Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Tim Roth, the star of the Fox series Lie to Me, has joined the cast of Arbitrage playing Michael Gower, a detective investigating a murder. Roth joins already-signed cast members Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon and director Nicholas Jarecki in the story of a troubled hedge fund magnate, desperate to sell his trading empire, who winds up heading down a dangerous trail.

The TV series Justified, based on characters by author Elmore Leonard, is doing quite well on the FX Network, which prompted Leonard to talk about his hopes for movie adaptations of some of his other works. He's apparently in talks with Morgan Freeman to star in Djibouti and says Freeman wants Sandra Bullock on board. He's also trying to persuade George Clooney to reprise his role as bank-robber Jack Foley in a sequel to the 1998 hit film Out Of Sight.

TV

NBCUniversal is changing the name of its crime and mystery cable channel from Sleuth to Cloo later this spring. Sleuth/Cloo broadcasts movies and repeats of series like NCIS, JAG, House, Monk, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Walker: Texas Ranger.

DCI Banks, the ITV1 drama starring Stephen Tompkinson and Andrea Lowe and based on the best-selling novels by international crime writer Peter Robinson, will return for its second season this fall in the UK. The cast is currently filming six new hour-long episodes, three different stories played out over two episodes.

The psychological thriller Homeland, starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, has been given a 12-episode order by Showtime. It follows a CIA officer (Danes) battling her own demons while convinced the intelligence that led to the rescue of a U.S. soldier (Lewis) was a setup.

Mary McDonnell, of Battlestar Galactica fame, is returning for the seventh season of The Closer, but this time she'll be a regular in her role as Captain Sharon Raydor. The season premieres in July and is lead actress Kyra Sedgwick's last with the show, leading to speculation McDonnell will take over in either a continuance of that series or in the upcoming spin-off titled Major Crimes.

The fall 2010 debut police procedural Chase, about a group of U.S. Marshals based in Texas, was bounced off NBC primetime in February due to low ratings, but the Peacock is going to broadcast the remaining episodes over a five-week period beginning Saturday, April 23.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Mother/daughter writer duo Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark, appeared on NBC's Today Show last week talking about their new books I'll Walk Alone and Mobbed.

Michael Connelly joined Tavis Smiley on his PBS show to discuss The Lincoln Lawyer and The Fifth Witness and why he fictionalizes real world events in his writing.