In Reference to Murder

Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Aaron Eckhart (London Has Fallen) is set to star in the conspiracy thriller, Wander. The story centers on Arthur Bretnik (Eckhart), a mentally unstable private investigator, who, after being hired to probe a suspicious death in the small town of Wander, becomes convinced the case is linked to the same conspiracy cover-up that caused the death of his daughter.

A trailer was released for French filmmaker Luc Besson's thriller, Anna, which stars Sasha Luss as Moscow fashion model turned government assassin, Anna Poliatova. She’s assigned to a top secret case in Paris per her boss (played by Oscar winner Helen Mirren in an M-like role).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Following the success of its Netflix original show, Young Wallander, Yellow Bird U.K. is set to produce its second drama, The Secret Woman, a series adaptation of the Danish book of the same name written by Anna Ekberg. The project is described a “luscious female-led murder mystery” that centers on Louise Andersen, a forty-something woman who lives in a secluded village on the Danish island of Bornholm with Joachim, who is 10 years older. Their routine is disrupted by the arrival of Edmund, a man convinced Louise is in fact Helene, his wife who mysteriously disappeared three years prior.

Jack Reacher author Lee Child has teamed up with Dancing Ledge Productions to develop a true crime anthology drama series described as “Black Mirror-meets-Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Lee Child: True Crime will dramatize the stories of real-life men and women from around the world driven to stand up and put their lives on the line, fighting for justice in the face of great danger (in other words, real-life “Jack Reachers”).

Fox has picked up the Dick Wolf-produced unscripted series First Responders Live. The show will look at first responders—paramedics, firefighters, police—as they answer emergency calls across the country, giving viewers a front-row seat.

Taylor Kitsch (True Detective), Michael C. Hall (Dexter), and Logan Marshall-Green are set to lead the cast of Shadowplay, a gritty dramatic thriller series from The Bridge co-creator Måns Mårlind, who has conceived the project as a 16-episode series told in two chapters. The story follows Kitsch's cop, who arrives in post-WWII Berlin to help set up a police force. Marshall-Green is a Nazi hunter in the aftermath of the War, while pieces of the coming Cold War are also being put in place.

The British broadcaster Alibi is producing its second original scripted drama, a six-part psychological thriller from Gaby Hull titled We Hunt Together. The cat-and-mouse story follows two detectives as they try to outsmart a pair of killers, one a former child soldier desperate to suppress his predisposition for violence and the other a magnetic and disarmingly charming free spirit. Described as both a psychological thriller and romance, the show explores the dangerous power of desire and questions who is really to blame when the damaged do damage.

Former Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany is set for a lead role opposite Matthew Rhys in the HBO limited series reboot of Perry Mason. Written and executive produced by Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald, who also will showrun, the re-imagined Perry Mason legal drama is set in 1932 Los Angeles.

Vincent D’Onofrio has been cast in CBS All Access’s upcoming true-crime drama, Interrogation, joining a cast that includes David Strathairn, Peter Sarsgaard, Kyle Gallner, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. D’Onofrio plays an Internal Affairs officer who ends up becoming Kyle Gallner’s character’s biggest ally, an experience that calls his faith in the criminal justice system into question. The show is based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Each episode is structured around an interrogation taken directly from the real police case files.

CBS has renewed crime drama NCIS for a 17th season. Mark Harmon will return as Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and of this writing, it appears the other stars will return, including Sean Murray (Special Agent Timothy McGee), Emily Wickersham (Special Agent Eleanor “Ellie” Bishop), Wilmer Valderrama (Special Agent Nickolas “Nick” Torres), Maria Bello (Special Agent Jacqueline “Jack” Sloane), Brian Dietzen (Dr. Jimmy Palmer), Diona Reasonover (Forensic Scientist Kasie Hines), with Rocky Carroll (NCIS Director Leon Vance) and David McCallum (Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard).

CBS also renewed cop drama Blue Bloods for Season 10, with Tom Selleck set to return as Frank Reagan, New York Police Commissioner and patriarch of a multi-generational family of police officers. The elite crop of law enforcement officials includes eldest son Danny (Donnie Wahlberg), a war veteran and a hardened detective who likes to bend the rules to crack his toughest cases, and Erin (Bridget Moynahan), who, as the only woman in the group, developed a thick skin which that makes her an adept assistant district attorney.

HBO has renewed the hitman dramedy, Barry, for a third season. Barry stars Bill Hader in the title role as a depressed, low-rent hitman from the Midwest who finds himself drawn into a community of acting students while on a job in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, YouTube has cancelled several scripted shows, including Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television, where an LAPD task force partners actors with homicide detectives so they can use their acting skills to help solve murders.

The Veronica Mars revival has been given a premiere date on Hulu in July, and the streaming service also released a short teaser trailer for the show that once again stars Kristen Bell as the titular private eye.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

NPR's All Things Considered spoke with Angie Kim about her debut novel, Miracle Creek, a courtroom thriller that tackles heavy themes like immigration, parenting, and autism.

Debbi Mack interviewed thriller author Jamie Freveletti on the Crime Cafe podcast. Freveletti is the author of the Emma Caldridge series and winner of a Barry award and International Thriller Writers Best First Novel award.

Read or Dead host Katie McClean Horner was joined by guest host Vanessa Diaz to chat about book-to-movie adaptations, their mutual love for the movie Clue, and more.

Meet the Thriller Author podcast welcomed Robert Dugoni, bestselling author of The Tracy Crosswhite series, including My Sister’s Grave, which has been optioned for television series development.

The Spybrary podcast featured the first in its series of commentaries on spy novels read by the students of the Fiction and Espionage class at the University of Edinburgh. The first group tackled Free Agent, the debut novel in the Paul Dark series written by Jeremy Duns.

In the latest episode of Frank Zafiro's Wrong Place, Write Crime, Colin Campbell discussed his law enforcement career with the Yorkshire Metro Police, his Jim Grant thrillers, and the differences between the US and the UK, including how US cops carry guns.

THEATER

Heart of Darkness is getting a radical retelling at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, UK, in a production that fuses live performance with cutting-edge digital technology. The innovative production turns Joseph Conrad's classic on its head, retelling the story through the eyes of a female Congolese detective making the perilous journey into a war-torn Europe. The show will run from Wednesday May 8 through Saturday, May 11.

Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

The Operative is headed to U.S. movie screens after Vertical Entertainment acquired North American rights to the spy thriller, looking to a third-quarter 2019 release. Written and directed by Yuval Adler and based on Yiftach Reicher Atir's novel, The English Teacher, the plot centers on Rachel (Diane Kruger), a rogue spy from Israel’s Mossad, who vanishes without a trace. The only clue to her whereabouts is a cryptic phone call she places to her former handler, Thomas (Martin Freeman), who must retrace her steps to determine what threats her knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program may pose to their operation, while also working to protect her.

Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger has signed on to direct the feature film, Slay the Dreamer, and he will also direct and produce a feature documentary on the same subject, the murder mystery surrounding the death of Martin Luther King. The projects are based on the life of Rev. James Lawson, friend and adviser to King and a civil rights icon in his own right, who tried to reopen the investigation of King’s murder when he discovered that Grace Walden — the only eyewitness to the man who shot King — had been involuntarily held in a mental institution outside Memphis since the assassination eight years earlier. 

Details have been sketchy concerning Rian Johnson's secretive upcoming mystery drama, Knives Out, but the director finally gave up some hints when he brought the first footage to CinemaCon. The film centers on a detective (Daniel Craig) investigating a murder when he comes across an eccentric, combative family. The film's star Jamie Lee Curtis was also on hand at CinemaCon and revealed that Don Johnson plays her husband and Chris Evans plays her son in a family gathering that turns bloody very quickly.

Avatar star Sam Worthington has boarded Nicholas Jarecki's opioid thriller, Dreamland, along with Game of Thrones actress Indira Varma and Grammy-winning recording artist and actor Kid Cudi (a.k.a Scott Mescudi). The new additions join a solid cast that includes Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, and Lily-Rose Depp. Currently filming in Montreal, the project follows three colliding stories: a drug trafficker (Hammer) who arranges a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation between Canada and the U.S.; an architect (Lilly) recovering from an OxyContin addiction who tracks down the truth behind her son’s involvement with narcotics; and a university professor (Oldman) who battles unexpected revelations about his employer, a drug company with deep government influence bringing a new “non-addictive” painkiller to market.  

The first trailer was released for Trial by Fire, director Ed Zwick’s controversial film that focuses on the true-life Texas story of the unlikely bond between death row inmate Cameron Todd Willingham (Jack O’Connell) and a mother of two from Houston, Elizabeth Gilbert (Laura Dern) who, though facing staggering odds, fights mightily for his freedom. Geoffrey Fletcher wrote the pic based on The New Yorker article “Trial by Fire” by David Grann and the letters of Willingham.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Showtime has given a series commitment and opened a writers room for the spy thriller, Intelligence, from Oscar-winning filmmaker Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) in his first foray into television. The project is based on real stories from around the world and will explore the secret inner workings of power and how espionage intersects with politics, finance, media, and Silicon Valley. The first season will dramatize the behind-the-scenes history leading up to the 2016 U.S. election, with each subsequent season looking at a major world event through the lens of covert operations.

Netflix has unveiled a Spanish adaptation of a Harlan Coben story, The Innocent. Retitled El Inocente, the eight-part series tells the story of Mateo who interceded in a fight and ended up becoming a murderer. Now he’s an ex-convict who's about to get the house of his dreams with his pregnant wife, Olivia, until a shocking and inexplicable call from Olivia’s cell phone again destroys Mateo’s life for the second time.

The ten-part series Cannes Confidential is being developed for TV by Midsomer Murders writer Chris Murray. Using the iconic Cannes location as a backdrop, the series is described as “a romantic procedural series that blends comedy, mystery and crime detection with a heart-warming love story.” The story centers on the relationship between an idealistic and ambitious female cop and a Canadian ex-conman who’s on the run from both the police and the mob. The pair are forced into an unlikely crime-fighting partnership, which sees them solve a murder case in each close-ended episode.

The myCinema digital content distribution system has announced its full slate of films a year after the service's launch, including director Arto Halonen’s Murderous Trance. The psychological thriller stars Josh Lucas and is based on a real-life case in 1950s Danish crime lore where a man commits a horrific murder while supposedly under hypnosis.  

Jack O’Connell is to star in the BBC’s adaptation of The North Water, playing the lead role of Patrick Sumner, a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as a ship’s doctor. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself on an ill-fated journey with murderous psychopath Henry Drax (Colin Farrell). Sumner is in search of redemption, and his story becomes a harsh struggle for survival in the Arctic wasteland.

The CW’s Nancy Drew pilot is giving a nod to the TV history of the iconic character by hiring Pamela Sue Martin, who played the brilliant teen sleuth in the first TV series adaptation of the Nancy Drew books from 1977-79 on ABC. Newcomer Kennedy McMann takes on the title role of the amateur detective, while Martin will play a small-town psychic who offers her talents to help Nancy investigate a murder—and ends up delivering an otherworldly clue that neither of them bargained for.

Melanie Field (Heathers) and Magda Apanowicz (Continuum) are set for recurring roles on the upcoming second season of Netflix’s You, which follows bookstore manager and creepy stalker Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley). In the freshman season, based on Caroline Kepnes’s bestselling novel, Goldberg becomes obsessed with his customer, Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), using social media and the Internet to stalk her.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Punisher) is set for a major recurring role opposite Kyle Gallner in CBS All Access’s straight-to-series drama, Interrogation. Co-created by Swedish writer-producer Anders Weidemann and John Mankiewicz, the project is an original concept based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man (Gallner) was charged with and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Moss-Bachrach plays a close friend of Kyle Gallner’s character—a heavy drug user with a violent streak. With secrets of his own, he finds himself entangled in the murder investigation. 

Apple TV’s Defending Jacob, based on William Landay’s bestselling novel, has rounded out its series regular cast as production gets underway in Boston. Cherry Jones (24), Pablo Schreiber (American Gods), Betty Gabriel (Get Out), and Sakina Jaffrey (House of Cards) have been cast opposite Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, and Jaeden Martell in the limited-run series about a father (Evans), dealing with the accusation that his son, Jacob (Martell), is a 14-year-old murderer.

Netflix has released the trailer for Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Joe Berlinger-directed pic about Ted Bundy that stars Zac Efron as the serial killer. The film, penned by Michael Werwie, takes on the Bundy story from the perspective of his girlfriend Liz Kendall (Lily Collins), who refused to believe the truth about him for years.

A trailer was also released for the Amazon series, Too Old to Die Young, starring Miles Teller as a police officer named Martin, as a grieving LAPD cop who just lost his partner. Nicolas Winding Refn, known for 2011’s Drive, writes and directs the series, with Ed Brubaker (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) also writing.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The PBS series, Between the Lines with host Barry Kibrick, welcomed Dennis Palumbo, a licensed psychotherapist, former screenwriter, and author of the bestselling crime series featuring Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert. The topic was a recent article Palumbo wrote for the Poisoned Pen blog titled “A Dark Mirror,” about how good crime fiction both reflects and reveals the society in which it is set—from Conan Doyle to Raymond Chandler to Gillian Flynn and more. 

Cynthia Erivo is to lead the voice cast and co-produce the upcoming podcast, Carrier, from the LA audio firm QCode (which recently launched with the hit Rami Malek podcast, Blackout). Erivo stars in the scripted thriller as a long-haul truck driver who discovers she’s transporting a trailer with disturbing, mysterious contents. Also in the cast are Lamorne Morris (New Girl), Martin Starr (Silicon Valley), Lance Reddick (The Wire), Elliott Gould (Ocean’s Eight), Robert Longstreet (The Haunting Of Hill House), Dale Dickey (Hell Or High Water), and Chris Ellis (The Oath).

Frank Zafiro's Wrong Place, Write Crime featured author S.A. Cosby discussing his new novel, My Darkest Prayer, which features a former Marine and sheriff's deputy who dives into the murky waters of small town corruption even as dark secrets of his own threaten to come to the surface.

The new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is a short story titled “Evening Call,” written by Julia Buckley and read by actor Amelia Ryan.

The Writer's Routine podcast chatted with C.L. Taylor, who has just released her sixth thriller, Sleep, which is centered on a woman who takes a job on a remote Scottish island as a retreat from the world—a retreat which quickly turns into a deadly nightmare.

Rachel Howzell Hall was the featured guest on the latest Speaking of Mysteries podcast, talking about her new novel, They All Fall Down, which centers around seven sinners brought to a private island for a reckoning.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Alex Wolff is set to star in the thriller, The Line, to be directed by Ethan Berger in his feature narrative debut. John Malkovich, Scoot McNairy, Jessica Barden, and Lewis Pullman have also joined the cast. The film is being described as a coming-of-age thriller at a university "that encapsulates the wild excitement of being young and the dangers of living without fear of consequences" and how quickly one horrible accident can turn that world into a nightmare.

The Sopranos prequel film, The Many Saints Of Newark, has cast its final major lead role. Michela De Rossi, the Italian-born actress who made her debut in Boys Cry, has been set to join Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Ray Liotta, Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen, John Magaro, Michael Gandolfini, and the just-cast Leslie Odom Jr. in the ensemble drama for New Line.

Celebrating its 21st year, Noir City: Hollywood returns to the Egyptian Theatre for "a 10-night feast of danger, desire and despair." Eddie Muller, host of TCM’s popular Noir Alley series, will join his Film Noir Foundation colleague Alan K. Rode to lead audiences on an excursion through "Hollywood's only organic artistic movement." This year’s program extends last year’s chronological pairings of "A" and "B" films from the 1940s, offering viewers a slate of films that tracks noir through the declining studio system and into a fresh cinematic landscape where noir was refashioned for a new generation. 

The Elizabeth Banks-directed reboot of Sony’s Charlie's Angels has bumped its release date from November 1 to November 15 to move it away from the 35-year-old Terminator franchise’s tentpole entry Terminator: Dark Fate. The female private eye project stars Banks, along with Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, Ella Balinska, Patrick Stewart, Sam Claflin, and Djimon Hounsou.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced this year's BAFTA award finalists for TV programs, with several crime-themed dramas honored, including in the Best Drama series category: Bodyguard, Killing Eve, Save Me, and Informer; and also the Best Miniseries category: A Very English Scandal and Mrs. Wilson. Best Actress nods included Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh for Killing Eve, Keeley Hawes for Bodyguard and Ruth Wilson for Mrs. Wilson, while Hugh Grant snagged a nomination for his role in A Very English Scandal. For all the nominees, check out The Guardian's roundup.

The History Channel is teaming with Sylvester Stallone to develop the turn-of-the-century police drama series, The Tenderloin (working title), based on the true story of Charles Becker. Becker led the Strong-Arm Squad, a group of dirty cops tasked with going to war with the Italian, Jewish, and Irish gangs in a violent New York City neighborhood, which led to Becker becoming first and only policeman in U.S. history to be executed for murder.

Law & Order: SVU and its star Mariska Hargitay have cemented their places in television history as NBC has renewed Dick Wolf’s series for a record-setting 21st season, surpassing the previous mark (for a live action series) of 20 seasons set by mothership series Law & Order (1990-2010) and Gunsmoke (1955-75). The renewal also marks a milestone for Hargitay’s Lt. Benson as the longest-running character in a primetime live-action series, passing Gunsmoke's James Arness and Milburn Stone and also Kelsey Grammer. However, it was also announced that key cast member Philip Winchester, who portrays Asst. District Attorney Peter Stone, won’t be returning for the history-making season.

Fox has renewed its Monday procedural dramas including 9-1-1. The series stars Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, and Jennifer Love Hewitt and explores the high-pressure experiences of police officers, firefighters, and emergency operators "who are thrust into the most frightening, shocking and heart-stopping situations."

Fans of the Epix spy drama, Berlin Station, weren't as lucky, with the network announcing it was cancelling the show after the end of its third season. The critically acclaimed series starred Ashley Judd, Richard Armitage, Rhys Ifans, Keke Palmer, Leland Orser, Michelle Forbes, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Mina Tander, and Richard Jenkins.

Hugh Dancy (Hannibal) is set for a multi-episode arc opposite Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin on the eighth and final season of Showtime’s Homeland. Dancy will recur as John Zabel, a savvy Washington consultant who joins the White House as a foreign-policy adviser to the president and a formidable opponent to Saul Berenson (Patinkin).

Pat Healy (The Post), Melinda McGraw (Outcast) and Michael Harney (Orange Is the New Black) are set for recurring roles opposite Peter Sarsgaard, Kyle Gallner, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and David Strathairn in CBS All Access’s true-crime drama, Interrogation. Co-created by Swedish writer-producer Anders Weidemann and John Mankiewicz, Interrogation is an original concept based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man (Gallner) was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother.

David James Elliott is set to reprise his JAG character, Navy Captain Harmon Rabb Jr. in a multi-episode arc on NCIS: Los Angeles, which brings him full circle since JAG (1995-2005) was the precursor of the original NCIS series. He will make his debut in the May 12 episode, "The Guardian," playing the XO Captain on the USS Intrepid. 

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace's Edgar Ramirez and American Horror Story's Lily Rabe have joined Nicole Kidman’s HBO limited series, The Undoing. The cast of the David E. Kelley-created show also includes Hugh Grant, Donald Sutherland, and Noah Jupe. The project centers on Grace Sachs (Nicole Kidman), a successful therapist with a devoted husband (Hugh Grant) and young son who attends an elite private school. Overnight a chasm opens in her life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The featured guest on this week’s Spectator Books podcast was Donna Leon who talked about her latest Commissario Brunetti novel, Unto Us A Son Is Given, as well as what Venice gives her as a setting, why she welcomes snobbery towards crime writers, and why she never lets her books be published in Italian.

On the latest Read or Dead, hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham examined mystery/thriller books featuring disabled protagonists and also looked forward to some new book adaptations.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro welcomed Gary Phillips to discuss his new release, The Movie Makers, the fourth novel in the Grifter's Song series.

Spybrary chatted with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang author Mike Ripley to find out what’s new in the paperback edition.

The latest guest on Meet the Thriller Author was Lauren Carr, author of several series including the Thorny Rose, Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Chris Matheson Cold Case mysteries.

THEATRE

After strong reviews in Chicago, Lizzie The Musical, a rock opera based on the infamous Lizzie Borden, will begin Off Broadway previews this summer at The Pershing Square Signature Center. Directed by Victoria Bussert (with music by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer and Alan Stevens Hewitt, lyrics by Cheslik-DeMeyer and Tim Maner, and choreography by Jaclyn Miller), the cast includes Shannon O’Boyle (Kinky Boots) as the title character, Carrie Cimma as Bridget, Ciara Renée as Alice, and Eden Espinosa as Emma.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Will Fetters, who with Bradley Cooper and Eric Roth adapted the Oscar-nominated screenplay for A Star Is Born, has been tapped to rewrite Tell No One, a Universal pic based on the 2001 Harlan Coben thriller novel. The book was first turned into a 2016 French film by Guillaume Canet, and at one point Liam Neeson was attached to star as a doctor who receives a strange message that leads him on a dangerous quest to find out the truth behind his wife's death.

Principal photography is now underway on The Postcard Killings, an adaptation of James Patterson and Liza Marklund’s bestselling thriller novel The Postcard Killers. Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land, Death in Sarajevo) is directing the film, which follows a hardened New York Detective (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as he investigates the death of his daughter who was murdered while on her honeymoon in London. Along the way, he recruits the help of a Scandinavian journalist when other couples throughout Europe suffer a similar fate.

Jeff Wadlow is set to direct Danger Girl, adapted from the namesake comic book series that follows the adventures of Abbey Chase, who's reluctantly recruited into an all-female secret organization. The daring Chase finds herself teamed with a trio of elite operatives — Sydney Savage, Natalia Kasstle, and “Silicon” Valerie — and dispatched on a globe-trotting adventure to find and secure a series of objects with destructive power coveted by the evil neo-nazi collective called the Hammer Syndicate.

Sony Pictures Entertainment has picked up the film Booker at a competitive auction. The project is described as "a John Wick-esque hard-boiled action film with an African American male lead." Derek Kolstad, who scripted the first two John Wick films, is writing this one with Gerard McMurray, who’ll direct the film as his follow-up to The First Purge.

New Line has set Tony-winning actor Leslie Odom Jr. for a starring role in The Many Saints Of Newark, the prequel film to David Chase’s iconic HBO mob series, The Sopranos. He joins Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Ray Liotta, Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen, John Magaro and Michael Gandolfini, the latter of whom is reprising the Tony Soprano role originated by his late father, James Gandolfini.

The first trailer was released for the mystery/drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which follows former Western TV star Cliff Booth (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Rick Dalton (Brad Pitt) as they navigate a city and industry they hardly recognize anymore. Margot Robbie also stars as the late actress Sharon Tate, who in 1969 was murdered by members of the Charles Manson-led Manson family.

In the new trailer for John Wick 3: Parabellum, every assassin in the world is after the bounty on Wick's (Keanu Reeves) head. New characters include Asia Kate Dillon, Halle Berry, and Angelica Huston, who join returning actors Lawrence Fishburne and Ian McShane. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Oscar-winning screenwriter Steve Zaillian will write and direct a straight-to-series project that focuses on Tom Ripley, the sociopath anti-hero of the Patricia Highsmith crime novel series. Zaillian will use the five novels written by Highsmith — The Talented Mrs. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Underwater — as a road map to show Ripley’s progression from con artist to serial killer.

Canadian production company New Metric Media is launching an U.S. division with a trio of projects including two crime dramas. The company is developing a Nashville-set drama based on criminologist Dr. Michael Arntfield’s book Monster City and also a series of crime thrillers based on the books of Peter Edwards, who wrote Bad Blood: The End of Honour.

The Fox artificial intelligence drama neXt is adding to its cast. neXt is described as a propulsive, fact-based thriller grounded in the latest A.I. research, featuring a brilliant but paranoid former tech CEO, Paul Leblanc, who joins a Homeland Cybersecurity Agent and her team to stop the world’s first artificial intelligence crisis. Mad Men alum John Slattery has been hired as the lead, while Jason Butler Harner (Ozark) has been added to play his somewhat narrow-minded younger brother who is a corporate executive at a tech company.

Writer and producer Tim Van Patten (Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones) has been tapped to direct and executive produce Perry Mason, HBO’s limited series starring Matthew Rhys in the title role. Based on characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner, the project follows the origins of American Fiction’s most legendary criminal defense lawyer, Perry Mason (Rhys). When the case of the decade breaks down his door, Mason’s relentless pursuit of the truth reveals a fractured city and just maybe, a pathway to redemption for himself.

Alive, TV’s latest attempt at a Frankenstein-inspired series has hired Ryan Phillippe (Shooter) to star as San Francisco homicide detective Mark Escher, who’s mysteriously brought back to life after being killed in the line of duty. As Mark and his wife realize he isn’t the same person he used to be, they zero in on the strange man behind his resurrection: Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Arrow alumna Katrina Law will portray Mark’s spouse Elizabeth Lavenza, a pathologist  who is stunned when her husband returns from the dead. Mad Men vet Aaron Staton will co-star as the brilliant, slightly odd and possibly obsessed Dr. Frankenstein, who is on the run from an ethics board in China. 

Downton Abbey alumna Michelle Dockery and It star Jaeden Martell are set as leads opposite Chris Evans in Defending Jacob, Apple’s limited drama series based on William Landay’s bestselling novel. The book tells the story of a father, Andy Barber (Evans), dealing with the accusation that his son, Jacob (Martell), is a 14-year-old murderer. Dockery will play Laurie Barber, Andy's wife and Jacob's mother.

Kate Mulgrew (Star Trek: Voyager), Brett Gelman (Stranger Things) and Natalie Paul (The Sinner, You) are set to recur on the upcoming third season of AT&T Audience Network’s critically praised drama series, Mr. Mercedes, which is based on the Stephen King novels. Season 2 took place a year after Brady Hartsfield’s (Harry Treadaway) thwarted attempt to perpetrate a second mass murder in the community of Bridgton, Ohio. Retired Detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) did his best to move on from his Brady obsession, teaming up with Holly Gibney (Justine Lupe) to open Finders Keepers, a private investigative agency. But when unexplainable occurrences began to affect hospital staff members attending to Brady, Hodges was haunted by the feeling that Brady was somehow responsible.

Pepe Rapazote (Narcos) and Alimi Ballard (Numb3rs) are set to recur in the upcoming fourth season of USA Network’s Queen of the South starring Alice Braga. Based on the bestselling book La Reina del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, the show tells the powerful story of Teresa Mendoza (Braga), a woman who is forced to run from the Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America. Rapazote will play Raul “El Gordo” Rodriguez, a Cuban drug dealer out of Miami who has ties to all the kingpins on the East Coast. Ballard will portray Marcel Dumas, a slick and measured Creole leader of a New Orleans street gang and owner of a hip jazz club.

The Brave alum Tate Ellington is returning to NBC as a series regular opposite Russell Hornsby and Arielle Kebbel in Lincoln, a drama pilot based on Jeffery Deaver’s bestselling The Bone Collector book series. Lincoln follows legendary forensic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme (Hornsby), who was seriously injured during his hunt for the diabolic serial killer known as the Bone Collector. Called back into action when the killer re-emerges, Lincoln forms a unique partnership with Amelia Sachs (Kebbel), a young beat cop who helps him hunt the deadly mastermind while also taking on the most high-profile cases in the NYPD. Ellington will play Felix, part of the CSI team and quick to speak his mind.

Simone Missick is set as the lead in CBS’ legal drama pilot Courthouse, which follows the dedicated, chaotic, hopeful and sometimes absurd lives of the judges, assistant district attorneys and public defenders as they work with bailiffs, clerks, cops and jurors to bring justice to the people of Los Angeles. Missick will play a Deputy District Attorney who's become a newly appointed judge and pushes boundaries and challenging expectations of what a judge should be. She joins previously announced series regulars Marg Helgenberger, Jessica Camacho, Wilson Bethel, and J. Alex Brinson. 

We’re getting the first look at Oscar winner Forest Whitaker as crime boss Bumpy Johnson in a teaser trailer for Epix’s new straight-to-series crime drama Godfather of Harlem. From Narcos co-creator Chris Brancato and Paul Eckstein and ABC Signature Studios, Godfather of Harlem is inspired by the story of the infamous crime boss Johnson (Whitaker), who in the early 1960s returned from ten years in prison to find the neighborhood he once ruled in shambles. With the streets controlled by the Italian mob, Bumpy must take on the Genovese crime family to regain control. Nigel Thatch, Vincent D’Onofrio, Giancarlo Esposito, Paul Sorvino, and Ilfenesh Hadera also star.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Authors of the Pacific Northwest welcomed crime author Frank Zafiro to chat about his gritty River City series, giving back to the author’s community, and Frank's own podcast, Wrong Place, Write Crime.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast features a baseball mystery short story called “Two Men On, One Man Dead” by Jack Bates, as read by Ariel Linn.

The CBC took a look at the forgotten history of Nancy Drew, the iconic teenage detective who “turns 90” soon.

On the latest Partners in Crime podcast, hosts Adam Croft and Robert Daws hosts debated the emotional price of true crime versus fictional and explored the “tortured detective”  cliché – or maybe it's a trope.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro welcomed Colin Conway to discuss the re-issue of his novel, Some Degree of Murder.

In the latest Criminal Mischief podcast, host DP Lyle took on the topic of how to create memorable first impressions in your crime novel.

THEATER

The Kings Theatre in Edinburgh is staging a production of The Girl on a Train, adapted from the bestselling suspense novel by Paula Hawkins. The play will run from March 25-30 and stars Samantha Womack and Oliver Farnworth.

GAMES

The classic action film Die Hard is being turned into a tabletop board game. Titled Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game, publishers at OP Games (aka USAopoly) tell Polygon that it will be a “one-versus-many asymmetric experience.”

Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it’s time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Tom Holland is in talks to star in a new film from Avengers directors Anthony and Joe Russo, the heist movie Cherry. Based on the 2018 novel by Nico Walker, the story centers on a former Iraq War Army medic who turned to robbing banks to pay for his increasing medical bills and to cope with his PTSD. While fictionalized, the book parallels the true story of its author, who himself was an army medic convicted for bank robbery and is currently serving out the last two years of his 11-year prison sentence.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired U.S. rights to Avengement, an action thriller starring Doctor Strange’s Scott Adkins and directed by Jesse V. Johnson from a screenplay he co-wrote with Stu Small. The film centers on a lowly criminal named Cain Burgess (Adkins) who evades his guards while on furlough and returns to his old haunts to take revenge on the people who made him a cold-hearted killer. Nick Moran, Thomas Turgoose, Kierston Wareing and Louis Mandylor co-star.

Killing Ground helmer, Damien Power, is attached to direct 20th Century Fox’s No Exit, a thriller based on the novel of the same name by Taylor Adams. The project follows several strangers stranded at a rest stop during a blizzard, where a young woman discovers a kidnapped girl and must determine who the kidnapper is and plot their escape.

Denzel Washington is in talks to star in John Lee Hancock’s cop thriller Little Things, taking on the role of Deke, a burned out Kern County sheriff who teams with LA County Sheriff’s Department detective, Baxter, to reel in a wily serial killer. Deke’s nose for the “little things” (hence the title of the movie) proves eerily accurate, but his willingness to circumvent the rules embroils Baxter in a soul-shattering dilemma, even as Deke wrestles with a dark secret from his past. The role of Baxter has yet to be cast.

Oscar winner Morgan Freeman has signed on for The Hitman’s Bodyguard sequel from Lionsgate and Millennium Films. Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, and Salma Hayek are set to reprise their roles with Patrick Hughes returning to direct from a screenplay by Tom O’Connor. The latest installment, which is slated to begin filming this month, will follow Michael Bryce (Reynolds) who joins Darius (Jackson) and his wife Sonia (Hayek) on a mission along the Amalfi Coast.

John Magaro has been cast in The Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark, reteaming with David Chase after their 2012 movie Not Fade Away. There’s no word on who Magaro is playing, but he joins Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Ray Liotta, Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen and Michael Gandolfini in the cast. The project is set in the era of the Newark riots in the 1960s, when African Americans and Italian Americans in the city were at each other’s throats.

Denis O’Hare, Naomi Battrick and Ruairi O’Connor have joined Danis Tanovic’s The Postcard Killings. The trio will star alongside Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Connie Nielsen and Cush Jumbo in the adaptation of the James Patterson and Liza Marklund bestseller which follows a hardened New York Detective (Dean Morgan), in search of the person responsible for the murder of his only daughter. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Riven Rock Projects is moving into the action-thriller arena with the acquisition of Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone series. The books, which consist of 14 installments including the recent Malta Exchange, focus on former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone, who partners with Cassiopeia Vitt to take down the world’s deadliest terrorists, assassins and con men, unraveling along the way some of history’s most legendary and iconic mysteries.

Indie producer Stampede has acquired bestselling author Ragnar Jónasson’s Icelandic thriller The Darkness and will adapt it as a local-language series. The Darkness, which was published last year, is Jónasson’s first in a planned trilogy focusing on Reykjavik detective Hulda Hermannsdóttir, a dedicated investigator forced into early retirement who takes on a final cold case centered on the mysterious death of a young Russian asylum seeker. 

NBC has given an early Season 7 renewal to veteran thriller drama The Blacklist. Series star James Spader had renegotiated his deal early on, adding an extra year, but the rest of the show’s original cast members’ contracts were up at the end of the current sixth season. In addition to headliners Spader, Megan Boone, Diego Klattenhoff, and Harry Lennix, The Blacklist cast also features Amir Arison, Mozhan Marnò and Hisham Tawfiq.

Michael Ealy and Mark Webber are set as leads opposite Cobie Smulders in Stumptown, ABC’s drama pilot inspired by the graphic novels published by Oni Press. It follows Dex Parios (Smulders), a strong, assertive, and sharp-witted Army veteran working as a PI in Portland, OR. Ealy will play Miles Hoffman, a detective with the Portland Police Department who is looking for escaped convict Samuel Kane, while Webber’s Grey McConnell is Dex’s best friend and has an unrequited crush on her. It was also announced last week that The Practice alumna Camryn Manheim is set as a lead in the project.

Last week I reported that Game of Thrones alum Finn Jones had signed on to star in Fox’s crime drama pilot Prodigal Son, but the network announced four days later they’d changed their minds and have replaced him with Walking Dead star Tom Payne. The project centers on Malcolm Bright, who has a gift of knowing how killers think and how their minds work because his father Martin Whitly (played by Michael Sheen) is one of the worst — a notorious serial killer called “The Surgeon.” Also starring in the pilot as previously announced are Bellamy Young, Lou Diamond Phillips, Aurora Perrineau, and Frank Harts.

And in other recasting news, Fox’s drama pilot, Deputy, is recasting one of the female leads opposite star Stephen Dorff. Bex Taylor-Klaus has been cast as Deputy Breanna Bishop, replacing Jasmine Kaur, who originally was cast in the role. Deputy centers on Deputy Bill Hollister (Dorff), a career lawman who’s very comfortable kicking down doors yet utterly lost in a staff meeting. But when the L.A. County sheriff drops dead, Bill becomes acting sheriff, in charge of 10,000 sworn deputies policing a modern Wild West. Taylor-Klaus’s Deputy Breanna Bishop is the smartly dressed, sarcastic, “quietly badass” driver in charge of newly appointed Sheriff Hollister’s security detail

Mary Stuart Masterson (Benny and Joon) is set as a lead opposite Nicholas Pinnock and Indira Varma in ABC’s untitled legal/family drama pilot from Hank Steinberg, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Doug Robinson, and Alison Greenspan. Also executive producing is Isaac Wright Jr., who was wrongfully convicted as a drug kingpin but got his conviction overturned while in prison and became a licensed attorney. Masterson will play Anya, the hard-charging Brooklyn District Attorney.

Former Midnight, Texas star Arielle Kebbel has been hired as the female lead opposite Russell Hornsby in NBC’s Lincoln, the drama pilot based on Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme book series that started with the 1997 novel The Bone Collector. Called back into action when the killer re-emerges, Lincoln forms a unique partnership with Amelia Sachs (Kebbel), a young beat cop who helps him hunt the deadly mastermind while also taking on the most high-profile cases in the NYPD. Also joining the cast is Michael Imperioli, who will play Rick Sellitto, an NYPD detective who assists the title character, a quadriplegic forensic criminalist.

Freddie Prinze Jr. is joining the CW’s Nancy Drew project, playing Nancy's father Carson Drew. In the untitled pilot based on the series of mystery novels featuring the teen sleuth, Carson is a dynamic attorney who has become estranged from his daughter (Kennedy McMann) following the death of his beloved wife. His attempts to reconnect with Nancy run aground when her murder investigation reveals unsettling secrets from Carson's past. The cast also includes Leah Lewis (Charmed), Tunji Kasim, Maddison Jaizani and Alex Saxon. 

Joseph Lyle Taylor (Sneaky Pete) and David Fierro (The Knick) are set as series regulars opposite Edie Falco and Michael Chernus in the CBS drama pilot Tommy (fka Nancy), from the Bull team of co-creator Paul Attanasio and producer Amblin TV. Falco will play Abigail “Tommy” Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles. Fierro’s Buddy is the brilliant, manipulative mayor of Los Angeles, who becomes a rival for power with the city’s first female police chief, while Taylor will portray Dudik, Buddy’s deputy.

Longmire and Saving Grace alum Bailey Chase and David Andrews (Shooter) have joined the Season 4 cast of USA Network’s Queen of the South drama series in key roles. Starring Alice Braga and based on the best-selling book La Reina Del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Queen of the South tells the powerful story of Teresa Mendoza (Braga), a woman who is forced to run from a Mexican cartel to seek refuge in America.  

Scrubs alum Donald Faison is set as a lead opposite Allison Tolman in Emergence, NBC’s mystery drama pilot. Emergence is a character-driven genre thriller that centers on Jo (Tolman), a police chief who takes in a young child, Piper (Alexa Skye Swinton), she finds near the site of a mysterious accident. The investigation draws her into a conspiracy larger than she ever imagined.

Michael Mosley (Seven Seconds, Ozark) is set as a series regular in Fox’s artificial intelligence thriller drama pilot neXT. The show is described as “a propulsive, fact-based thriller grounded in the latest A.I. research.” Mosley will play CM, a Southern ex-con hacker with a genius IQ who works at the FBI cybercrime division. He joins previously cast series regulars Fernanda Andrade, Eve Harlowe, Aaron Moten, and Gerardo Celasco.

Joe Tippett (Rise) and Colony alum Alex Neustaedter are set as series regulars opposite Malin Akerman and Mykelti Williamson in NBC’s legal drama pilot Prism, inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa. Prism is described as a provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved.

A trailer was released for Charlie Says, a film which focuses on the females who fell prey to the manipulation of the infamous murderer and cult leader Charles Manson. American Psycho filmmaker Mary Harron directed the film, which stars The Crown’s Matt Smith as Manson.

A keynote lecture by James Naremore will be part of the second annual Dr. Saul and Dorothy Kit Film Noir Festival  Wednesday, March 27. The event will be held at the Katharina Otto-Bernstein screening room at the Lenfest Center for the Arts in New York and features the talk “Into the Night: Cornell Woolrich and Film Noir.”

If you’re a fan of international crime dramas, check out this list from the New York Times of “5 New International Series [that] Visit 5 Far-Flung Crime Scenes.”

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Story Blender welcomed Liv Constantine, the internationally bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish, who follows that success with an addictive novel about the aftermath of a brutal high-society murder in The Last Time I Saw You.

Debbi Mack interviewed mystery author Phillippe Diederich (writing as Danny Lopez), author of the Dexter Vega mysteries, on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Writer Types hosts Eric Beetner and  S.W. Lauden welcomed the writing team of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar to talk about their debut novel, Double Exposure; Wendall Thomas, author of the Cyd Redondo series; Jeffrey Fleishman to answer five questions about his novel My Detective; plus authors from the upcoming anthology Murder A Go-Gos.

Hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham talked about the big college admissions scam and provided some creepy book picks for a reader’s book club on the Read or Dead podcast.

The latest two Speaking of Mysteries podcasts featured Jess Montgomery discussing The Widows, the first novel in a new series with Lily Ross, the first woman sheriff in Ohio; and Glen Erik Hamilton, talking about Mercy River, the fourth installment in his series about the former Army Ranger, Van Shaw.

Tell the Damn Story host Chris Ryan chatted with mystery author and ex-journalist, R.G. Belsky.

The latest edition of Michael Connelly’s Murder Book podcast focuses on the defense of Pierre Romain.

THEATER

The Kings Theatre in Edinburgh is staging a production of The Girl on the Train, adapted from Paula Hawkins’s novel about a woman who learns someone she’s been secretly watching has suddenly disappeared, embroiling her in a thrilling mystery. The show opens March 25 with a run through March 30.

GAMES

NEXT Studios has announced its upcoming narrative-centric detective game, Unheard, will be released on PC on March 29, 2019. Unheard combines story-driven audio drama with puzzle elements to create a unique experience where players take on the role of a time-traveling detective who is only able to use one sense—sound.

Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures and Brad Pitt’s Plan B (the creative team behind this year's Oscar winners Vice and If Beale Street Could Talk) are adapting the best-selling novel The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides to the big screen. The thriller centers on Alicia Berenson, a famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer with a seemingly perfect life - until one day she shoots her husband five times in the face and then never speaks another word. When she's sent to the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London, criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber is determined to get her to talk and unravel the mystery behind her actions, a pursuit that threatens to consume him.

The upstart Solstice Studios has chosen its first homegrown picture, the action thriller Split Second. Scripted by former military intelligence officer Mitchell LaFortune, Split Second centers on an assassin who suffers a psychological breakdown when he is ordered to kill the woman who is his lifeline. The story follows two versions of the same character: one who pulls the trigger and descends into madness, the other who takes the road to redemption and goes on the run with her.

Unified Pictures is developing the film noir thriller Whisper. The project stars Maia Mitchell, Joey Bicicchi, and Guy Burnet, with Azi Rahman making his feature directorial debut. Bicicchi plays Nick, a talented photographer who is new to Los Angeles and falls for Tessa (Mitchell), a free-spirited young woman who is no longer charmed by the city. Their worlds are turned upside down when she asks him to do the unimaginable, which forces the duo down a path of revenge and destruction.

Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike has been cast as the lead in the thriller I Care A Lot. Director J Blakeson (The 5th Wave) is also writing the project, which will begin shooting in June of this year. Oscar nominee Pike will play Marla Grayson, a highly successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her clients’ detriment. But when she cherry picks her seemingly perfect client, she soon realizes looks can be deceiving.

James Moses Black has come aboard Black and Blue, a crime drama directed by Deon Taylor. Naomie Harris stars as a rookie cop in New Orleans who witnesses corrupt narc officers murdering a drug dealer, an event captured by her body cam. When they then fail to execute her and she escapes, the narcs pin the murder on her, and she is hunted both by the narcs who are desperate to destroy the incriminating footage, as well as the drug dealers out for apparent revenge.

Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow announced the release of Sherlock Holmes 3 has been pushed back a full year. The still-untitled follow up to 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows will now hit theaters December 22, 2021, instead of December 25, 2020. The first two films were directed by Guy Ritchie and starred Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson, respectively. It's not been officially announced whether Downey and Law will return for the third outing.

If you're a fan of noir cinema, check out this list of the “10 best neo-noir films of all time: From Chinatown to LA Confidential.”

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

FX Networks has landed the rights to adapt Don Winslow’s acclaimed Cartel Trilogy into a TV series that will include Winslow’s 2005 novel The Power of the Dog, the 2015 followup The Cartel, and the just published conclusion, The Border. The book trilogy spans a 45 year period and follows DEA agent Art Keller through America’s long running war on drugs as well as his blood feud with Mexican drug kingpin Adan Berrera. The first two books were originally sold to be turned into a feature film by Fox, but the company ultimately decided it was too much material for a two-hour film and better suited for “an edgy Sons of Anarchy-style series” by sister company FX.

The classic British series Rumpole of the Bailey is returning to the small screen. The legal drama, which was created by writer and barrister John Mortimer, will be rebooted by Mortimer’s daughter, Emily. The original starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an elderly barrister in London who defended a weird and wonderful mix of clients. Polly Williams, eOne’s head of scripted development in the UK, told Deadline that Mortimer has “reimagined” the series and she and her sister Rosie were writing the script. “They have written a very modern take on Rumpole. I’m very excited to see how that turns out,” Williams added.

Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories has inked a deal with Agatha Christie Ltd. to develop a new Miss Marple TV series. The latest incarnation will be co-developed by the Big Little Lies producer and Endeavor Content. Christie’s books about the amateur detective have been in print for more than 90 years and are now in more than 100 territories worldwide. Numerous film and TV adaptations through that time have starred Margaret Rutherford, Angela Lansbury, Geraldine McEwan, Helen Hayes, and Joan Hickson as the iconic amateur sleuth.

NBC has put the brakes on its plans for Law & Order: Hate Crimes, the greenlighted new Law & Order spinoff from the franchise’s creator Dick Wolf, which had already been given a 13-episode order. The project remains in active development at the network as everyone “needed more time to fresh (sic) out the concept.” Meanwhile, SVU has not been renewed, although it is considered to be likely so it can break the record for the longest-run drama series jointly held by Gunsmoke and Law & Order. It is thought the Hate Crimes spinoff could then be introduced during SVU’s 21st and likely final season.

A drama series starring Captain Marvel star Brie Larson has landed at Apple with a straight-to-series order. The untitled female-focused CIA drama is based on Amaryrillis Fox’s upcoming memoir, Coming of Age in the CIA, and draws upon the real-life experiences of undercover operative Fox as a young woman working up the ranks in the spy agency.

Podcast company Wondery is stepping up its television activities following the success of Dirty John and is in talks to adapt its latest hit, Over My Dead Body. The first season of the Over My Dead Body podcast tells the story of Dan Markel and his wife Wendi, two good-looking attorneys whose wedding is featured in the New York Times. But when this perfect couple’s marriage falls apart, it leads to a bad breakup, a worse divorce, and a murder case involving a menagerie of high-priced lawyers and unexpected co-conspirators.

USA Network has picked up a third season of its thriller drama series, The Sinner, and has tapped Matt Bomer as a new lead opposite Bill Pullman who will return as Detective Harry Ambrose. Bomer will play Jamie, an upstanding Dorchester resident and expectant father who looks to Ambrose for support in the wake of an accident. He succeeds Jessica Biel and Carrie Coon, who starred opposite Pullman in Seasons 1 and 2, respectively.

Russell Hornsby has been hired as the title character in NBC’s Lincoln, a drama pilot based on the bestselling book series by Jeffery Deaver (adapted into the 1999 movie starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie). Lincoln follows legendary forensic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme (Hornsby), who was seriously injured during his hunt for the diabolical serial killer known as the Bone Collector. Called back into action when the killer re-emerges, Rhyme forms a unique partnership with Amelia Sachs, a young beat cop who helps him hunt the deadly mastermind while also taking on the most high-profile cases in the NYPD.

Nicholas Pinnock (Counterpart) has been cast as the lead in ABC’s untitled legal/family drama pilot that centers on Aaron (Pinnock), a prisoner who becomes a lawyer, litigating cases for other inmates while fighting to overturn his own life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. One of the producers on the project is Isaac Wright, Jr., who was once wrongfully convicted as drug kingpin but got his conviction overturned while in prison and became a licensed attorney. It was also recently announced that Indira Varma (Game of Thrones) has been cast as the female lead in the pilot.

Game of Thrones alum Finn Jones has signed on to star in Fox’s crime drama pilot, Prodigal Son. The project centers on Malcolm Bright (Jones), who has a gift—he knows how killers think because his father Martin Whitly (played by Michael Sheen) is one of the worst, a notorious serial killer called “The Surgeon.” Also starring in the pilot are Bellamy Young, Lou Diamond Phillips, Aurora Perrineau, and Frank Harts.

ITV announced that Brenda Blethyn will return for a 10th series of Vera (based on the novels by Ann Cleeves), reprising her role as DCI Vera Stanhope. Four feature-length episodes, set in North East England, will begin production in April and will air in 2020. Returning alongside Blethyn are Kenny Doughty (DS Aiden Healy), Jon Morrison (DC Kenny Lockhart), Riley Jones (DC Mark Edwards), Ibinabo Jack (DC Jacqueline Williams), and Paul Kaye (Dr Malcolm Donahue).

Hellboy’s Ron Perlman and X-Men’s Famke Janssen are to star in BBC One's spy drama The Capture, joining previously announced Callum Turner and Holliday Grainger in the six-part series. The London-set spy thriller begins with the unjust arrest of an innocent man and escalates into a multi-layered conspiracy of manipulated evidence.

Sara Rue is set as a series regular in NBC’s Prism pilot. Written and directed by Daniel Barnz, Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa, and is described as a “provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved.”

Sofia Barclay has booked a series regular role on ABC’s NYPD Blue pilot, a new iteration of the iconic cop drama. The sequel centers on Theo (played by Fabien Frankel), the son of Dennis Franz’s Detective Andy Sipowicz character from the original series, who tries to earn his detective shield and work in the 15th squad while investigating his father’s murder.

Daredevil alum Wilson Bethel is set as a series regular in the CBS legal drama pilot Courthouse, a show that pulls back the curtain on the court system. It follows the lives of the judges, assistant district attorneys, and public defenders as they work with bailiffs, clerks, cops and jurors to bring justice to the people of Los Angeles. Bethel will play Mark, a roguish, highly successful Deputy District Attorney.

Maddison Jaizani and Alex Saxon are set as series regulars opposite Kennedy McMann and Tunji Kasim in the CW’s untitled Nancy Drew pilot inspired by the classic mysteries about the brilliant young sleuth. Jaizani will play Bess, a refined young woman whose wealthy background sets her apart from Nancy (Kennedy McMann) – but when they both become suspects in the same murder, Bess proves to be a spirited ally in the search for the real killer.

Chris D’Elia is set for a recurring role on the upcoming second season of Netflix’s You. D’Elia will play Henderson, a “designer hoodie, black Ray-Bans, expensive sneakers-wearing famous comedian.” You follows bookstore manager and stalker Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) and is based on Caroline Kepnes’s best-selling novels. The show’s second season will be loosely based on the author’s second book in the series titled Hidden Bodies, which follows Goldberg to Los Angeles where he meets Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), an aspiring chef who isn’t into social media like his previous leading lady.

Yara Martinez and Brian Van Holt will co-star opposite Stephen Dorff in Deputy, Fox’s police drama pilot from Bright helmer David Ayer, Aquaman writer Will Beall, and eOne. Written by Beall and directed by Ayer, Deputy centers on Deputy Bill Hollister (Dorff), a career lawman who’s very comfortable kicking down doors but utterly lost in a staff meeting. But when the L.A. County sheriff drops dead, Bill becomes acting sheriff, in charge of 10,000 sworn deputies policing a modern Wild West. Martinez will play Hollister’s wife, Dr. Paula Reyes, a trauma surgeon, while Van Holt will play former Marine-turned-Deputy Cade Walker.

Sarayu Blue has joined the cast of Medical Police, which has a 10-episode series order at Netflix and stars Childrens Hospital alums Erinn Hayes and Rob Huebel. Medical Police is described as an action-packed thriller, mystery, and love story that centers on two American physicians (Hayes and Huebel) stationed at a pediatric hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, who discover a civilization-threatening virus. The duo are recruited as government agents in a race against time and around the world to find a cure and uncover a dark conspiracy.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

David Swinson was featured on WAMU public radio's Kojo Nnamdi Show to talk about his career, his characters, and the “good cop/bad cop” tropes of crime fiction.

On the latest Mysteryrat’s Maze podcast from Kings River Life magazine, actor Thomas Nance reads the first chapter of the mystery novel Fostering Death by K.M. Rockwood.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste welcomed guest Jo Spain, who talked about her road to being published, Brookside, and writing for TV.

Beyond the Cover chatted with Greg Iles about his latest novel, Cemetery Road.

Crime Cafe host Debbi Mack interviewed Dr. Ellen Kirschman, clinical psychologist and consultant, who's worked with law enforcement agencies for over 20 years, and has written mysteries and nonfiction books like I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know.

Dr. D.P. Lyle's Criminal Mischief focused on “The Rules of Writing.”

Michael Connelly's Murder Book podcast continued the real life saga of a Hollywood killing that tested the limits of the American justice system.

THEATER

The Mystery Series at Calgary's Vertigo Theatre is performing Might as Well Be Dead: a Nero Wolfe Mystery, from March 16- April 14. Adapted by Joseph Goodrich from the Rex Stout novel, the story follows iconic P.I. Nero Wole and his assistant Archie Goodwin as they help a client whose estranged son has been charged with murder.

Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Fox Searchlight has signed a deal with producer Damian Jones to develop several movie projects, including a thriller and a murder mystery. The thriller is a remake of Julia Roberts’s 1991 hit, Sleeping With The Enemy, about a woman trying to escape her abusive husband. The project is an untitled murder mystery film by Flaked co-creator Mark Chappell, although no further details were released.

Christian Gudegast and JP Davis have closed a deal to co-write Mafia X for Thunder Road Pictures and Pioneer Pictures, with Gudegast serving as director. Mafia X is described as a high-concept action thriller inspired by the true stories of organized crime groups banding together to fight terrorism.

Saban Films has picked up domestic rights to Richard Bates Jr.’s horror thriller, Tone-Deaf, which stars Terminator 2’s Robert Patrick and Silicon Valley’s Amanda Crew. Tone-Deaf follows millennial Olive (Crew) who leaves the city for a weekend of peace in the country, only to discover the shockingly dark underbelly of rural America. She rents an eccentric, ornate country house from Harvey (Patrick), an old-fashioned widower who’s struggling to hide his psychopathic tendencies — and the two collide.

Indie distributor Roadside Attractions has acquired U.S. rights to Edward Zwick’s true-crime drama, Trial by Fire, adapted by Geoffrey Fletcher and based on David Grann’s article in The New Yorker. The project stars Laura Dern and Jack O’Connell and centers on the unlikely bond between a death row inmate (O’Connell) and a mother of two from Houston (Dern) who, though facing staggering odds, fights for his freedom.

NEON has taken U.S. rights to this year’s Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner, Clemency, from filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu. The film stars Oscar nominee Alfre Woodard as prison warden Bernadine Williams, who after years of carrying out death row executions, comes up against one inmate who forces her to confront the psychological and emotional demons her job has created.

Warner Bros. has acquired worldwide distribution rights to Reminiscence, the action thriller starring Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson and directed by Lisa Joy (Westworld), who also wrote the script. The project is set in a near-future Miami flooded by rising seas and follows one man’s journey to find the woman he loves after her mysterious disappearance—delving through the dark world of the past to uncover the truth about the woman he fell for.

Ray Liotta is in talks to join The Many Saints Of Newark, The Sopranos prequel film that has already lined up Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Jon Bernthal, Billy Magnussen, Corey Stoll, and Michael Gandolfini (who will play the Tony Soprano role originated by his late father James Gandolfini). Scripted by The Sopranos creator David Chase and Lawrence Konner, the prequel is set in the era of the Newark riots in the ’60s, at a time when African Americans and Italian Americans in the city were at each other’s throats.

Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek is in final negotiations to play the villain opposite Daniel Craig in writer-director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Bond 25. There aren’t many character details available, though the villain has been rumored to be a blind man. Deadline also reported that fellow Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o is being courted to join the film as the latest “Bond girl.”

Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, and Lily-Rose Depp have been set to join Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, and Evangeline Lilly in Dreamland, Nicholas Jarecki’s dramatic thriller revolving around the opioid crisis. The film follows three colliding stories: a drug trafficker (Hammer) arranges a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation between Canada and the U.S.; an architect (Lilly) recovering from an OxyContin addiction tracks down the truth behind her son’s involvement with narcotics; and a university professor (Oldman) who battles unexpected revelations about his employer, a drug company with deep government influence bringing a new “non-addictive” painkiller to market.

A trailer was released for the thriller, A Dark Place, featuring Andrew Scott (Sherlock), Bronagh Waugh (The Fall), and Denise Gough (Colette). Scott stars a local sanitation truck driver in a sleepy backwoods town who plays detective when a local boy goes missing.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Harriet Tyce’s psychological thriller, Blood Orange, has been picked up by World Productions (the producer responsible for Bodyguard) to develop into a TV series. The project centers on a young lawyer as she takes on her first murder case, and her life starts spiraling out of control.

Tony winner Nathan Lane will play a lead role opposite Daniel Zovatto and Natalie Dormer in Showtime’s upcoming series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, a follow-up to Penny Dreadful from the original show's creator, writer and executive producer, John Logan. The next chapter moves from Victorian London to 1938 Los Angeles where a grisly murder shocks the city, leading Detective Tiago Vega (Zovatto) into an epic story that reflects the rich history of Los Angeles: from the building of the city’s first freeways and its deep traditions of Mexican-American folklore, to the dangerous espionage actions of the Third Reich and the rise of radio evangelism.

Jimmy Smits has been tapped as the male lead in NBC’s legal drama pilot Bluff City Law, a character-driven legal drama that follows the lawyers of an elite Memphis firm that specializes in the most controversial landmark civil rights cases. Led by legendary lawyer Elijah Strait (Smits) and his brilliant daughter, Sydney Keller (Caitlin McGee), they take on the toughest David-and-Goliath cases while navigating their complicated relationship. Barry Sloane (Six) and Michael Luwoye (Hamilton) have also been added to the cast.

Adelaide Clemens (Rectify) is set for a lead role opposite Edie Falco and Michael Chernus in the CBS drama pilot, Tommy, from the Bull team of co-creator Paul Attanasio and producer Amblin TV. Tommy stars Falco as the title character, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female chief of police for Los Angeles and uses her unflinching honesty and hardball tactics to navigate the social, political and national-security issues that converge with enforcing the law. Clemens will play Blake, the Press Secretary for the chief of police.

Avengers co-star Cobie Smulders is returning to network television as the lead of Stumptown, ABC’s drama pilot that's inspired by the graphic novels published by Oni Press. It follows Dex Parios (Smulders), a strong, assertive, and unapologetically sharp-witted Army veteran working as a P.I. in Portland, OR. With a complicated personal history and only herself to rely on, she solves other people’s messes with a blind eye toward her own.

Eve Harlow (Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.) is set as a series regular in Fox’s AI thriller drama pilot, neXT, described as a propulsive, fact-based thriller grounded in the latest A.I. research. It features a brilliant but paranoid former tech CEO who joins a Homeland Cybersecurity Agent and her team to stop the world’s first artificial intelligence crisis: the emergence of a rogue AI with the ability to continuously improve itself. Harlow will play Gina, a bit of a nerd who works in the FBI cybercrime division.

Chloe Wepper (Good Trouble), David Alpay (The Lottery), and Brooke Smith (The Good Doctor) are set as series regulars in NBC’s Prism pilot. Written by Daniel Barnz, who also directs, Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa.

How I Met Your Mother’s Josh Radnor has been cast opposite Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, and Jerrika Hinton in The Hunt, Amazon’s vengeance-driven Nazi-hunting series executive produced by Oscar-winning Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele. Radnor will play Lonny Flash, a movie star who’s secretly a member of Meyer’s (Pacino) organization, a diverse band of neo-Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City.

Child actress Alexa Skye Swinton (Billions) has landed the young lead opposite Allison Tolman in Emergence, a new NBC mystery drama pilot. The character-driven genre thriller centers on Jo (Tolman), a police chief who takes in a young child, Piper (Swinton), she finds near the site of a mysterious accident. The investigation draws her into a conspiracy larger than she ever imagined, and the child’s identity is at the center of it all.

NBC has renewed all three of its Chicago-set drama series from Dick Wolf: Chicago Fire (for Season 8), Chicago P.D. (Season 7) and Chicago Med (Season 5). The network noted that the Windy City trio is delivering their most-watched season ever, per Nielsen.

The ITV series Endeavour has been renewed for a seventh season.The show depicts the early career of the young Endeavour Morse, played by Shaun Evans, along with his mentor DI Fred Thursday of the Oxford City Police, played by Roger Allam. Both series (Endeavour and Inspector Morse) are based on the novels by Colin Dexter.

British detective Agatha Raisin is returning to Acorn TV after the streaming service ordered a third season of the drama based on MC Beaton’s novels. Ashley Jensen stars as a London PR whizz turned amateur sleuth, who becomes entangled in mischief, mayhem, and murder when she opts for early retirement in a small village in the Cotswolds.

Oxygen has set an April 7 premiere date for Murder For Hire, the latest true crime series from Dick Wolf. The program gives an exclusive look into the dark world of contract killings, showcasing some of the most fascinating murder for hire cases.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Unpause Your Life host Dr. Cali Estes welcomed Phil Chalmers, an American true crime writer and homicide consultant who has appeared on the shows Killer Kids on A&E and Crime Watch Daily on Fox. He is the author of several books including the landmark book on teen violence, Inside the Mind of a Teen Killer.

Point Blank: Hardboiled, Noir, & Detective Fiction reviewed some of the latest in crime dramas and books, including A Walk Among The Tombstones by Lawrence Block.

The newest episode of Michael Connelly's true-crime Murder Book podcast featured part 4 in the series profiling the case of Jade Clark’s murder in 1987. The killer, Pierre Romain, thought he could game the system and get off, but LAPD Detective Rick Jackson, prosecutor John Lewin, the so-called king of cold cases, and Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler had other ideas.

The latest monthly Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast featured a reading of "English 398: Fiction Workshop” by Art Taylor, who is currently nominated for both the MWA’s Edgar Allan Poe Award and the Malice Domestic Convention’s Agatha Award for best short story.

Beyond the Cover’s special guest was Steve Berry, chatting about his Cotton Malone series involving the Knights of Malta, papal conclave, and lost documents that could change history.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime author and screenwriter James Longmore on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Writer Types welcomed three authors this week: Samuel Gailey, back after 5 years with his new novel, The Guilt We Carry; Jessica Barry, with her debut thriller novel, Freefall; and Angel Luis Colon, who has his first full length novel out, Hell Chose Me.

In the latest Read or Dead podcast, hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham talked about the history of mysteries and thrillers and espionage novels.

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by Det. Adam Richardson, profiled the new Authors of Mass Destruction podcast, hosted by Natasha Bajema; and Adam answered questions about which agency would take the lead on arresting a federal agent, and about the different uniforms and insignias police departments use to identify rank.

THEATER

The UK's Norwich Theatre Royal is staging a production of crime author and playwright Peter James’s The House On Cold Hill, starting March 11 with a run through the 16th. When the Harcourt family move into the house of their dreams, that dream home quickly turns into the stuff of nightmares as they begin to wonder whether they may not be the only residents at Cold Hill.

GAMES

Mystery Tribune compiled a 2019 list of best crime, mystery, and thriller games for Xbox One, including old and new titles such as now classic Grand Theft Auto and Mafia, as well as new releases such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Just Cause 4.

Media Murder for Monday

The start of a new week means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

AWARDS

The Oscars were handed out last night in Los Angeles, and although this was a light year for crime dramas, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Congrats also go to Green Book for Best Picture; Best Director, Alfonso Cuarón for Roma; Best Actress, Olivia Coleman for The Favorite; and Best Actor, Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody.

Last week, the Writers Guild handed out their annual awards for excellence in television and film. On the film side, the crime dramedy Can You Ever Forgive Me won Best Adapted Screenplay (screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, based on the book by Lee Israel). On the TV side, The Americans won for Best Drama Series Writing (Peter Ackerman, Hilary Bettis, Joshua Brand, Joel Fields, Sarah Nolen, Stephen Schiff, Justin Weinberger, Joe Weisberg, Tracey Scott Wilson); and Long-Form Adapted Writing went to The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (writers: Maggie Cohn, Tom Rob Smith, based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth).

THE BIG SCREEN

A remake of the 1965 crime thriller, Bunny Lake is Missing, is in early development stages via Sony’s Screen Gem label. The original, based on the novel of the same name by Merriam Modell, was directed and produced by Otto Preminger and starred Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, and Keir Dullea. The story follows a mother who comes to pick up her daughter Bunny from school only to find her missing. When the police start investigating, they can’t find any evidence of a child ever living at the home and learn that Bunny was the name of the mother’s imaginary childhood friend. It’s not clear whether the mother is crazy or she is being set up.

Gunpowder & Sky is working with screenwriters Nora Kletter and Grainne Belluomo to adapt Cristin Terrill’s suspense novel Here Lies Daniel Tate, although they’re adding a gender twist, making the film’s protagonist a teen girl rather than a boy. The film’s plot will kick off when 10-year-old Danielle Tate goes missing from an elite California community, only to resurface six years later in Vancouver before being reunited with her family as she tries to recover lost memories.

Gerard McMurray (The First Purge, Burning Sands) has been tapped to write and direct the Michael B. Jordan action thriller, The Silver Bear. The feature adaptation of Derek Haas’s best-selling book series centers on Columbus (Jordan), the most feared and respected hit man in the criminal underworld, who takes on everyone from drug dealers to Czech crime lords.

Two-time Oscar winner, Kevin Costner, and Diane Lane are set to star in Let Him Go, a suspense thriller written and directed by Thomas Bezucha and based on the novel by Larry Watson. Costner and Lane star as retired sheriff George Blackledge and his wife Margaret who leave their Montana ranch after the death of their son to rescue their young grandson from the clutches of a dangerous family living off the grid in the Dakotas, headed by matriarch Blanche Weboy. When they discover the Weboys have no intention of letting the child go, George and Margaret are left with no choice but to fight for their family.

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace) and Matt Smith (The Crown, Dr. Who) have joined the cast of the psychological thriller, Last Night in Soho. The duo joins Anya Taylor-Joy in the project which Edgar Wright co-wrote with Penny Dreadful scribe Krysty Wilson-Cairns. Details about the plot of the film are currently being kept under wraps.

After nearly a decade in development, Todd Field’s adaptation of Boston Teran’s novel, The Creed of Violence, is on the fast track, with Daniel Craig tapped to star in the indie film. Set in 1910 during the Mexican Revolution, The Creed of Violence follows an assassin named Rawbone (Craig) and a young government agent named John Lourdes as they travel from Texas to Mexico to stop a smuggling ring.

The first trailer dropped for Dragged Across Concrete, starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn as two police detectives suspended after a video of their strong arm tactics is leaked to the media. With little money and no options, the embittered cops descend into the criminal underworld and find more than they wanted waiting in the shadows. The cast also includes Tory Kittles, Michael Jai White, Jennifer Carpenter, Laurie Holden, Fred Melamed, Thomas Kretschmann and Don Johnson.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

UK production company Ugly Duckling Films is developing the crime series We Are Your Children based on the 1970s San Francisco “Doodler” serial killer. The murderer, who targeted San Fran’s gay community, became known as the “Doodler” from the elaborate drawings of his victims that he’d leave behind at the scenes of his crimes. Two of his victims survived and identified a man but refused to testify in court, and the man was never charged.

Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer, co-creators of hit podcast Criminal, are turning the true crime audio program into a scripted series for AMC. Criminal tells stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.

Colin Farrell is to star in the BBC’s adaptation of The North Water, written and directed by Andrew Haigh. Farrell plays Henry Drax in the drama, a harpooner and brutish killer who will set sail on a whaling expedition to the Arctic with Patrick Sumner, a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as the ship’s doctor. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself on an ill-fated journey with a murderous psychopath.

Malik Yoba, star of Dick Wolf’s 1990s series New York Undercover, has been tapped to star in the contemporary reboot of the cop drama for ABC. Yoba will reprise his role as J.C. Williams from the original series, who is now overseeing the unit and the next generation of detectives.

Filming has begun on the new Australian contemporary mystery series, My Life Is Murder, starring iconic actress Lucy Lawless. Lawless stars as Alexa Crowe, a charismatic and complex homicide detective whose unique skills and insights into the darker quirks of human nature allow her to provoke, comfort, and push the right buttons as she unravels the truth behind the most baffling of crimes.

Nathaniel Arcand (Cold Pursuit) has been cast opposite Julian McMahon, Alana de la Garza, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Roxy Sternberg and Kellan Lutz in FBI: Most Wanted, the spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. The spinoff has a series commitment, making an episodic pickup for next season likely. Arcand will play Agent Clinton Skye, a marksman with a law degree.

Ramon Rodriguez (Iron Fist) is set as a lead opposite Malin Akerman in NBC’s legal drama pilot, Prism. Written by Daniel Barnz, who also directs, Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa, and is described as “a provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved.”

The Office alum Rainn Wilson is set to co-star opposite Sasha Lane in Utopia, Amazon’s adaptation of the British series written by Gone Girl author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn. Utopia follows a group of young adults who meet online and are mercilessly hunted by a shadowy deep state organization after they come into possession of a cult underground graphic novel.

Kodi Smit-McPhee (X-Men: Apocalypse) is set as a lead opposite Kyle Gallner in CBS All Access’s straight-to-series true-crime drama, Interrogation. The project is an original concept based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man (Gallner) was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Since the episodes are made to be watched in any order, the audience will jump back and forth in time, witnessing this man’s story unfold in multiple timelines. Smit-McPhee will play a troubled and homeless teen who meets Gallner’s character at a drug-rehabilitation center, where they became quick friends.

Gabriel Ebert and Rarmian Newton are set as series regulars and Glynn Turman (How To Get Away With Murder) will recur on the upcoming third season of AT&T Audience Network’s critically praised drama series, Mr. Mercedes, based on the Stephen King novels. Ebert will play Morris Bellamy, a failed writer and volatile and charismatic wolf in sheep’s clothing. Newton plays Peter Saubers, whose picturesque Midwestern life was derailed when his father was disabled during the Mr. Mercedes massacre. Turman recurs as Bernard Raines, the no-nonsense judge presiding over Lou Linklatter’s murder trial.

Alicia Witt has landed a recurring role on the upcoming seventh and final season of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, playing Zelda, a professional fundraiser for various high-end non-profit organizations. The series follows the inmates of Litchfield Minimum Security Prison, with Season 6 seeing many of the main cast move to the Maximum Security Prison mentioned frequently in the series.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

There is a new podcast by the Granite Noir Literature Festival that will include interviews with previous guests as well as information about forthcoming events. In the first episode, festival ambassador Stuart MacBride chats to Granite Noir’s Lesley Anne Rose about his motivations and books, and what we can look forward to at Granite Noir this year.

Michael Connelly's latest Murder Book podcast focused on Detective Rick Jackson, the “king of cold cases.”

Kings River Life magazine's Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast featured the first chapter of the mystery novel, Murder Gone Missing, by Lida Sideris, read by actor Casey Ballard.

On the latest CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction, host DP Lyle took a look at “Alice in Wonderland” syndrome.

On Writer’s Detective Bureau, Det. Adam Richardson answered questions about virtual private networks (VPNs), his personal story, and how police academies have changed.

20th Century Geek podcast host, Scott Weatherly, chatted with Caroline Crampton of Shedunnit podcast fame about the period between 1920 and 1940, regarded as the golden age of detective fiction.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover featured Steve Barry, discussing his latest international Cotton Malone thriller that follows a deadly race for the Vatican’s oldest secret.

On this episode of the Spybrary Spy Podcast, John Koenig sent in a brush pass review of two spy novels written in the early 80s, Chess Player and Button Zone. (A brush pass is a first impression review sent in by Spybrary listeners with their first impressions of a spy book, spy movie or spy tv show soon after finishing it.)

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a new week and a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to Cold Case Hammarskjöld, the documentary from journalist Mads Brügger that delves into the investigation surrounding the unsolved death of UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival where it had its world premiere.

Paramount Pictures is developing Kyle Starks’ graphic novel Kill Them All and has set the action project up with Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse producers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec. The story, first published in 2015, centers on a betrayed murderess seeking revenge who partners with a hard-drinking former cop who wants his job back. They have to fight their way through fifteen floors of criminals, assassins, drug lords, murderers, and accountants in a Miami high-rise.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired U.S. rights to Collin Schiffli’s thriller All Creatures Here Below, which stars Guardians of the Galaxy’s Karen Gillan, Bird Box’s David Dastmalchian, and Once Upon a Time’s Jennifer Morrison. The film is having its international premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival later this month and is slated for a spring release. The film centers on Gensan (Dastmalchian) and Ruby (Gillan) who struggle to thrive in the face of abject poverty. When Gensan loses his job and gambles his last pay check, he sets in motion a series of events with dire consequences.

Oscar winners Mira Sorvino and Richard Dreyfuss are set to star in Reckoning, the Dark Castle Entertainment crime thriller written and directed by Adam Lipsius. The indie centers on Ben Myers (Dreyfuss), a temperamental, take-no-prisoners tough guy with a terrifying dark side who, despite suffering from leukemia while nursing his dementia-ridden wife, decides to seek revenge on the thieves who have destroyed his life. Sorvino will play Police Detective Nick Wallace, Ben’s semi-estranged daughter who rebukes his attempts to buy her affections.

Rising Asian actor Mike Angelo has joined veteran action director Renny Harlin’s heist pic The Misfits. Pierce Brosnan stars along with Hermione Corfield and Jamie Chung in a tale centered on renowned criminal Richard Pace (Brosnan) who finds himself caught up in an elaborate gold heist that promises to have far reaching implications on his life and the lives of countless others

Sebastian Stan will replace Chris Evans in The Devil All The Time, the Antonio Campos-directed drama, after Evans dropped out over a problem with scheduling. The Devil All The Time is an adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 mid-western gothic novel set in the forgotten backwoods of a place called Knockemstiff, Ohio, where a storm of faith, violence and redemption brews.

Rebecca Ferguson, who joined the Mission: Impossible franchise as the enigmatic agent Ilsa Faust in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in 2015, has confirmed she will return for the next installment. Director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise are both expected to be on board for two more Mission: Impossible movies, shooting back-to-back for release in 2021 and 2022.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have partnered with Hulu to adapt Erik Larson’s book The Devil in the White City, which tells the true story of two men, an architect and a serial killer, whose fates were forever linked by The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. It follows Daniel H. Burnham, a brilliant and fastidious architect racing to make his mark on the world and Henry H. Holmes, a handsome and cunning doctor who fashioned his own pharmaceutical “Murder Castle” on fair grounds – a palace built to seduce, torture and mutilate young women.

New details about the Breaking Bad movie indicate the feature-length film will be a sequel revolving around Aaron Paul, who will reprise his Emmy-winning role as Jesse Pinkman. Sources also confirm Netflix will have first-run rights to the top-secret project, which will then air on AMC. The movie will be written by original series creator Vince Gilligan and follows the escape of a kidnapped man (Paul’s Jesse) and his quest for freedom. Speaking on The Dan Patrick Show, Bryan Cranston (who starred as Walter White) said it was unclear if Walter White would appear in the sequel but said he would “absolutely” appear in the movie if Gilligan were to ask him.

Acorn TV has signed up two spin-offs of Australian period drama, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. The Modern Murder Mysteries series moves the setting to the 1960s and follows Phryne Fisher's niece (Geraldine Hakewill), who sets out to become a world-class private detective in her own right with the guidance of The Adventuresses’ Club, a group of exceptional women of which her celebrated aunt was a member. The feature film, Miss Fisher and The Crypt of Tears, continues the story of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, which aired for three seasons between 2012 and 2015, and starred Essie Davis, who will return along with series regulars Nathan Page as Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, Miriam Margolyes as Aunt Prudence, and Ashleigh Cummings as her loyal assistant and maid Dorothy ‘Dot’ Collins.

NBCUniversal International Networks has acquired the gritty crime drama The Murders across multiple European markets as well as for Africa. The eight-part series follows a determined but fallible rookie homicide detective (Jessica Lucas) in Vancouver. After a fatal error on the job which costs the life of a fellow officer, she is driven to rectify her mistake and measure up to her late father, a highly decorated detective killed in the line of duty, searching for redemption in her investigations.

USA Network has given the green light to Psych: The Movie 2, a follow-up to its successful Psych: The Movie, starring original cast members James Roday, Dulé Hill, Maggie Lawson, Kirsten Nelson, Corbin Bernsen, and Tim Omundson. The movie picks up with Santa Barbara Police Chief Carlton Lassiter (Omundson) ambushed on the job and left for dead. In a vintage Psych-style Hitchcockian nod, he begins to see impossible happenings around his recovery clinic. Shawn (Roday) and Gus (Hill) return to Lassie’s side in Santa Barbara and are forced to navigate the personal, the professional, and possibly the supernatural.

UK broadcaster Alibi, which is operated by Discovery and BBC-backed UKTV, is creating its first original scripted program, a crime drama described as “Happy Valley-meets-Silent Witness.” Traces is a six-part series based on an original idea from crime writer Val McDermid, whose Hill/Jordan books were turned into the hit crime drama Wire in the Blood. It’s set in Scotland and explores the world of SIFA, the Scottish Institute of Forensic Science, with a focus on Emma Hedges, Prof. Sarah Gordon, and Prof. Kathy Torrance – who will use the rigors of forensics to uncover the truth about an unsolved murder case.

Avengers: Endgame directors, Joe and Anthony Russo, are creating a “groundbreaking, action-packed, character-driven spy series” for Amazon Studios. The show will be built around an international series that will then be followed by multiple connected local-language series starting with India and Italy. You can read even more about it via this Q&A over at The Wrap.

Amazon has confirmed the cast for The Hunt, a vengeance-driven Nazi hunting series, executive produced by Oscar-winning Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele. Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, and Jerrika Hinton have closed deals to star in the series, along with Lena Olin, Carol Kane, Saul Rubinek, Tiffany Boone, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Greg Austin, and Dylan Baker. The Hunt follows a diverse band of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City, known as The Hunters. After discovering hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the U.S., the eclectic team of Hunters will set out on a bloody quest to bring the Nazis to justice and thwart their new genocidal plans.

Hulu has picked up the femme fatale thriller Reprisal, from Handmaid’s Tale exec producer Warren Littlefield and Josh Corbin (StartUp). The series centers on a relentless femme fatale who, after being left for dead, leads a vengeful campaign against a "bombastic gang of gearheads." The drama stars Abigail Spencer in the lead role alongside Rodrigo Santoro, Mena Massoud, Madison Davenport, Rhys Wakefield, David Dastmalchian, W. Earl Brown, and Gilbert Owuor.

Emmy winner Edie Falco is set to star in the CBS drama pilot, Tommy, from the Bull team of co-creator Paul Attanasio and Amblin TV. Falco will play the titular character, Abigail “Tommy” Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who’s just been hired as the first female Chief of Police for the LAPD.

Law & Order alum Alana de la Garza and Roxy Sternberg have been tapped to star opposite Julian McMahon and Keisha Castle-Hughes in FBI: Most Wanted, the planned spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. De la Garza will play Assistant Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castile, and Sternberg will play FBI Agent Sheryll Barnes, an ex-NYPD detective with "elevated street smarts."

The CW has found its Nancy Drew. The network cast newcomer Kennedy McMann to play the title role in its pilot, based on the beloved YA novels. The series will follow Nancy whose college plans and sense of self have been derailed by a recent family tragedy – but when she ends up a suspect in a murder, it rekindles her love for detective work, even though the clues lead her to believe a long-dead local girl may be the killer. Charmed's Leah Lewis co-stars as George, a tough, tattooed girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who’s forced to team up with Nancy to track the culprit and clear their names.

Starz has opted not to renew Counterpart, the J.K. Simmons-starring sci-fi espionage thriller, for a third season. In the series, Simmons plays Howard Silk, a lowly cog in a Berlin-based bureaucratic UN spy agency who discovers his organization safeguards a crossing into a parallel dimension. He’s thrust into a shadow world in which the only man he can trust is his near-identical counterpart from this parallel world.

Ken Marino is the latest of the Veronica Mars cast to confirm his return for the Kristen Bell-led series’ upcoming eight-episode revival on Hulu. Marino will reprise his role as sleuth Vinnie Van Lowe.

Investigation Discovery has ordered a six-part series following a detective with a photographic memory titled Deadly Recall. It features Detective Pat Postiglione, who remembers every single detail of the crimes that he’s tasked to solve.

Will Packer is producing a documentary series for Investigation Discovery about the murder of 29 African American children in Atlanta. The three-part special will air on the cable network on March 23.

Amazon announced that the John Krasinski-fronted Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is coming back for a third season. The series is a small-screen reinvention with a modern sensibility of the iconic Tom Clancy hero, starring Krasinski as Jack Ryan, an up-and-coming CIA analyst thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time.

The first trailer was released for Season 2 of the BBC America drama, Killing Eve, which also will be simulcast on AMC this year. The series revolves around Eve (Sandra Oh), an MI6 operative, and psychopath assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer).

If you're trying to keep score about how your favorite shows stand in the renewal wars or what new favorites might be forthcoming, this updating list from The Wrap may help.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

CBS Sunday Morning profiled crime author Don Winslow about his writing career and latest novel, The Border.

The featured guest authors on this week’s Speaking of Mysteries were Charles Todd (the writing team of Charles and Caroline Todd), talking about The Black Ascot, the 21st installment in their series featuring WWI veteran, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham chatted about adaptations coming of Karin Slaughter’a and Bill Clinton’s books, and the bizarre story about Dan Mallory, a.k.a. AJ Finn.

Best sellers Steph Post, Gregg Hurwitz, and debut author SA Cosby stopped by Writer Types.

The third episode of Michael Connelly’s new true crime podcast, Murder Book, focused on Pierre Romain, a member of the 1960s gang, Rollin’, who beat a murder charge and later became a cop, only to be arrested thirty years later for the murder.

The topics on this week’s Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, were “Therapist Confidentiality, Gladys R. Questionnaires, and Police vs. Medical Examiners.”

The Nightlife podcast welcomed author and Agatha Christie fan Stuart Turton, whose novel The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle aims to shake up the mystery genre.

The Writer’s Routine podcast featured Fiona Barton, journalist turned psychological thriller author, talking about her new book, The Suspect.

The latest guest on Meet the Thriller Author was William L. Myers, Jr. who chatted about his Philadelphia Legal Series.

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a brand-new Monday and a new update of the latest crime drama news:

AWARDS

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts handed out their annual BAFTA awards yesterday. Crime drama winners include Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director of Producer, which was won by the psychological thriller Beast for Michael Pearce (Writer/Director) and Lauren Dark (Producer); and Best Adapted Screenplay went to BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, Kevin Willmott).

THE BIG SCREEN

Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams has been cast in Julius Berg’s ’90s thriller, The Owners, based on the comic book from Hermann Huppen and Yves H. The story is set in rural England in the early 1990s and follows Nathan and Terry, who are tracked down by an out-of-town sociopath names Gaz and forced to rob an elderly doctor and his wife.

Ezra Miller (Justice League and Fantastic Beasts) is attached to star in thriller The Mourner, based on the Japanese novel by Arata Tendo, with Casper Kiriya (Last Knights) set to direct from a script by Robin Shushan. The Mourner follows a jaded and embittered homicide detective on the trail of murderous sex traffickers, who discovers new spiritual meaning in her life when she comes across a mystical young man (Miller) whose calling in life is to mourn the dead who have no one else to mourn them.

Lily Collins will join Simon Pegg to star in the thriller Inheritance, taking over the role that Kate Mara was originally set to play. From a script by Matthew Kennedy, Inheritance explores what happens when the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful family suddenly passes away, leaving his wife and daughter with a shocking secret inheritance that threatens to unravel and destroy their lives.

Anne Heche and Jason Patric are joining Thomas Jane in the cast for the upcoming action-thriller, Hour Of Lead, from writer-director Peter Facinelli (Breaking & Entering). The story charts the fallout after a ten-year-old girl goes missing from an RV park. The girl’s father (Jane) and mother (Heche) take justice into their own hands, stopping at nothing to track their daughter down, but as they fall deeper into the search, a tragic revelation is uncovered, deepening the mystery of the girl’s disappearance.

Bella Thorne is set to star in writer-director Joshua Caldwell’s crime feature Southland, about two young lovers who rob their way across the southland, posting their exploits to social media and gaining fame and followers as a result. Obsessed with their rising number of followers, they embark on a dangerous adventure together that leads to robbery, cop chases and murder.

Ruby Rose is attached to star in the action-thriller Doorman for director Ryuhei Kitamura. The film tells the story of an officer in the Marines who becomes traumatized while serving her country and returns home looking for an opportunity to heal. She seeks refuge as a doorman at a labyrinthine, historic, New York apartment building but discovers that mercenaries are intent on destroying everything in their way to retrieve precious art hidden in the building walls.

Game of Thrones alum Lena Headey's next project is Gunpowder Milkshake, which Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado will direct for Studiocanal and The Picture Company. Headey joins Karen Gillan in the high-concept action thriller with a rich mythology that revolves around a multi-generational ensemble cast.

Paramount has announced that Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse will hit theaters on Sept. 18, 2020. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as John Kelly, one of the recurring characters in the Jack Ryan universe who is a former NAVY Seal turned CIA ops guy. The role was played in previous adaptations by Willem Dafoe in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger and Liev Schreiber in 2002’s The Sum of All Fears.

Warner Brothers released the first trailer for the Shaft reboot directed by Tim Story and written by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow. Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Roundtree reprise their roles as the slick detective John Shaft to usher in the next generation, Shaft’s son, as played by Jesse T. Usher.

A trailer dropped for writer-director Rohit Karn Batra’s crime thriller, Line Of Descent, starring Brendan Fraser, Abhay Deol, Ronit Roy, Neeraj Kabi, Prem Chopra and Max Beesley. The film follows an established Indian mafia family after the death of their patriarch.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie and Anthony Peckham have boarded The President Is Missing, the drama series adaptation of the novel by President Bill Clinton and James Patterson. The story centers on a powerless and politically aimless who Vice President unexpectedly becomes President and walks right into a secret world-threatening crisis, both inside and outside the White House.

Netflix has placed a series order for an eight-episode adaptation of crime author Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her. Homeland director Lesli Linka Glatter will direct the series, with writer Charlotte Stoudt (Homeland and House of Cards) penning the scripts and acting as showrunner. As the logline states, "When a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall with her mother suddenly explodes into violence, an adrift young woman’s conception of her mother is forever changed. As figures from her mother’s past start to resurface, she is forced to go on the run and on that journey, begins to piece together the truth of her mother’s previous identity and uncovers secrets of her childhood."

HBO has put into development a new drama series from Power creator Courtney A. Kemp about a group of dirty cops in New York City. Titled Dirty Thirty, the project is inspired by the true story of a gang of cops operating out of New York’s 30th Precinct in the 1990s and follows a crime wave infecting the highest levels of municipal government, corrupting the justice system and defining a city.

Fox has ordered more drama pilots, including Deputy and the AI thriller drama neXT. Deputy is an hour-long police procedural from Bright helmer David Ayer and Aquaman writer Will Beall and centers on Deputy Bill Hollister, a career lawman who’s very comfortable kicking down doors and utterly lost in a staff meeting. But when the LA County Sheriff drops dead, Bill becomes acting sheriff of Los Angeles County, in charge of 10,000 sworn deputies policing a modern Wild West. neXt is described as a propulsive, fact-based thriller grounded in the latest A.I. research and features a brilliant but paranoid former tech CEO who joins a Homeland Cybersecurity Agent to stop the world’s first artificial intelligence crisis.

AMC has opened a writers' room for 61st Street, a potential new series executive produced by Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society and exec produced by Peter Moffett, who wrote the British drama Criminal Justice (the basis of the HBO series The Night Of). Set in present-day Chicago, 61st Street follows Moses Johnson, a promising high school athlete, who is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system. Taken by the police as a gang member, he soon finds himself in the eye of the storm as police and prosecutors seek revenge for the death of an officer during a drug bust gone wrong.

A reboot of classic British police procedural Bergerac is being developed by Paramount Network International. The series previously starred John Nettles, later known for his role in Midsomer Murders, as a detective on the small island of Jersey. It ran for nine seasons and 87 episodes on the BBC between 1981 and 1991 and was created by Robert Banks Stewart. Updated for the present day, it will deal with "contemporary stories-of-the-week that run alongside a strong serial spine.”

Julian McMahon and Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes are set to star in FBI: Most Wanted, the planned spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. McMahon will play Jess LaCroix, an "agent’s agent" who’s at the top of his game and oversees the team from the FBI’s Most Wanted Unit, which is assigned the most extreme and egregious cases. Castle-Hughes will play Lynn Khanna, a cowboy boot-wearing FBI analyst from a conservative Dallas family who is a master of data-mining and social engineering.

Mykelti Williamson has been tapped to co-star opposite Malin Akerman in NBC’s legal drama pilot, Prism. Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa, and is described as "a provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved. Each new version of the facts ratchets up the mystery and the suspense, calling into question everything we have seen so far and asking, Is the right person on trial?"

Levy Tran (Shameless) has been cast in a major recurring role on CBS’ action drama series, MacGyver, playing a new character that would help fill the void left by the departure of series co-lead George Eads. Tran, whose first episode airs February 15, will play Desiree Nguyen (Desi), who joins the Phoenix Foundation to protect MacGyver (Lucas Till) and his team on their global missions.

The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant will topline the British crime drama The Barking Murders, along with Sheridan Smith and Jaime Winstone. The BBC One drama tells the true story of the notorious Essex crime spree, with Merchant playing serial rapist and killer Stephen Port, while Smith plays Sarah Sak, the mother of Anthony Walgate, his first victim. Winstone, daughter of Ray Winstone, plays Donna Taylor, sister of victim Jack Taylor.

Rosanna Arquette has joined Ratched, Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series starring Sarah Paulson as a younger version of the diabolical Nurse Ratched from the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Arquette will have a multi-episode arc in the origins story that begins in 1947 and follows Ratched’s (Paulson) journey and evolution from nurse to full-fledged monster. The all-star cast also includes Sharon Stone, Cynthia Nixon, Finn Wittrock, Jon Jon Briones, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, Harriet Harris, Hunter Parrish, Amanda Plummer, and Corey Stoll.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

For Novel Suspects, bestselling author Megan Abbott discussed her latest book, Give Me Your Hand, female friendship, and the interesting ways that women communicate and exert power differently from men.

Michael Connelly's latest Murder Book true-crime podcast focuses on a reputed gang member who beat a murder charge decades ago and went on to land a job as a police officer but was convicted of the 30-year-old killing of Jade Clark after DNA evidence put him at the crime scene.

Suspense Radio Inside Edition featured Keven James Breaux and Lisa Gardner. Gardner's latest, Never Tell, is the latest in her series with D.D. Warren and Flora Dane; Breaux writes in several genres including horror, suspense, and fantasy.

The latest episode of Mysteryrat’s Maze podcast featured the mystery short story, "The Way to a Man's Heart," a twisted take on Valentine's Day written by mystery author Merrilee Robson and read by actor Sean Hopper.

Words and Nerds welcomed author Stuart Turton to chat about his novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and the murder mystery genre.

Amanda Knox will host a true-crime podcast series, “The Truth About True Crime,” that will serve as a companion to SundanceTV’s upcoming documentaries. Knox was profiled in her own true-crime documentary for Netflix in 2016, which looked at her conviction and acquittal by Italian courts of the brutal killing of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

The latest Criminal Mischief: the Art & Science of Crime Fiction, hosted by DP Lyle took a look at "Fentanyl—A Most dangerous Game."

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused this week on "Diamond Jubilee, Grand Juries, and Cultural Diversity."

On Episode 67 of the Spybrary Podcast, author David Holman shares more about his Alex Swan trilogy novels.

THEATER

The King's Theatre in Edinburgh is staging a new adaptation of the much-loved film The Lady Vanishes (directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave). The story centers on socialite Iris, who's traveling home to England on the train when an accident introduces her to the mild-mannered Miss Froy. After her companion suddenly disappears, Iris is perplexed to find that all the other passengers deny ever having seen her. With the help of urbane musician Max she turns detective and together they become drawn into a complex web of European intrigue as they try to solve the mystery of why the lady vanished.

The Cambridge Arts Theatre is presenting Ian Rankin's Rebus: Long Shadows through February 16. Detective Inspector John Rebus is retired but the shadows of his former life still follow him through the streets of Edinburgh. Whisky helped but now he’s denying himself that pleasure, but when the daughter of a murder victim appears outside his flat, he’s back on the case and off the wagon.

Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap is currently being staged at the Metropolis Performing Arts Center in Arlington Heights, Illinois, with a run through March 16. In the longest-running play in London’s West End, a group of strangers become stranded in an English country boarding house, cut off by a sudden snow storm. They soon discover, to their horror, that there is a murderer in their midst.

The Sarasota, Florida, Studio Theatre's latest production is a staging of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the play by Simon Stephens adapted from Mark Haddon's novel. The story revolves around an autistic teenager who sets out to investigate the bizarre death of a neighbor’s dog, inspiring a series of events that expose far greater mysteries. The production runs through March 29.