.

The Wolf of Wall Street finally has its release date in theaters, scheduled for November 15. The Martin Scorsese film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a New York stockbroker living the highlife in the 1980s, only to see everything fall apart over accusations of fraud.

TV

Omnimystery News reports that BBC One Daytime, in collaboration with BBC Worldwide, has commissioned a second season of Father Brown. The series is based on the novels of GK Chesterston and stars Mark Williams as the titular Roman Catholic priest, who solves mysteries in his Cotswolds parish.

Christine Lahti is joining the CBS pilot Beverly Hills Cop, which may mean her days playing Mama Doris McGarett on Hawaii Five-0 are numbered, as could be the fate of her character.

Jamie Bell, who starred in the film Billy Elliot, is heading to the AMC drama pilot Turn from Nikita executive producer Craig Silverstein. He'll play the lead role and one of a band of young soldiers and civilians who come together to form America's first top-secret spy ring.

Actress Joanna Cassidy (Body of Proof and Six Feet Under) has signed on to play Agent Booth's mom Marianne Booth, in an upcoming episode of Bones.

Dennis Haysbert (The Unit and 24) is coming aboard the CBS crime drama pilot Backstrom, adapted by Hart Hanson (Bones) from the Swedish book series by Leif G.W. Persson.

Annie Potts (Designing Women) has signed on to star in the ABC dramedy Murder in Manhattan. Potts will star as the mother in a mother-and-daughter team of amateur detectives, while Bridget Regan has signed on as the daughter. Potts' character turns to solving crimes because she's never gotten over her second husband's murder and takes it on as her own private case.

ABC has cancelled Zero Hour, the latest among several mid-season series failures. Although the show and its conspiracy-theory premise were praised by several critics, the ratings didn't follow.

Vinnie Jones has already shot one episode of the CBS Sherlock Holmes drama Elementary, but announced he's also been hired to come back for two more. Jones will play the villain "M," and as the actor noted, "Is he Moriarty? Is he Sebastian Moran? You just don't know. It could go either way."

FX Networks renewed the animated comedy spy series Archer for a fifth season of 13 episodes. (Hat tip to Ominimystery News.)

A little over a year after leaving the CBS series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Marg Helgenberger is returning to the network to star in Intelligence, a drama from Josh Holloway (Lost) about a U.S. Cyber Command unit.

NBC's untitled thriller pilot from writer-executive producer Rand Ravich has added X-Files star Gillian Anderson to the cast. She joins 666 Park Avenue star Rachael Taylor in the tale of a Secret Service agent who must deal with the kidnapping of the President’s son and several of his classmates.

British actor Tom Mison has been tapped by FOX to play Ichabod Crane in the Sleepy Hollow pilot. The reworking of Washington Irving's tale finds Crane time traveling to the present and partnering with a local detective (played by Nicole Beharie of The Good Wife).

Need a cheat sheet for all the TV pilots in the pipeline? You're in luck, thanks to Hollywood Reporter's handy list.

NBC released a creepy trailer for its new upcoming series Hannibal, a prequel of sorts to the series by Thomas Harris that included Silence of the Lambs and iconic serial killer Hannibal the Cannibal. The show features Hugh Dancy playing FBI Agent Will Graham and Mads Mikkelsen as the sadistic-yet-sophisticated cannibal, Dr. Lecter.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

Mark Billingham, the award-winning creator of DI Tom Thorne, joined BBC Radio 4 to discuss his "Rule Book of Crime," delving through the radio archives to draw out what makes the greats of crime fiction so enduring and whether there's a formula for creating successful detective stories. In a preview article for Radio Times, Billingham discussed with makes him hurl a book across the room and why detectives should be flawed

Joining NPR's Fresh Air last week were Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, authors of Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice.

Patricia Cornwell appeared on the Katie Couric show last week, the author's first TV interview since a federal court handed her a $50 million victory over financial mismanagement from her former advisors.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

In case you missed the Academy Awards last night, book adaptations fared well. The Best Picture went to Argo, based in part on The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA by Antonio Mendez; Ang Lee won the Best Director Award for Life of Pi, adapted from Yann Martel's novel; Lincoln, based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, earned awards for best actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) and production design; Silver Linings Playbook, based on the novel by Matthew Quick, had nods for best actress (Jennifer Lawrence); the adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables saw awards for supporting actress (Anne Hathaway), sound mixing and makeup and hairstyling; and the adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina won for costume design. (Hat tip to Shelf Awareness.)

Sony is developing an updated version of Charles Dickens's classic novel in a new project titled Dodge and Twist. The plot re-imagines pickpocketing rivals Oliver Twist and Artful Dodger twenty years later and puts them on opposite sides of the law as they become embroiled in an affair to steal the Crown Jewels.

Warner Bros beat out other studios in a bidding battle for screen rights to the upcoming yet-to-be-published thriller novel by Patrick Lee, and brought Justin Lin on board to direct and produce with Michael De Luca. The untitled project is the start of a series featuring an ex-special operative named Sam Dryden who encounters a mysterious young girl and embarks on a journey to keep her safe from a powerful government agent intent on hunting her down.

Andy Goddard (who directed the season finale of Downton Abbey) has been hired to direct a film adaptation of the 1954 novel The Blunderer, by Patricia Highsmith, who is best know for her works The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. Susan Boyd, who optioned the novel with her husband, novelist and screenwriter William Boyd, has written the adaptation. The Blunderer centers on young, successful, handsome Walter Stackhouse, who seems to have it all until his wife's body is found at the bottom of a cliff and flees when he becomes the chief suspect. (Hat tip to Ominimystery News.)

Magnolia Pictures has picked up two Norwegian crime dramas for U.S. distribution. The first is the thriller Pioneer, set in the early 1980s Norwegian oil boom when a professional diver obessed with reaching the sea floor gets caught up in a web of political intrigue. The second project is Ragnarok, about a sunken Viking ship located between Norway and Russia, a treasure map, and the secrets to Norse mythology's end of days prophecy.  (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Marvel President Kevin Feige is describing the upcoming sequel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as a "political thriller." The film is being directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and penned by the scribes of the original movie, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

Warner Bros. has acquired film rights to The Road Home, the soon-to-be-published novel by Michael Armour. The studio has hired Scott Cooper to direct, write, and produce and Leonardo DiCaprio to co-produce and star. The story centers on a man who finds himself in a scandal when he is asked to investigate the brutal murder of a local man, a case that local police have tried to hide.

TV

TNT has guven the go-ahead for a 10-episode order of an untitled private-eye drama based on author David Baldacci's series characters Sean King and Michelle Maxwell. The project will star Jon Tenney (The Closer) and Rebecca Romijn (X-Men), with Michael O'Keefe (Michael Clayton), Chris Butler (The Good Wife) and Ryan Hurst (Sons of Anarchy, Wanted) rounding out the cast. Baldacci is a consultant on the series, scheduled to debut in the summer of 2014.

Criminal Minds' Paget Brewster has joined the ABC comedy pilot, Spy, based on Simeon Gouldon’s British TV series. She’ll play a mother named Erica, "an emotionless person with plenty of personal issues who spends a lot of time at the therapist’s office.

Cinemax is co-developung a crime drama with Søren Sveistrup, creator of the popular Danish series Forbrydelsen, which became the popular US series The Killing. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu of the CBS hit drama Elementary were interviewed about their roles as Sherlock Holmes and Watson and their hopes for the future of the show.

The Cold War spy thriller The Americans has been renewed for a second season on FX. The show stars Matthew Rhys (formerly of Brothers & Sisters) and Keri Russell (Felicity) as two KGB spies.

Hill Harper has quit his role as Dr Sheldon Hawkes on CSI: NY and moved over to USA's Covert Affairs as a series regular, playing an ambitious CIA agent based in Latin America.

NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal will guest star on the April 3 episode of TNT's crime drama Southland, playing Officer Earl Dayton, an old friend of Officer John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz).

Bridget Regan (formerly with Legend of the Seeker and CW's Beauty and the Beast), has been cast in a starring role in the ABC drama pilot Murder in Manhattan playing the daughter in a mother/daughter who work in New York City as amateur sleuths.

Lost star Jorge Garcia has joined the new legal drama The Ordained, which features Charlie Cox (Boardwalk Empire) as a former priest who becomes a lawyer to investigate an assassination plot against his sister. Garcia will play the law firm's staff investigator Carlos.

The pilot for the Beverly Hills Cop TV adaptation has added Argo actress Sheila Vand to the cast, playing the show's female lead Leila, a Beverly Hills detective who comes from a privileged background.

The casting news for the frenetic pilot season continues, with more news about various crime drama shows and more via this TVLine link and this one.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

The latest podcast from Suspense Radio features Lisa Gardner, Deborah Ledford, Harrison Demchick and Amy Lignor.

THEATER

Academy Award winner Robert De Niro is planning to direct a musical version of A Bronx Tale, based on the one-man show by Chazz Palminteri (The Usual Suspects and Bullets Over Broadway) that played on Broadway in 2007. In that version, Palminteri played 18 roles that depict "a rough childhood on Bronx streets populated by a cast of friends and enemies."

GAMES

The software company Frogwares announced the newest entry in its popular series of "Sherlock Holmes" videogames, titled Crimes & Punishments, in which players will assume the role of Sherlock Holmes and lead their own investigation.

Media Monday for Monday

MOVIES

Pierce Brosnan has signed to star in the film adaptation of Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast (titled Last Man Out for production purposes), which is scheduled to begin shooting at the end of this year. The adaptation was written by late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson and Ted Mulkerin. The project follows a former IRA hitman haunted by the memory of his victims 20 years after serving time for murder, who can't find peace until he takes revenge on their behalf.

Director Daniel Espinosa (of Safe House fame) is developing an adaptation of John Grisham's latest novel, The Racketeer, for Fox 2000 and New Regency. The story follows the only person who has any information regarding the murder of a federal judge—an imprisoned former attorney who plans to use his new position of power to get revenge on those that sent him to prison. 

Deadline reports that Dominik Garcia-Lorido has joined the cast of Heat, directed by Simon West. She'll play the ex-girlfriend of a good-hearted Las Vegas enforcer (Jason Statham), who turns to him when she is violently beaten. Also, in other casting news, Australian actor/singer Tom Budge has signed on to the indie thriller Son of A Gun.

Variety is reporting that the film adaptation of Lawrence Block's novel A Walk Among the Tombstones appears to be getting closer to a reality. It was announced last May that Liam Neeson had been signed to star as former cop turned PI Matt Scudder, and now Downton Abbey's Dan Steven has also been added. (Hat tip to Crimespree.)

TV

Fox was impressed enough with the pilot for The Bridge project, that it has given an order for a 13-episode series. The show is an adaptation of the Danish/Swedish co-produced crime drama Broen/Bron, but is updated to follow a serial killer who is operating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, with an El Paso Detective working with her Juárez counterpart. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.) 

Deadline reports that Domenick Lombardozzi (Breakout Kings) has been cast in a recurring role on HBO’s period mob drama Boardwalk Empire, playing Ralph Capone, older brother to Chicago mobster Al Capone (Stephen Graham). Also, in another casting update, James Hiroyuki Liao (Battle: Los Angeles) has joined the revamped CBS crime drama Unforgettable in the role of a detective "with a wide variety of eclectic interests and skills."

Spy dramas appear to be big for next year, and three spy drama pilots have added cast members, including two on ABC:  Ernie Hudson is in negotiations to co-star in Reckless, playing a world-weary experienced CIA analyst, and Seth Numrich and British actor Burn Gorman (The Dark Knight Rises) are set to join the Revolutionary-war project, Turn; meanwhile over at Fox, Felicity Huffman is taking on the role of a housewife with a double life as a spy and master of disguise, in Boomerang.

The Wire's Paul Ben-Victor has signed on for a four-episode story arc on CBS's Vegas, playing an arrogant Hollywood mogul.

Peter Sarsgaard is joining AMC's The Killing, playing the new villain, a Death Row inmate who's been in and out of jail since he was a kid.

CCH Pounder, former star of The Shield, has joined the legal drama pilot The Advocates, from The Mentalist's Bruno Heller. Pounder will play the dedicated head of the Victims Advocate office where female lawyer Shannon Carter works (and partners with male ex-con Henry Bird) as a victim advocate.

NBC released a trailer for its new show Hannibal, based on the novels of Thomas Harris featuring serial killer Hannibal "the cannibal" Lecter.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

Michael Enright, host of CBC's The Sunday Edition, talked with two masters of the police procedural: Swedish writer Henning Mankell and American novelist Craig Johnson.

GAMES

USA Network is launching a new online murder mystery game titled The S#cial Sector, written by Psych writers and starring Psych's detective duo, James Roday and Dulé Hill. The game will run eight weeks on SocialSector.usanetwork.com and allow fans to help investigate a murder by "playing games, sending real-time messages to Shawn and Gus and also sending video of their whodunit theories."

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The winners of this year's BAFTA Awards (the British version of the Oscars) were announced Sunday. Winners included a Best Film nod to Argo and Best Director to Ben Affleck and an award for Best British Film given to Skyfall.

Paramount is adapting the bestselling French thriller Syndrome E by Franck Thilliez. The supernatural procedural follows a detective named Lucie Hennebelle who teams up with a a Paris cop to investigate a film embedded with subliminal images that lead to murder and the personification of evil. (Hat to Omnimystery News)

New Regency is taking on an adaptation of the true-crime memoir True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, by reporter Michael Finkel. The plot follows Finkel, a disgraced NYT reporter who discovered that an accused murderer had stolen his identity and would only give his story to the reporter. Jonah Hill, James Franco and Felicity Jones have signed aboard the project to star, with Rupert Goold directing.

Omnimystery News reported that production has begun on the film adaptation of Elmore Leonard's crime novel The Switch, with a potential release date later this year. The project stars Jennifer Aniston as Margaret "Mickey" Dawson, a loving, naive housewife whose husband has been embezzling millions for years and keeping the cash in off-shore accounts without her knowledge.

Ralph Fiennes and Mads Mikkelsen are in talks to star in the film adaptation of the John Le Carre novel Our Kind of Traitor. Ewan McGregor was already cast as the male half of a couple who get mixed up with a Russian money launderer and find themselves caught between the Russian Mafia and the British Secret Service.

TV

Actress Kim Raver (24, Gray's Anatomy) has landed the starring role in the new NCIS:LA spinoff for CBS. She'll play Special Agent Paris, joining joining John Corbett who plays the male lead. The premise follows a mobile “Red” team of agents forced to live and work together as they crisscross the country solving crimes.

NBC has given a pilot order for a remake of Ironside, the series from 1967 to 1975 that featured Raymond Burr as a wheelchair-bound detective. Sopranos story editor Michael Caleo is writing the pilot, and Blair Underwood (LA Law) is in talks to star as the lead.

The small-screen adaptation of the film Beverly Hills Cop has landed Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) to direct and executive produce the pilot.

Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) has been cast in the NBC drama pilot Bloodline, written by David Graziano and directed by Peter Berg, about an orphaned young girl caught in the struggle between two warring families of mercenaries and killers.

British actor Max Fowler and 18-year-old newcomer Bex Taylor-Klaus have been added to the third season of AMC’s drama series The Killing. The duo join returning stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman and fellow new cast member Elias Koteas in the drama, which will center around homicide detective Sarah Linden's investigation into the disappearance of another teen girl.

Despite ratings that are lower overall this season, Castle is getting an additional episode order from ABC.

Anthony Zuiker, one of the creators of CSI, has out a casting for a new mystery reality competition for ABC. They are seeking "armchair detectives, perceptive problem solvers or anyone who believes they have the mental acuity to go up against other like-minded sleuths for a huge cash prize."

Tonight in the UK, the series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, based on Kerry Greenwood's novels, gets its UK premiere on Alibi.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

The guests this week on Suspense Radio are Brett Battles, Wendy Corsi Staub and Amnon Kabatchnik.

BBC Radio 4's "Books & Authors" podcast for February 10 included Scottish crime writer Christopher Brookmyre talking about his turning to science fiction for inspiration.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The Directors Guild of America handed out its annual awards this weekend. Ben Affleck was named recipient of the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for Argo, while Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series went to Rian Johnson for the episode "Fifty-One" of the AMC series Breaking Bad.

Bradley Cooper has signed to star in and produce the upcoming adaptation of James Renner's novel The Man From Primrose Lane. Southland writer Chad Feehan is adapting the story, about a true-crime writer who finds himself at the center of a chain of serial murders and "must look outside the parameters of what he believed to be true about time and space" in order to solve the mystery.

Johnny Depp will star in Barry Levinson's gangster thriller Black Mass, centering on the real-life story of South Boston criminal mastermind Whitey Bulger. The project is based on the book Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerland O'Neil. Bulger was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for more than a decade before his capture in June 2011.

Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, the same screenwriters behind the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, will also adapt Don Winslow's crime thriller The Power of the Dog. The plot hinges on a 30-year struggle between a hardened DEA agent and a family of cartel kingpins in Mexico.

Jeremy Renner has been cast in the lead role in Kill the Messenger, playing journalist Gary Webb. The project is based on the real-life story of a journalist who committed suicide after being smeared by the CIA.

Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace are in talks to star in the thriller Child 44, based on the Tom Rob Smith novel about a 1950s-era Soviet police officer who tries to solve a string of child murders.

Tom Welling, who starred as Superman in the TV series Smallville, has signed to play an unnamed role in Parkland, a movie from director Peter Landesmant that's based around President John F Kennedy's assassination.

Will Daniel Craig return for the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sequel? Some sources say the actor is demanding a larger salary to return, which may force producers to cut his role out of the picture or find another actor. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the actor claims Craig hasn't started negotiations yet and is "keen to return" for both The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.

Comic book publisher Valiant Entertainment has taken over the film adaptation of Harbinger, after a project at Paramount fell through. The Harbinger series, created by Jim Shooter and currently written by Joshua Dysart, follows a rogue group of psychics who set out to bring down a powerful organization. Valiant is in talks with producer/director Brett Ratner to head up the project.

TV

CBS has ordered a pilot titled Second Sight, a detective drama from Homeland director Michael Cuesta and CSI's Carol Mendelsohn. The project is based on a BBC psychological thriller (starring Clive Owen) about a detective afflicted with an autoimmune virus causing hallucinations that mirror his subconscious.

To almost no one's surprise, CBS has renewed NCIS for an 11th season after coming to an agreement on a contract for star Mark Harmon. The procedural is still the top-rated scripted drama on television.

The BBC commissioned a second season of the historical crime drama Ripper Street, set in London's East End in 1889 around the time Jack the Ripper, with eight episodes to air in 2014. 

Cinemax has given a second season order to its original drama Banshee, starring Antony Starr as an ex-con and master thief who assumes the identity of the sheriff of Banshee, Pennsylvania.

Jamie Dornan will reprise his role as Sheriff Graham on Once Upon a Time in an upcoming episode arc.

Gerald McRaney (Major Dad; Simon and Simon) has signed on to appear in a multi-episode arc of the TNT police drama Southland. He'll take on the role of retired Detective Hicks, who trained Officer John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) years before.

Melinda Clarke (The O.C. and Nikita) is joining freshman CBS drama Vegas playing Mia's mother, Lena, a charismatic, shrewd, strong woman who is attracted to even stronger men.

David "Dr. Who" Tenant has signed aboard a BBC three-part drama, playing Will Burton, a talented junior barrister who has earned the nickname "The Escape Artist" due to his ability to get his clients out of tight legal corners.

The 1970s teenage heart-throb from the Partridge Family, David Cassidy, has landed a guest-starring role on CSI as a veteran poker player named Mr. Coe.

PODCASTS

This week's Guardian Books Podcast features American crime writing, with Gillian Flynn, Joseph Wambaugh, Michael Koryta and Peter Messent.

THEATER

The Beautiful Soup Theater Collective is staging Arthur Bicknell's Moose Murders through February 10 at The Connelly Theatre in New York. The play is about owners and a group of guests at a hunting lodge in the Adirondacks who discover that a murderer is among them. Although the play was a notorious flop on Broadway in 1983, it has since been revived and staged successfully in other venues.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The Screen Actors Guild Awards were handed out last night, with winners including Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones for Lincoln; Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables;  Kevin Costner for Hatfields & McCoys; Bryan Cranston, for Breaking Bad; and Claire Danes, for Homeland. The award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (essentially the SAG version of "Best Picture") went to Argo.

Meanwhile, at the Producers Guild Awards, Ben Affleck, George Clooney and Grant Heslov received the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for producing the film Argo, and Showtime's Homeland won its first PGA Award in the drama series category.

Director David Fincher (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Fight Club) has expressed an interest in adapting Gillian Flynn's bestselling novel Gone Girl for the big screen. Flynn has written a screenplay for her novel, which centers on a wife who disappears on her fifth anniversary, leaving her husband as the main suspect

James Franco announced he will direct and star in a film adaptation of crime novelist James Ellroy's American Tabloid, which follows three law enforcement officers who are drawn together as the events of President Kennedy's assassination unfold. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Joaquin Phoenix is replacing Robert Downey Jr. in director Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of the novel Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. Phoenix will star as a detective solving a case brought to him by his ex-girlfriend in 1969 Los Angeles.

Twilight's Peter Facinelli has been cast to star alongside Dylan McDermott in the thriller Freezer from director Mikael Salomon. The two actors play unwitting of shadowy Russian thugs who falsely accuse McDermott's character of stealing millions from them.

TV

Lara Pulver, who starred as Irene Adler in the "Scandal in Belgravia" episode of the BBC's Sherlock, has joined the cast for the upcoming Ian Fleming biopic. She'll play play Ann O'Neill, an elegant Baroness whose wartime meeting with James Bond creator Fleming alters the course of their lives.

Sean Patrick Flanery is joining Dexter for a recurring role in what may be the series' last season. He'll play Jacob Elroy, and ex-cop who runs a private investigation service in Miami.

Actor James Brolin has signed on to play Rick Castle's father in an episode of Castle debuting Monday, Feb. 25.

The BBC released a promo photo of Merlin star Colin Morgan in his new role on the three-part series Quirke, starring Gabriel Byrne as a Dublin pathologist who solves crimes in the 1950s. The series is based on characters from the crime thrillers of Booker Prize winner John Banville (a/k/a Benjamin Black).

All sorts of news pilots have just been given orders from the networks, including from CBS, Backstrom, based on a character created by Swedish crime novelist Leif G. W. Persson. Stockholm police inspector Evert Backstrom, and a version of Beverly Hills Cop; from ABC, a Revenge-like drama called Betrayal; and from Fox, a pilot for The List about members of the Federal Witness Security Program who start getting killed. (Hat to Omnimystery News.)

Other pilots that have orders in hopes of snaring a coveted spot on ABC's 2013-14 lineup include Doubt, from House creator David Shore, about a former cop who's now a street-smart and low-rent lawyer; Killer Women, which follows the only woman in the Texas Rangers; and an adaptation of the British series Spy.

Creator and showrunner of The Mentalist, Bruno Heller, has also sold a pilot to CBS titled The Advocates, about a female lawyer and a male ex-con team up as victim advocates.

The same team behind Fringe on Fox (J.J. Abrams and J.H. Wyman) are creating a new futuristic pilot for the network that's billed as an action-packed buddy cop show with all LAPD officers partnered with highly evolved human-like androids.

For an updated scorecard on all the various pilots currently in the network pipeline, Hollywood Reporter has a handy list.

Larry Manetti, 65, who played Magnum, P.I.'s sidekick Rick from 1980 to '88, has landed a recurring role in Hawaii Five-0 as a nightclub owner.

Omnimystery News provides a look at the teaser poster for the new ABC crime drama Red Widow, about the widow of a man murdered by Russia gangasters who is forced to work with them to repay his debt, while also serving as an inside mole for the FBI.

If you happen to be in New Zealand next month, check out the new crime drama, The Blue Rose when it debuts. It centers around a group of temp workers who band together to try to work out who killed a friend after her death in the Auckland harbour is officially called an accident.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

The latest Suspense Radio podcast features authors Kerry Copleand Smith and Dr. Barry Johnson.

Although this is originally from May of 2012, the Passive Voice blog posted a link the day from mystery author Hallie Ephron's AtGoogleTalks appearance (note that it's a relatively long clip, at about 50 minutes or so).

Bestselling novelist David Baldacci will guide a virtual field trip at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History via a free webcast will on March 5th at 1:00 p.m. ET / 10:00 a.m. PT.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Fresh off his nomination for Best Actor at the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, Bradley Cooper has just signed to star in the Warner Bros. adaptation of Howard Blum's book Dark Invasion. Cooper will play NYPD Captain Tom Tunney, a man who must put together a team during World War I to bring German spies to justice.

Will there be a Jack Reacher sequel? Paramount Studios is waiting to see how the film fares in Asia before making a decision, but the film hasn't performed well enough at the box office in the U.S. alone to make it a done deal.

Ewan McGregor has joined the cast of the espionage thriller Our Kind of Traitor, an adaptation of John Le Carre's 2010 novel about a British couple who become entangled with the Russian Mafia and the British Secret Service.

Dylan McDermott is set to star in the action-thriller Freezer, playing an everyman character kidnapped by Russian thugs and locked inside an industrial freezer for reasons unknown.

Martin Scorsese is moving ahead with his mob drama based on the Charles Brandt book I Heard You Paint Houses. He held a reading of Steve Zaillian's script for the project, which already has signed Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci to star.

The producers of RED 2, the action-thriller sequel to the original 2010 RED, released a trailer for the film. Stars Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren are reprising their roles as older government agents who are nostalgic for their espionage days of yore, while Anthony Hopkins takes a turn as the villain.

TV

The new period police thriller Ripper Street premiered on BBC America. The series stars Matthew MacFadyen as Inspector Edmund Reid, head of the notorious H Division, the toughest district in London's East End. He's joined by Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) as Reid's right-hand man and Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) as an American ex-Pinkerton agent and an expert in the world of early forensics.

TNT has given a ten-episode order to King and Maxwell, based on the novels of David Baldacci, starring Jon Tenney (The Closer) and Rebecca Romijn (X-Men) as former Secret Service agents turned private eyes.

Steven Bochco, the creator of such shows as Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, is behind a new pilot for TNT titled Murder in the First that is set in San Francisco area and involves two seemingly unrelated murder investigations. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

TNT has also ordered a pilot for an untitled quirky bounty hunter drama starring Geena Davis, inspired by the real-life story of bounty hunter Mackenzie Green.

CBS has given the greenlight to the political thriller pilot Hostages from writer-director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, Jerry Bruckheimer Television and Warner Bros. The plot revolves around a political conspiracy when a family is taken hostage - the family happens to be that of a successful surgeon (Toni Collette) who's just been tasked with operating on the President of the United States.

Syfy's series Alphas, about a crime-fighting team with unusual abilities, has been cancelled after two seasons.

ABC has delayed the premiere date for the third season of Body of Proof until February 19, to avoid scheduling conflicts. The new season has a revamped cast, including Mark Valley who joins the procedural as Tommy Sullivan, a man with a romantic connection to Dana Delany's Megan Hunt.

Tamron Hall has signed to host a new series for the mystery-and-suspense network, Investigation Discovery  The 13-part series, Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall, features a core team of law enforcement correspondents who try to determine not only what happened with each profiled case, but why it happened and how it was investigated.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

Vermont Public Radio interviewed Quebec murder mystery author Louise Penny, discussing her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series.

Philip Quarles and WNYC discusses and posts audio from a speech given by Rex Stout (creator of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin), which he gave to a 1966 Books and Authors Luncheon. He discusses his career as a writer and his "beef" with the FBI.

Every Saturday from noon to 2 pm PT, Margaret McLean hosts It's A Crime Radio on itsacrimeradio.com or NBC News Radio KCAA 1050 Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. Topics include crime, law, and courtroom drama including the upcoming trial of James "Whitey" Bulger.

THEATER

Vancouver's Vertigo Mystery Theatre is presenting PatRick Hamilton's Gaslight, directed by Christopher Newton, with previews beginning January 26. The play is best known for its 1944 film adaptation starring Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton and Angela Lansbury in her on-screen debut.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Warner Bros is planning to make a movie based on Joshua Davis's recent Wired magazine article "John McAfee's Last Stand." The project is based on the life of the software guru who was wanted for the murder of Gregory Faull in Belize and went on the lam before being arrested in a Guatemala hotel.

Actress Sean Young has signed to star opposite Chris Riggi in the indie sci-fi thriller Police State, about a potential nationwide terrorist plot involving a series of bombings that cripple Manhattan.

The film sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, from the team of Robert Rodreguiz and Frank Miller, has added Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, and Christopher Meloni to the cast. Also returning from the original Sin City project are Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, and Jaime King. (Hat tip to Crimespree.)

Omnimystery News has links to some trailers for upcoming crime thrillers, including The Iceman, based on the true story of notorious contract killer Richard Kuklinski; Dead Man Down, starring Colin Farrell and Noomi Repace as a revenge-seeking couple; and the art heist thriller Trance.

Jude Law teased that a script is in development for a third installment of the Sherlock Holmes film franchise starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Law as Dr. Watson.

Fans of the recently-cancelled small-screen series Leverage may not be totally out of luck; executive producer Dean Devlin is keeping various options open, including a feature-film version of the show, although he admits it may be "a long shot."

TV

NBC has given the greenlight for a pilot based on Norwegian novelist Jo Nesbo's book I Am Victor. Nesbo is teaming up with former House executive producer Katie Jacobs and screenwriter Mark Goffman (Studio 60, The West Wing) for the project, described as "House as a divorce attorney."

The CBS crime drama Sherlock has signed Vinnie Jones to play Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' greatest enemy, in the show's 12th episode.

NBC has reduced its episode orders for freshman dramas Revolution and the mystery thriller Deception, about a detective (Meagan Good) who returns undercover to the family she grew up in to investigate her old friend's murder..

Heroes star Ali Larter has joined Sean Bean in the cast of the new TNT spy drama pilot from Homeland executive producer Howard Gordon.

TNT has given the go-ahead to the unscripted procedural drama Cold Justice, which follows two top-notch female investigators, a Texas prosecutor and a crime scene investigator, as they delve into cold murder cases.

John Logan and Sam Mendes, the team behind the Bond film Skyfall, are developing a horror-thriller project for Showtime. Titled Penny Dreadful, the premise involves literary characters like Dr. Frankenstein, Dracula's Van Helsing and Dorian Gray who come together in Victorian London as a sort of noirish Downton Abbey-style ensemble drama.

Showtime also announced changes to their schedule, including moving the potential final season of the serial killer-series Dexter to summer with a June 30th premiere. It will serve as a lead-in to Showtime's new detective drama series Ray Donovan, starring Liev Schreiber as a "fixer."

Fans of the Fox crime drama Bones can relax; the network announced it's renewed the series starring Emily Deschanel as Dr. Temperance Brennan for a ninth season.

Netflix signed a licensing agreement with Warner Bros. TV to allow them to stream NBC's series Revolution and Chuck, the Fox dramas The Following and Fringe, A&E's Longmore, ABC's 666 Park Avenue and USA's Political Animals. 

The Outdoor Channel is airing a show called "Elite Tactical Unit: S.W.A.T." The reality show is "a character-driven, adrenaline-fueled reality show featuring the fierce competition between active-duty S.W.A.T. officers who are put into realistic missions that are both mentally rigorous and physically dangerous."  The S.W.A.T. operators are divided into two teams to win money for themselves and the departments they serve back home.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

Suspense Radio kicked off its 2013 schedule with guests Judge James Bell, Brad Taylor and Robert Pobi.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Author Thomas Pynchon is in talks with director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood) to bring Pynchon's 2009 stoner private-eye novel Inherent Vice to the big screen.

A March 27 debut has been set in the U.K. for director Danny Boyle's psychological thriller Trance (no U.S. release date has been announced yet). The film centers around an art auctioneer mixed up with a criminal gang who joins forces with a hypnotherapist to recover a lost painting, and stars James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson.

Lee Child hinted about a sequel to Jack Reacher that could be set in a rural landscape and based on either Child's novels The Hard Way or Worth Dying For.

CinemaBlend has a trailer for the upcoming thriller Dead Man Down starring Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films) as a mysterious woman who hires a hit man.

Here's a trailer for the Cold War-era thriller Phantom, starring Ed Harris as a Soviet submarine captain who suffers from seizures that alter his perception of reality, facing off against a rogue KGB group led by a man named Bruni (David Duchovny).

And here's another trailer, actually three trailers, for the 1940s-set crime thriller Gangster Squad starring Sean Penn as infamous gangster Mickey Cohen and Ryan Gosling as an LAPD outsider assigned to a special task force to bring Cohen down.

From Omnimystery News: A new poster for the crime thriller Parker starring Jason Statham as a gentlemanly professional thief whose crew doublecross him, steal his stash, and leave him for dead.

This year's Oscars telecast will include a 50th anniversary tribute to the James Bond franchise.

As Crimespree notes, if you missed the movie featuring Tyler Perry portraying Alex Cross from James Patterson's novels, it will be available on home video February 5th.

TV

BBC America bought broadcast rights for ITV's eight-part murder mystery drama Broadchurch, featuring former Doctor Who stars David Tennant and Arthur Darvill. The premise centers on a small British seaside town and how it's affected by the murder investigation of a young boy. Tennant will play newly-appointed Detective Inspector Alec Hardy, a by-the-book investigator who butts head with local Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman), while Darville will play town priest Paul Coates.

If you enjoyed the Lifetime original movie An Amish Murder broadcast last night, you may be in luck; the movie, which was based on the book Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo, "has really good potential" to become a series, according to star and Executive Producer Neve Campbell.

Call it gimmick or stroke of ratings gold, but the CBS crime drama Hawaii Five-0 will become the first primetime drama to allow viewers to choose the ending of an episode in real time on Monday, January 14. The plot follow the team as they investigate the death of professor whose boss, teaching assistant and a student busted for cheating are all viable suspects. 

A&E has set March 18 as the premiere date for its new Psycho prequel series Bates Motel starring Max Thieriot, Olivia Cooke, Nicola Peltz, Nestor Carbonell  and Mike Vogel.

The second season of the BBC's Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, edged out Homeland as the best show on British TV in 2012, according to an annual year-end survey of TV critics and writers by Radio Times magazine.

Atlas Entertainment is partnering with the Starz network for the dramedy series Crime, written by Oscar winner William Monahan. The project is billed as "a study of criminal enterprise and scandal across 1960s Britain," and was developed from a feature film treatment by Vanessa Sadler.

Lost star Zuleikha Robinson has landed a guest role on The Mentalist, playing brilliant scientist Dr Sonia Kidd. Over on CBS, Homeland star David Negahban has landed a role on CSI: NY playing the only person who knows where star Gary Sinise's kidnapped girlfriend Christine (Megan Dodds) is being held.

Although it's just a rumor, and a weak one at best, it's interesting to contemplate the possible return of Twin Peaks to TV. Also among the potential aspects connected to the rumor: star Kyle MacLachlan might create webisodes of the show in addition to returning to the cast.

Want to know where you favorite shows stand in the renewal/cancellation realm? TVLine has a list for you.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

Louise Penny chatted with Vermont Public Radio about her bestselling series with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and the upcoming TV series based on the books.

Media Murder for Monday

Since Hollywood typically takes the week off between Christmas and New Year's, so will Media Murder for Monday. Hope everyone has a very Happy New Year!