It’s tradition.
US TV
Month: February 2014
News: Taylor Lautner is BBC3’s new Cuckoo, the good Sheriff of Nottingham, Flash back + more
Film casting
- Olivia Wilde to star in and produce Reed Morano’s Meadowland
Trailers
- New trailer for Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin with Scarlett Johansson
- New trailer for Wally Pfister’s Transcendence with Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, Rebecca Hall et al
Theatre
- Lily Cole to play Helen of Troy in The Last Days of Troy
Canadian TV
- CBC greenlights: comedy Schitt’s Creek with Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara
UK TV
- Janice Hadlow to step down as controller of BBC2
- ITV and Channel 5 licences renewed until 2024 [subscription required]
- BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to create Freeview Connect for smart TVs
UK TV show casting
- Taylor Lautner to replace Andy Samberg on Cuckoo
- Joan Collins to guest on Benidorm
New UK TV shows
- Reece Shearsmith, Alex Kingston and Noel Clarke to star in ITV’s Chasing Shadows
US TV show casting
- Michelle Fairley replaces Judy Davis on 24: Live Another Day
- Nazanin Boniadi to recur on Scandal
- Candace Cameron and Scott Weinger to reunite on The Neighbors
- Ron Canada to guest on Elementary
New US TV shows
- BBC America developing: Robin Hood/Sheriff of Nottingham reinvention Nottingham
- Lifetime greenlights: dystopian future show The Lottery
- HBO greenlights: comedy The Brink with Jack Black and Tim Robbins
- MTV greenlights: cyberstalker series Eye Candy, will reshoot pilot
- USA redlights: Horizon and Divide & Conquer
New US TV show casting
- Greta Gerwig to star in CBS’s How I Met Your Dad
- Original Flash John Wesley Shipp to recur on The CW’s The Flash
- Maggie Lawson to star in CBS’s Save The Date
- JoAnna Garcia Swisher joins ABC’s Astronaut Wives Club
- Titus Welliver to guest on TNT’s The Last Ship
- Sean Pertwee to play Alfred plus other casting on Fox’s Gotham
- Annie Wesching joins CBS’s Extant
- Katrina Bowden to star in TNT’s Public Morals
- Dick Van Dyke and Valerie Harper to recur on Signed, Sealed, Delivered
- Ahna O’Reilly to star in The CW’s Identity
- Colton Dunn joins NBC’s The Pro, Jonathan Tucker to co-star in DirecTV’s Navy St
- Georgina Rylance leaves Fox’s Broadchurch remake Gracepoint
News
News: more Musketeers and Lewis, less Mob City, a young Transporter + more
Film casting
- Ed Skrein to play young Jason Statham in Transporter prequel movies
- Eliza Dushku and Bradley Whitford join Midnight Rider
Trailers
- Trailer for Richard Ayoade’s The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska
International TV
- Maggie Q to star as pirate Ching Shih in Red Flag
UK TV
- BBC1 renews: The Musketeers
- ITV1 renews: Lewis
- Sunday ratings
US TV
- NBC to create web series for Chicago Fire, Parks & Rec, Grimm and Parenthood during the Olympics
- CBS adds more shows to Hulu Plus
- TNT cancels: Mob City
- Teaser for season 3 of Veep
- Sunday ratings: Walking Dead gets 15.8m viewers
US TV show casting
- Roseanne Barr to guest on The Millers
- Barry Watson to recur on Hart of Dixie
- Nathalie Emmanuel promoted to regular on Game of Thrones
- Vinessa Shaw to recur on Ray Donovan
- Michael J Fox to return to The Good Wife
New US TV shows
- HBO adapting: A Teacher
- AMC developing: civil rights drama Bombingham
- CBS green lights: comedy Cuz-Bros pilot
- TBS green lights: adaptation of Israeli comedy Your Family or Mine
- Teaser for HBO’s Silicon Valley
New US TV show casting
- Tom Cavanagh joins The CW’s The Flash
- Courtney B Vance and Eloise Mumford join ABC’s Warriors
- Lucas Black joins CBS’s NCIS: New Orleans
- Nick Zano to co-star on NBC’s One Big Happy
- Laurence Fishburne joins ABC’s Black-ish
- Kevin Alejandro to co-star on ABC’s Clementine
- Ben McKenzie to play Jim Gordon in Fox’s Gotham
- Rob Riggle joins NBC’s The Pro
- Jamie McShane joins Netflix’s ZKZ
- Rita Moreno joins NBC’s Old Soul
US TV
Babak Najafi directs an episode of Banshee
Babak Najafi isn’t an especially well known director. Born in Iran and emigrating to Sweden at the age of 11, he’s largely directed short films and documentaries. However, his feature debut Sebbe was best film at Guldbaggegalan and won him a gold bear at the Berlin Film Festival for best debut film.
So despite the episode itself being something of a departure for the show – a road trip of sorts encompassing life evaluations and musings on the nature of relationships, rather than its usual brutality and sex – it was somewhat surprising to see that Friday’s episode of Banshee, The Truth About Unicorns, was directed by Najafi. Certainly the look of it was something else altogether, a tour de force visually, as you can probably see in this shoot out.
He’s up directing the next episode, Armies of One, too, but here’s hoping to much more TV exposure for Najafi, so he can enliven US TV with new ideas*.
* I should probably point out that Banshee is one of the most interestingly diverse shows on TV anyway, as it stars a New Zealander (Antony Starr), a Dane (Ulrich Thomsen), a Korean-American (Hoon Lee), two African-Americans (Demetrius Grosse, Frankie Faison), a Yugoslavian/Sarajevan-American (Ivana Milicevic), a Brit (Ben Cross) and a Filipino-Chinese-Spanish-German-Scottish-American (Anthony Ruiviar), and is set in a town with significant nearby populations of Native Americans and Amish, as well as Ukrainians (now). Good work guys.
French TV
Did 19-2 just do a Spiral shout out?
19-2 is, for those who don’t know, a English-language Canadian remake of a French-language Canadian show, also called 19-2. Set in Montreal, it has the slightly novel, Wallander-esque touch of having everyone speaking English, even though they’re really speaking French. The signs are all in French, the newspapers are all in French… and even the movies are in French.
You’ll notice here that virtually all the movie titles are fake. But let’s look closely at that second one: Engrenage. There have been a few short movies called Engrenage or L’Engrenage, but not recent ones. So I’m just wondering if perhaps this was a nice shout out to France’s premier cop show, Spiral aka Engrenages.
Maybe not, but I’d like to think it was.