• Paul Feig developing female spy movie Susan Cooper
• Mary Jane removed from Amazing Spider-Man 2

• Cillian Murphy joins In The Heart of the Sea
• Max Greenfield returns for Veronica Mars movie
• Sarah Lancaster joins The Judge

• Trailer for The Lego Movie

• Brooke Nevin replaces Stefanie von Pfetten on Cracked

UK TV

• Sky News added to the Apple TV

US TV

• HBO, ESPN join the Apple TV
• Netflix renews: Hemlock Grove
• Bryan Fuller's seven-season plan for Hannibal [minor spoilers]

US TV casting

• Tom Scavo to guest on Rizzoli & Isles

• FX green lights: Martin Lawrence, Kelsey Grammer sitcom…
• …Man Seeking Woman
• HBO red lights: Hobgoblin
• Showtime developing John Legend comedy

• Sienna Guillory leaves NBC's Believe

First, the usual recommendations:

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)

Still in the viewing queue: last night's Graceland and I'm toying with watching Channel 4's The Returned, even though I normally can't be arsed with zombie shows, even French zombie shows.

Here's a few thoughts on what I did watch this week, though :

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): After last week's improvement, yet more signs of recovery, with the various first-season story arcs starting to come back to life again at last, joining the new ones from this season. As well as some things that made precisely no sense, we did get a whole collection of great moments, mostly involving Carlos and Kiera. I think it's clear where a lot of this is going but there's enough surprises still coming that it still feels quite fresh and exciting.
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central): John Oliver's first week on the job and although he's obviously not as comfortable in the job as Jon Stewart – give him time – it's actually been a pretty good run so far. To a certain extent, he'll need to find his own voice as a host to differentiate himself from Stewart.
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix): Ah! A notorious finale. Haven't had one of those in a while. Not so much a conclusion as a slight pause in the story. To be honest, the fact it's been renewed for a second series actually makes this a less impressive finale than it should have been, since it's quite an original thing to do (spoiler alert: let the criminal get away). Now it just looks like they were setting everything up oddly for a second series. Maybe they were. Nevertheless, despite this being the least impressive of all the episodes, it was probably the best British drama I've seen in a long time, so yay to a second series.
  
• Family Tree (HBO/BBC2): I think I'm going to give up after this one. It's giving me wry chuckles but that's about it. Well observed, well acted, even Nina Conti and Monkey are tolerable, but it's just not very funny.
• Game of Thrones (HBO/Sky Atlantic): So I finally made it through to the end of the third season. I think most of my comments from last week hold, particularly about the second season, although the nudity did drop off again in the third season, thankfully. I imagine that this is a show that's going to be best appreciated as one massive box set binge one day, because there's a lot going on that's frustratingly close to great but never actually gets there: you can see that everyone's eventual stories are going to end up being great, it's just we're in the middle of them as they head towards that greatness, and it's not going to be for another two to three seasons that we actually get to see it. Still, a lot to commend about it and I'm probably going to be glued to my set when the fourth season comes round. Perhaps Stephen Dillane and Patrick Malahide will meet again. PS The red wedding? What was all the fuss about?
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): My hat's off to Bryan Fuller and co, as always, as the show hits its penultimate episode, revealing just how tightly written and architected this first season has been. What the finale will bring us is anyone's guess, but this has been one of the most consistently excellent first seasons of any show I've watched.
• Up The Women (BBC4): Already renewed for a second series, for which it will transfer over to BBC2, this studio comedy about suffragettes in 1910 features a great cast – Jessica Hynes, Rebecca Front, Adrian Scarborough – and some clever writing. Unfortunately, it doesn't feature any real jokes. Well, not that I found funny. There's probably a few people who'll laugh at a joke in which a man shows he knows less about a light bulb and how it works than a woman does, but they've presumably never seen comedy shows before and this will all be new to them. If, however, you have seen a comedy show before, then the most you can do is hope it does better and wish it well, since its heart is in the right place, at least.

And in movies:

Wreck-It Ralph
Bizarrely, it's Pixar does Tron. A villain in an 80s arcade game decides he wants more from life so goes exploring other video games, messing not only his own game up but those he encounters along the way. Weirdly, the first half is probably going to be unfathomable to anyone under the age of 30, with clever references to Pac Man, Streetfighter and any number of games that a child of the 80s would love and remember. The second half on the other hand is probably going to be unfathomable to anyone over the age of 40, since it's largely references to modern console games, particularly Super Mario Kart on the Wii. It's all very precise and very clever, and there's great vocal work from John C Reilly (Ralph), Alan Tudyk (the evil King Candy), Sarah Silverman (Ralph's new friend in the superbly imagined Sugar Rush) and Jane Lynch (a heroine from a first-person shooter) among others. But the fun-density isn't quite as high as it should be, with big chunks that just sort of amble by. Some of the sexual politics are a little debatable, too, but only a little. Enjoyable but not a true classic.

The Iceman
Given a choice of Michael Shannon movies to watch last night, I chose to watch The Iceman rather than Man Of Steel: I'm watching that tonight. I'm not sure Shannon could be better in the latter though, since he gives a spot-on performance as the real-life Iceman, a mafia hit-man who killed probably more than 100 people from the end of the 60s through to the 80s, somehow managing to keep the terrible truth from his family. Surprisingly, it's a film of good performances from the unexpected likes of Ray Liotta, Winona Ryder, Chris Evans (practically unrecognisable as another, rather hirsute killer) and, incredibly surprisingly, David Schwimmer from Friends. Perhaps a little slower and flatter than in needed to be, it's nevertheless a thoughtful insight into the mind of a sociopath who needs to kill people in order to preserve his marriage. Yes, that does sound weird.

Sponsored by discount vouchers from My Favourite Voucher Codes

"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

• Krysten Ritter joins Tim Burton's Big Eyes

• Trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Canadian TV

• CBC and BET to adapt The Book of Negroes

• Greek government shuts down ERT

UK TV

• Smack The Pony to return?
• Blinkbox to offer third season of Game of Thrones first
• Monday ratings: The Fall hits series high

US TV

• Direct TV renews: Rogue
• Sunday cable ratings
• Monday cable ratings: King & Maxwell starts okay, Major Crimes dips

• Alexander Ludwig and Linus Roache join Vikings
• Roger Howarth to recur on Californication
• Kunal Nayyar to guest on Sullivan & Son
• Shirley Jones to guest on Hot In Cleveland live episode

New US TV shows

• BET and CBC to adapt The Book of Negroes

New US TV show casting

• Sarah Jane Morris joins A&E's Occult
• Miguel Gomez joins FX's The Strain

First, the usual recommendations:

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

On Monday, I was somewhat incapacitated with food poisoning (oops), so spent the whole day in bed. Faced with the prospect of an entire day without brain stimulation, I decided to bite the bullet and try watching…

Game of Thrones
Yep, season 1 all in one go. And now I'm halfway through season 2. So no spoilers. On the whole, I'm liking it more than I did on my first attempted viewing a couple of years ago, but that might be because I made a stab at reading the first book to ease me in. I didn't love the first season, but I did enjoy a lot of the elements of it and the potential that it was building. I like the mix of mythic influences - the story's northern stories are more in keeping with Germanic and Scandinavian myth while the eastern stories are more in the style of Middle Eastern stories. I like the fact that a lot of it is about outsiders within a patriarchal system and how they learn to obtain power within that system. I like the fact it's essentially a good excuse to give overlooked British and Irish character actors (and Peter Dinklage) decent, regular, well paying jobs for a change.

Season 2 so far is feeling a bit of a filler season; the amounts of female nudity are ridiculous; and the increased magic quotient is unappealing. There's also no single Nedd Stark figure around which the second season revolves, which makes it feel a little rudderless. But both Patrick Malahide and Stephen Dillane have turned up, which can only be good news, and Charles Dance is marvellous.

Still in the viewing queue: Up The Women, BBC4's suffragette sitcom written by and starring Jessica Hynes, and last night's Graceland, USA's new cop show. My thoughts on those next week, I suspect.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars:

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): A near return to form this week, with sci-fi fun, some important revelations for both viewers and characters, and hints that all the standalone episodes we've been having actually had an arc in them (spoiler alert)that another corporation from the future is trying to acquire all its competitor companies and their technologies in the present, including Alec's. Still not up there with season 1 and we could do with Liber8 getting its act together, but it slightly restored my faith in the show.
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix): Less about misogyny, more about Belfast this episode, as well as some expansion on the background of Gillian Anderson's character. The revelation from Archie Punjab was a little too deus ex machina (spoiler alert)she knew someone who went out with the serial killer at university, but I'm hoping they can pull back from that.
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): Last week's saw Ellen Muth (Dead Like Me, another Bryan Fuller show) turn up as someone who thought she was dead, making for an interesting piece of deconstruction. As in previous weeks, the episode ended with an entirely throw-away but stunning moment of horror that'll stick with you. The idea of Lecter and his friend withholding information like that was also ghastly, but in an entirely different way. This week's episode was slightly let down by Eddie Izzard turning up again and was a little low-key, but was also disturbing and affecting in its own way. I'm wondering what's up with Gillian Anderson's character - are they ever going to do anything with her, or is that for later seasons?

And in movies:

The Hangover 3
Not an especially funny film, yet still better than the second. Weirdly, though, it didn't actually feel like they were trying to make a funny movie, more an action drama with the occasional joke. All the regular characters were back plus John Goodman, but unlike 2, this didn't rehash the plot of the first movie, instead sending the 'Wolf Pack' to go looking for gold (literally) because of naughty old Ken Jeong. Weirdly, it's clear they could have made a funny film if they'd wanted to, judging by the end titles.

"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

• Gillian Jacobs to star in Hot Tub Time Machine 2, Chevy Chase to return
• Melissa Leo joins The Ever After
• Jennifer Lawrence to star in Rules of Inheritance

• Final trailer for Man of Steel
• Trailer for Runner Runner with Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake
• Trailer for Eden

French TV

• Canal+ reviving Pharaoh

Canadian TV

• CTV acquires Marvel's Agents of SHIELD and The Goldbergs…
• …reveals fall line-up

US TV

• Showtime renews: Nurse Jackie
• HBO cancels: Eastbound & Down
• Teaser for season 3 of Necessary Roughness
• Wednesday's ratings

US TV casting

• LeAnn Rimes to guest on Anger Management

• CBS to adapt Taxi 22
• Trailer for Netflix's Orange Is The New Black

New US TV show casting

• Paige Davis to co-star in A&E's Whitey, Gordon Clapp to recur on TNT's Lost Angels

• Javier Bardem to star in A Most Violent Year and The Gunman
• Emmy Rossum and Justin Long to star in Comet
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to star in Alex Proyas's Gods of Egypt
• Don Johnson joins The Other Woman

• Trailer for Getaway with Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez
• Trailer for Paranoia with Liam Hemsworth, Harrison Ford, Amber Heard and Gary Oldman

• Global green lights: Remedy and Working The Engels
• Showcase renews: Continuum

UK TV

• Channel 4 launches second-screen app 4Now
• ITV renews: Endeavour
• Vanessa Redgrave and Olivia Colman join BBC2's The Thirteenth Tale
• Channel 5 acquires: CBS's Under The Dome

• Showtime cancels: The Borgias
• Bad Robot to develop Rod Serling's final screenplay into an event series
• Tuesday ratings

US TV casting

• C Thomas Howell to recur on Sons of Anarchy
• Vinnie Jones, Olivia d'Abo and Kali Hawk to guest on Psych
• Danny Pudi and William Shatner to guest on Hot In Cleveland

New US TV show casting

• Christian Kane to guest on King & Maxwell

• Kristen Stewart to star in Camp X-Ray and Sils Maria
• David Arquette, Lauren Holly and Tom Skerritt to star in Field of Lost Shoes

Trailers

• Trailer for The Family, with Robert De Niro, Michelle Pgeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones et al

Canadian TV

• City TV renews Seed, green lights Package Deal
• Vision TV acquires ITV's Mr Selfridge

• Virgin Media adds 11 more channels to Virgin TV Anywhere [subscription required]
• Monday ratings

• Trailer for season 5 of Drop Dead Diva
• Monday ratings: Revolution up, Mistresses starts soft
• Sunday cable ratings

US TV casting

• Bridget Regan to recur on White Collar
• Someone's leaving Shameless [spoilers]
• Michelle Fairley to recur on Suits [spoilers]

• WGN America green lights: Brannon Braga's Salem

New US TV show casting

• Justin Theroux to star in HBO's The Leftovers
• Jerry O'Connell to guest on King & Maxwell

• Matt Smith definitely leaving Doctor Who

• Leven Rambin joins Seven Minutes and Walter
• Melissa Leo joins The Equalizer
• Michael C Hall to star in Cold In July
• Karen Gillan to be a villain in Guardians of the Galaxy
• Rex Linn joins A Million Ways To Die in The West
• Tom Wilkinson joins Good People

Trailers

• Trailer for Prisoners with Hugh Jackman and Jack Gyllenhaal
• Trailer for Machete Kills with Danny Trejo, Sofia Vergara, Amber Heard et al
• 13-minute Man of Steel featurette
• 3-minute clip from Hammer of the Gods

Theatre

• Stephen Mangan and Matthew Macfadyen to play Jeeves and Wooster

Canadian TV

• Jessica Pare, Jerry O'Connell and Tommy Chong to guest on Satisfaction

UK TV

• Up The Women gets a second series
• Olivia Colman, Sophie Turner, Robert Pugh and Antonia Clarke join BBC2's The Thirteenth Tale
• Citizen Khan gets a Christmas special
• BBC2 green lights: In and Out of the Kitchen adaptation
• Channel 4 to air entire ad break in French
• Thursday ratings: Up The Women starts okay
• Saturday ratings

US TV

• Dan Harmon coming back to Community
• Hannibal gets a second season
• Wednesday ratings
• Thursday ratings: Hannibal flat, Mike and Molly low

US TV casting

• Ashley Madekwe out of Revenge
• Alan Tudyk and Rex Lee out of Suburgatory
• Marisa Ramirez promoted to regular on Blue Bloods
• Sam Page and Molly Parker join House of Cards

• Starz green lights: Ronald D Moore's Outlander
• FX green lights: Death Pact with Tracy Morgan

• Judy Greer to star in FX comedy
• Agnes Bruckner to co-star in A&E's Occult

• Time Cop reboot planned

Trailers

• Trailer for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon, with Scarlett Johansson
• Trailer for We're The Millers, with Jennifer Aniston, Ed Helms, Jason Sudeikis et al
  
• Trailer for Delivery Man with Vince Vaughn

Canadian TV

• CBC green lights The Best Laid Plans, renews Cracked, Republic Of Doyle, Murdoch Mysteries…
• …and Crossing Lines

• BBC3 renews: In The Flesh
• BBC to charge Sky for content?
• Tuesday ratings

US TV

• Tuesday's ratings

US TV casting

• Billy Baldwin to recur on Copper
• Emma Roberts join American Horror Story
• Rumer Willis to guest on Pretty Little Liars
• Casting on Homeland

• CBS green lights: Bad Teacher
• FX green lights: The Comedians, with Billy Crystal
• USA green lights: Divide & Conquer

New US TV show casting

• Logan Marshall-Green to star in Cinemax's Quarry

First, the usual recommendations:

• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
  
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• Doctor Who (BBC1/BBC America)
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
• Endeavour (ITV1)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)
  
• Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

Still in the viewing queue: Netflix's Hemlock Grove, which still doesn't look appealing and last night's Elementary.

I have tried a couple of new shows, though:

Vicious
Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi camp it up something as a pair of 'vicious old queens' (that was the working title of the show, anyway). They've been living together for years, when a fit but clueless young man (Iwan Rheon from Misfits) moves into their building. If you're in your 60s, this would probably be entertaining, since it's the kind of studio-shot show that used to be made in the 70s and entirely consists of obvious and somewhat feeble jokes - it's almost "call and response" TV - lightened by how the cast perform them. Rheon is wasted as the straight man to the jokes (ho, ho), but it's entirely awful for anyone under 60.

The Job Lot
ITV's other new sitcom, this is more in the modern vein of comedy, with single camera shooting and no laugh track. Starring Russell Tovey and Sarah Hadland, it's set in a West Midlands job centre and is a combination of The Office and any of the interactions with support desk customers in The IT Crowd. It's also about as funny as unemployment.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I'm still trying

• The Americans (FX/ITV): Not an entirely surprising finale, but it's interesting how you can find yourself rooting for the KGB, this episode being an inversion of the usual "staff back at HQ come up with desperate last ditch plan to help the agents in the field". Looking forward to the next season.
• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1): A definite pick-up this week, although the show is now not just tonally Batman Begins, it actually is Batman Begins. If it doesn't turn out next week that The Dark Archer was trained by Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows, I'll be very surprised. Didn't quite buy John Barrowman as King Karate, but hey ho.
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): Starting to meander a bit, now. Despite the occasional shoot out to try to lift the pace, this is more about setting up ideas than plot. Basically, more budget, needs to be bigger and more cool things need to happen.
  
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living): Excellent episode last week, as we once more return to the serial plot involving Moriarty, and Vinnie Jones returns. I think they're now torturing him deliberately by getting him to sing Arsenal chants.
  
• Endeavour (ITV1): All very nicely done, and the break away from pure murder-mystery procedural to look at 1960s London gangsterism and the somewhat "making it up as we go along" approach to policing violent crime was welcome. But the whodunnit was somewhat daft.
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): Last week, we got into the strange situation of a prequel to Silence of the Lambs actually mining most of the plot of Silence of the Lambs to the extent that Silence of the Lambs couldn't really happen as a movie without someone in-story wondering about cosmic coincidences. It also took on a vital scene from Red Dragon and gave it to another character, to the extent that the back story will have to change significantly by the time season 3 rolls round (season 4 being Red Dragon). Nice to see Veep's Anna Chlumsky and The X-Files' Gillian Anderson back on US TV, not so nice to see Eddie Izzard trying to be a serial killer.
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic): It's all gearing up well for the finale, but this clearly isn't the show it was when it started and all the life seems to have drained out of it. Looking forward to a big confrontation with Michael Ironside tonight.

And in movies:

Syrup
Based on the cult Max Barry novel of the same name, this sees Shiloh Fernandez come up with the idea for a marketing-driven soft drink called Fukk, which he pitches to young marketing executive Amber Heard, who promptly tries to steal his idea. He stops her, but they're both outsmarted by Fernandez's pal Kellan Lutz. Cue a battle of the cola companies. Unfortunately, while the book had a kind of young energy and largely revolved around Heard's character guiding Fernandez's through the moves and counter-moves of office politics, this becomes a more conventional romance with few funny moments and almost no real wit, beyond demonstrating the emptiness of marketing. Indeed, the filmmakers (including Barry who co-scripted it) unfortunately decided that the movie's message had to be "Marketing Bad" and the entire plot, right down to the conclusion, is switched to reflect that. Obviously they were never going to be able to adapt the book 100% faithfully (not unless Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Coke and others had jumped on board to create a sci-fi blockbuster within the movie), but in the adaption, too much was ripped out.

Fernandez is a bit too fey for 'Scat', Amber Heard gives one of her best performances as '6' but lacks confidence in some scenes, while Lutz is silent for the majority of the movie. Weirdly, Kate Nash cameos as a receptionist.

Iron Man 3
Weirdly, a better movie than both of its predecessors, particularly Iron Man 2, but I didn't love it as much. It's a strange amalgam of the Extremis comic strip, James Bond and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, with Robert Downey Jr running around by himself, almost like a secret agent, for big chunks of the movie. Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle get less screen time, but what they do get gives them more to do than before. As well as a lot of wit and laugh out loud scenes, the story also features top racist Iron Man villain (Ben Kingsley), yet cleverly manages to flip the character around to play on that (no, no spoilers). Despite the inevitable descent into a CGI finale, the film still managed largely to retain its humanity throughout, and the ending serves as a good potential ending for the whole Iron Man franchise, if necessary. Yet, somehow, despite all this - and perhaps because of its more adult themes of - it just wasn't as much fun or as enjoyable as the first.

Star Trek: Into Darkness
Can't say too much without spoiling it, but it's actually very good. Drags a bit in the middle, there's a tragic death, and there's a clever inversion of a previous movie - as well as an entertaining moment where (spoiler) Spock calls up his older self and asks for spoilers. Benedict Cumberbatch edges over into hammy in a couple of places and doesn't look as buff as he needs to be for the role, the leery male gaze of the first movie is slightly downplayed but still present, and everybody gets something to do, although largely individually rather than together. Some very cool moments too, and the movie does diverge from its predecessor in saying that vengeance and warfare aren't things that Starfleet should be involved in. Worth seeing, even if again, it doesn't quite have the energy of the first movie.

"What did you watch this fortnight?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

• Guy Ritchie to direct, Alicia Vikander to star in The Man From UNCLE

Film casting

• Richard Madden to star in Cinderella
• Michael Shannon to star in Midnight Special
• Pierce Brosnan, Jessica Alba and Kristin Scott Thomas to star in How To Make Love Like An Englishman

Trailers

• Trailer for the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, with Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, F Murray Abraham et al
• Trailer for Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips, with Tom Hanks
• Trailer for Edgar Wright's World's End, with Simon Pegg, Martin Freeman, Reece Shearsmith et al

Canadian TV

• CTV renews: Motive

French TV

• Fuse to launch Entourage-like The Hustle

• Sweden's TV4 green lights: Amy and Greg Poehler comedy Welcome To Sweden

• Lee Mack and Catherine Tate to star in BBC1 remake of Everybody Loves Raymond
• ITV renews: The Bletchley Circle
• Tamzin Outhwaite joins New Tricks
• Casting on Atlantis, Breathless and The Smoke
• Casting on Mr Selfridge and The Widower

US TV

• NBC cancels: Deception
• Trailer for season 2 of Copper
• Tuesday ratings

US TV show casting

• Colin Ferguson joins Haven

New US TV shows

• Piers Morgan developing Fleet Street for Starz
• Fox green lights: dramas Rake, Gang Related, Sleepy Hollow and Almost Human…
• …and comedies Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Surviving Jack, Enlisted and Us and Them
• Fox red lights: Delirium
• NBC red lights: Bloodline, The Sixth Gun, The Gates, Joe & Jane, Brenda Forever, Hatfields & McCoys, Holding Patterns and The Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives
• TNT green lights: Legends (trailer)

• Omar Miller to co-star with The Rock in HBO dramedy

Film

• Steven Spielberg to shoot American Sniper
• David Slade to direct The Widow

Film casting

• Kristen Connolly joins adaptation of Good Marriage
• Leighton Meester, Gillian Jacobs to star in Life Partners
• Sarah Gadon to star in Dracula
• Max Greenfield joins Veronica Mars

• Trailer for Kristen Wiig's Girl Most Likely
• Teaser for Ender's Game
• Clip 1 and Clip 2 from Syrup

Canadian TV

• Space renews: Orphan Black
• Vincent Walsh to star in CTV's Played
• Ratings for the week of April 15

• Sky Living green lights: sitcom Give Out Girls
• BBC developing: dating dramedy Seeks Similar
• UKTV to launch Drama
• Damian Molony to guest on Ripper Street
• Hannibal, Trollied, Borgias to debut on demand before TV
• Sky subscribers up 30,000 thanks to Now TV [subscription required]

US TV

• Trailer for Necessary Roughness
• Teaser for season two of Magic City
• Wednesday ratings: Family Tools starts soft

New US TV show casting

• The Rock to star in HBO dramedy

• Michael Fassbender to star in Macbeth
• Chris O'Dowd to star in The Coward
• Jeremy Irvine and Phoebe Fox to star in The Woman in Black 2
• Olga Kurylenko to star in Vampire Academy

Trailers

• Extended trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim

• Arte France and NRK to adapt Jo Nesbø's Occupied

• Netflix acquires Sundance's Rectify

UK TV

• Trailer for ITV's Life of Crime, with Hayley Atwell
• BBC3 renews: a final series for Him and Her
• BBC3 green lights: a lot of comedies
• BBC1 green lights: The 7.39, with David Morrissey, Sheridan Smith, Olivia Colman and Sean Maguire
• Channel 5 acquires: Wentworth

• Defiance producer leaves
• Sunday ratings: Red Widow hits ABC drama season low

• Spike developing more scripted dramas, including Hit Men and The Lamp

Doctor Who

• Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS down to under 5m

Film

• Bridget Jones 3 stalled

Casting

• Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo to star in Nightcrawler
• Colin Firth to star in Matthew Vaughn's The Secret Service
• Johnny Depp joins Rob Marshall's Into The Woods

Trailers

• Trailer for Red 2 with Anthony Hopkins et al
• Trailer for In Fear

Theatre

• The Full Monty gets a West End run
• Zachary Quinto to star in The Glass Menagerie on Broadway

Canadian TV

• Space acquires: BBC3's In The Flesh

• BBC2 green lights: House of Fools, with Vic and Bob, and Matt Berry
• ITV1 green lights: The Great Fire of London
• BBC1 renews: The Village
• BBC2 renews: The Trip
• BBC3 renews: Pramface
• Channel 5 acquires: Coma
• TLC acquires: TV Land's The Exes and Happily Divorced
• Thursday ratings
• Friday ratings
• Saturday ratings

US TV

• Trailer for season 3 of The Killing
• Remaining Zero Hour and Do No Harm episodes to air over summer
• Rockne S O'Bannon joins Revolution staff
• CBS renews: Two and a Half Men
• The CW renews: Hart of Dixie and Beauty and the Beast
• NBC renews: Revolution, Chicago Fire, Parenthood, Grimm and Law & Order: SVU
• Thursday ratings: Lots of lows
• Friday ratings: Happy Endings hits low

• Angus Jones demoted to recurring on Two and a Half Men
• Xosha Roquemore promoted to regular on The Mindy Project
• Larry Gilliard Jr joins The Walking Dead
• Julian Sands to recur on Dexter

• CW green lights: The Originals
• AMC green lights: Line of Sight

New US TV casting

• Kevin Durand to co-star in FX's The Strain

First, the usual recommendations:

• The Americans (FX/ITV)
• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
• Being Human (US) (SyFy)
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• Doctor Who (BBC1/BBC America)
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
• Endeavour (ITV1)
• Go On (NBC)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)
• Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

Still in the viewing queue: Netflix's Hemlock Grove, which still doesn't look appealing; BBC2's The Politician's Husband; and Sundance's 'difficult' Rectify.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I'm still trying

• The Americans (FX/ITV): The first good episode not written by Joe Weisberg, although the parallels between 'the oaths' were crude. But the end twist shows how quickly things can turn round in this spying game.
• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1): Feels like it's going round in circles, covering old storylines it's already covered. The stunts are still good though.
• Bates Motel (A&E/Universal): I'm not actually watching this, merely reading updates on episode guides. Turns out that there are some interesting twists to it, but those twists are more interesting to read about than to watch.
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): A pleasing series of double-bluffs. Just as you think you can see where the episode us going, it goes in a completely different direction. Not quite the slam dunk of the first episode - you'd have thought with it being the most popular drama in Canada, Shaw might sink some cash into the show - but full of good moments.
• Defiance (SyFy): Precisely as conventional as you'd have expected the second episode to be, focusing more on the cultures of the aliens than on giving the aliens interesting personalities. Also horrifically patriarchal as before, with even the 'strong' women and female aliens deferring to the men or needing the support of men for their decisions.
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living): Notable mainly for the arrival of master blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton from the Holmes stories, rather than any aspects of the plot itself.
• Endeavour (ITV1): Much better than the previous episode, although I had for a moment hoped it was going to be a prequel to my favourite Inspector Morse episode, Masonic Mysteries. However, it was pretty obvious what was going on and the denouement was glacially slow and silly.
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): Despite episode four having been dropped and then cut down into US-only webisodes, episode five carries on pretty well from previous episodes, but feels like a cross between Millennium and Touching Evil. Actually quite moving in the scenes between Jack Crawford and his wife, it's an excellent show that's definitively worth watching.
• Plebs (ITV2): A good way to end the series. Here's hoping for more!
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic): Quite liking the additional of Mia's mother to the story and Carrie-Anne Moss is finally getting some good things to do. But the rest of the plot feels like it's treading water, and Dennis Quaid has stopped putting the effort in. On the other hand, it did treat the domestic abuse storyline with tact and sensitivity, despite the era in which the show is set.

"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?