It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:
THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES
Oscar-nominated Colin Farrell is set to star in Netflix's The Ballad of a Small Player, with Edward Berger directing. Rowan Joffe will adapt the script that is based on the 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne. The story follows a corrupt English lawyer and high-stakes gambler who decides to lay low in Macau after his past and debts catch up with him. Along the way he encounters a kindred spirit who might just hold the key to his salvation.
Sony’s 3000 Pictures has preemptively acquired film rights to the Clare Leslie Hall (aka Clare Empson) romantic suspense novel, Broken Country, set to be published March, 2025. Broken Country follows a married woman whose first love unexpectedly comes crashing back into her life and changes everything in an instant. His presence unravels her world as she weighs all that could have been, against the life she has made for herself since. Passion proves dangerous, ultimately leading to a murder and unearthing a web of secrets that she always intended to leave buried in the past.
Artists Equity is set to adapt Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on the 1993 Broadway musical, which in turn was inspired by Manuel Puig’s landmark 1976 novel. Diego Luna and Tonatiuh will star in the adaptation as Valentin Arregui and Luis Molina, respectively, joining Jennifer Lopez, who was previously announced in the titular role. The musical is set in an Argentinian prison in 1981, against the backdrop of what is historically referred to as the Guerra Sucia ("Dirty War") waged by the military dictatorship. Molina is a department store window dresser serving an eight-year sentence after being entrapped by police for allegedly corrupting a minor. To escape the horrors of imprisonment, he imagines a movie starring classic silver screen diva Ingrid Luna (Lopez) as both fashion editor Aurora and the Spider Woman, who kills her prey with a kiss. Molina’s life is upended when forced to share a cell with Marxist revolutionary Valentin, with whom an unlikely bond is formed.
TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN
Sherlock star Mark Gatiss is writing and will star in the British TV drama, Bookish, a six-part series about a bookshop owner who helps police solve crimes. Set in post-war London in 1946, the series will follow Gabriel Book (Gatiss), an "erudite and unconventional" sleuth who cracks mysterious cases from his antiquated bookshop, using the thousands of books that line his shelves to provide him with the knowledge that he needs. Around him are a gathering of "loveable, damaged misfits who he informally protects, cajoles and mentors." Starring alongside Gatiss is Polly Walker (Bridgerton), who plays Book’s colorful wife Trottie. She is charismatic and adventurous, owns a wallpaper shop next door and loves Book deeply but not physically, as they share a "lavender marriage," which helps conceal Book’s sexual orientation at a time when it was illegal to be gay.
The BBC and new co-production partner Amazon have given an order for two additional seasons of the John le Carré adaptation, The Night Manager, with Tom Hiddleston returning to lead, Hugh Laurie coming back as executive producer, and a new director in Georgi Banks-Davies. The Night Manager Season 2 will begin filming later this year and will pick up with Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine eight years after the explosive finale of Season 1, going beyond the original book, which was written by the celebrated British writer in 1993. Additional plot details are being kept under wraps and there is not yet confirmation as to whether Hugh Laurie’s Richard Roper, who was last seen in the back of a paddy wagon driven by arms buyers who were not pleased with him, will return to star.
Melissa Fumero (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), AnnaSophia Robb (The Act), and Ben Rappaport (For the People) are set as leads in Grosse Pointe Garden Society. The NBC drama pilot follows four members of a suburban garden club — three of them played by Fumero, Robb, and Rappaport — all from different walks of life, who get caught up in murder and mischief as they struggle to make their conventional lives bloom. Fumero plays Birdie, a successful author whose memoir is a bestseller. Robb plays Alice, a high school English teacher whose best dreams are crashing down on her, while Rappaport plays Brett, who put his own dreams of starting a car restoration business on hold so his wife (now ex-wife) could finish law school.
After bringing back CSI: Crime Scene Investigation with CSI: Vegas, CBS is looking to revive another Jerry Bruckheimer Television-produced crime procedural from the 2000s. According to Deadline, the network is in negotiations with Warner Bros. TV for a reboot of Cold Case, which aired on CBS for seven seasons from 2003-2010. Set fifteen years after the original series’ final episode, the untitled Cold Case reboot would follow a new team of tenacious detectives who investigate cold cases across the Southwest, which would be a new location as the original Cold Case was set in Philadelphia. The original series follows Detective Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris), a homicide detective with the Philadelphia Police Department specializing in cold cases, who was partnered for the majority of the show’s run with Detective Scotty Valens (Danny Pino).
CBS renewed Dick Wolf’s trio of FBI dramas, FBI, FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International, which follows the announcement by NBC that it's renewing Wolf’s other trio of "Chicago" shows. CBS is also renewing NCIS, a top 20 series for 18 of its 20 full seasons and the No. 1 drama for the last five consecutive seasons.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
The podcast Science Vs tackled "Science Vs Murder in the Ivory Tower." It’s 1849, and a gruesome murder has just happened at Harvard. As body parts turn up, the science of the day is put to the ultimate test to find out who committed this brutal killing. Professor Paul Collins tells us how this morbid mystery unfolds.
Spybrary was joined by Jonna Mendez, a former CIA operative with an enthralling tale of espionage, covert operations, and the very human aspect of intelligence work.
The latest Mystery Rat's Maze podcast featured the mystery short story, "Squashed to Death" by Charlotte Morganti, as read by actor Donna Beavers. This story was first published in Seeds, the Texas Gardeners newsletter.
The Red Hot Chili Writers chatted with historical and thriller writer Erin Young, discussing her gold kitchen, banned trousers, and Christianity's oldest religious book to ever go on sale, the Crosby-Schøyen Codex.
On Crime Time FM, Stig Abell chatted with Paul Burke about his new crime novel, Death in a Lonely Place; rural idyll as vest of Vipers; writing a series; love of genre fiction and how crime fiction is a tonic for the soul.
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