- Actor Michael Caine wants to revive one of his most famous characters, secret agent Harry Palmer, whom he portrayed in The Ipcress File, Funeral In Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain during the 60's. All three films were produced by James Bond co-producer Harry Saltzman.
- Despite the fact that the first installment of Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes movie isn't being released until Christmas, word comes that a sequel is already in the works.
- Denmark's choice to be considered for best foreign film in the Oscar race is the dark thriller Terribly Happy, about a Copenhagen cop transferred to a rural town, where he discovers that things aren't as quiet as they seem.The film already won the Grand Prix Crystal Globe at this years Karlovy Vary Festival.
TV
- On November 1 and 8 at 9pm,the PBS Masterpiece Contemporary series will feature a dramatization of Val McDermid's A Place of Execution in which a 13-year-old girl vanishes from an English village, and the mystery deepens 40 years later when a journalist arrives to make a film about it. Juliet Stevenson and Greg Wise co-star.
- It appears there is a possible major shakeup underway for Law and Order: Criminal Intent on USA Network. Vincent D'Onofrio, Kathryn Erbe and Eric Bogosian are apparently leaving the cast, along with the recently-departed Julianne Nicholson.
- A new crime drama is coming to the BBC. Hugo Blick will write and direct The Shadow Line. As a BBC rep explained, "The narrative takes place partly in the world of the police, who are investigating a murder. There is a parallel story … in the criminal world."
- CBS has given script orders to two projects: the first is an untitled crime drama from Peter Tolan (Rescue Me) about a quirky college professor who solves crimes, to be produced by Tolan and Michael Wimer. The second is The Rememberer, from writer/executive producer Ed Redlich (Without a Trace), about a female NYPD cop who has the secret ability to recall everything she experiences.
- ABC has given a pilot order for a "high-concept" police procedural, Hopscotch, from writer/executive producer Chris Levinson (Law & Order), executive producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Jonathan Littman. The series apparently tells the stories of homicide investigations over several nonconsecutive days, with each act of an episode chronicling a different day.
- The Canadian mystery series Murdoch is going to film episodes in the U.K. British actors including former Holby City and Spooks actress Lisa Faulkner will join the cast.
- Central Crime Zone has an interview with Richard Castle, the fictional character from the ABC crime drama Castle played by Nathan Fillion, who "wrote" a novel released this summer.
WEB/RADIO
- James Ellroy has been all over the news lately with the release of his latest novel, the final title in his "Underworld USA" Trilogy. In an interview with NPR, Ellroy says he's writing for God, and for "people who are thrilled by history and all its shifting momentousness."
- If you're on Facebook, Lee Goldberg (author of the Monk book series) is having a "Live Author Chat/Interactive Webcast" on Facebook Sunday, October 4 at 6:00pm.
- This week on BBC Radio 7: David Warner reads Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers; Cordelia Gray investigates in P. D. James's The Skull Beneath the Skin; and Andy Dalziel thinks a suicide was murder in Reginald Hill's Bones and Silence. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)
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