Wednesday’s “the end of Wallander” news

Doctor Who

Film

Books

British/Swedish TV

  • Third and final series of both English and Swedish Wallander go into production with three episodes and six episodes respectively

US TV

  • Richard Schiff to play Christina Applegate’s dad on Up All Night
  • NBC orders pilot of Save Me
  • ABC adapting BBC3’s White Van Man
  • Starz commissions second season of the Boss before the first one airs
  • Boardwalk Empire returns with 2.9m viewers
  • True Blood‘s Kristin Bauer to guest on Once Upon A Time
  • Monday ratings: Terra Nova starts okay, Two Broke Girls down 37%, Playboy Club drops 19%

Friday’s “Ali’s back” news

Film

British TV

  • Little Crackers to return to Sky 1 with John Bishop, Alan Davies, Jane Jorrocks, Sanjeev Bhaskar et al
  • BBC2 acquires Pan Am
  • Virgin to offer Sky 1 and Sky Living content on demand [subscription required]
  • BBC launches its global iPad iPlayer app

US TV

Random Acts

Random Acts: No. No, no, no, no, no

No. This has to be stopped now. It was bad enough when Ali was doing it.

Ali Larter with red hair

See how wrong that is? Thankfully, she saw the (yellow) light.

Ali Larter

But this random red hair infection is spreading. Scarlett may be her name, and she’s been reliably random for a couple of weeks now, getting a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, having one night stands with Justin Timberlake, and going to Motley Crue concerts. I mean Motley Crue – how random is that?

But this?

Scarlett Johansson at a Motley Crue concert

No. I don’t care if it’s for The Avengers. It’s just wrong.

Alex Breckenridge doesn’t even have that excuse. You’re on the True Blood premiere red carpet, Evan Rachel Wood is there and she’s already red: this does not need to happen.

Alex Breckenridge at the True Blood premiere

At least Joanna Page is just inventing new red-coloured nail varnishes. And even though her character, 6, has black hair in the book, Syrup, Amber Heard is still reassuring blonde in the movie version.

Amber Heard in Syrup

Phew. Panic attack over.

Random Acts

Random Acts: Ali and Amber at Century City, Scarlett just goes completely random but she has competition from Brad Pitt

Ali Larter at Anneberg Amber Heard with wife Tasya van Ree

Well, Ali Larter and Amber Heard were being quite normal this week, having a random team meeting at a ‘‘A seminal examination of photography’s role in capturing and defining notions of modern female beauty’ at the Anneberg Space for Photography in Century City (partners were allowed, apparently). Well, okay, Ali tried to be a little random:

“Ugh!” shrieked Ali Larter upon seeing a photograph of a bony model falling as she walked down a runway in a pair of impossibly high platform shoes, the model’s knees buckling in a way that made her look almost like a sideshow contortionist. “I have like a gag reflex to this,” she said.

Nice try, Ali, but while you and Amber were off looking at photographs, Scarlett Johansson was off doing this:

Scarlett Johansson as a clown

And this

Scarlett Johansson

And this

Scarlett Johansson

No. No idea. That’s how random Scarlett is. And she didn’t even stop there. She’s also recorded a song for a movie, Days of Grace, with Massive Attack. At this rate, this is going to have to become Random Acts of Scarlett Johansson.

Oh, no. Wait. Brad Pitt has randomly decided to pretend to be Don Johnson in Miami Vice. I’ll get back to you on that. Anyone for Random Acts of Brad Pitt?

Brad Pitt