CBS has secured a multi-year contract extension with NCIS star and executive producer Mark Harmon and renewed the hit series for an eleventh season. The renewal comes as CBS is preparing another spin-off of the NCIS franchise which will be piloted as an episode of NCIS: Los Angeles.
The second season of The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret will receive its UK premiere on FOX on Tuesday March 5th at 10:30pm, it has been announced.
Last week, TVWise broke the news that Stephen Dillane and Clémence Poésy had been cast as the co-leads in the upcoming Sky Atlantic/Canal+ co-production The Tunnel. In that same report we revealed that Dillane would play Karl Roebuck and Poésy would play Elise Wasserman. Sky Atlantic made that official today by formally announcing the casting and also revealing that the series, which enters production later this month, will also star Joseph Mawle (Game of Thrones) as social worker, Stephen Beaumont; Tom Bateman (Da Vinci’s Demons) as Danny Hillier, a British journalist who unintentionally becomes caught in the serial killer’s web; Tobi Bakare (Silent Witness) as Chuks Akinade, Karl Roebuck’s junior counter-part; Jeanne Balibar (All About Actresses) as Charlotte Joubert, whose husband’s troubles lead her straight into the path of Karl and Elise’s investigation; Thibault de Montalembert (Days of Glory) as the Head of the Calais police, Mathieu Carrièrre as Alain, Charlotte’s husband, and Angel Coulby (Merlin) & Jack Lowden (Mrs Biggs) Karl’s wife and son, Laura and Adam Roebuck. Sky Atlantic’s press release follows below…
UKTV has promoted Steve Hornby (not to be confused with Steve Hornsey, General Manager of UKTV’s Alibi and Watch channels) to the newly created position of Head of Digital and Social Media.
In addition to all of today’s news (which has included Syfy UK’s acquisition of Defiance, Yesterday acquiring a factual series from eOne and BBC One confirming our scoop that David Tennant, Ashley Jensen, Toby Kebbel and Sophie Okonedo will star in The Escape Artist), there is a very minor event going on. Yes, it’s true. It’s our birthday, so to speak. TVWise launched one year ago today. When we launched on the evening of January 31st 2012, we had a very small audience (our first day’s traffic didn’t even break the 1000 mark, I seem to recall). Since then, our audience has grown and in the past year we’ve had in excess of 2.4 million page views. Given that, I just wanted to express my thanks to all of our readers and advertising partners. 2013 is set to be a banner year for us and we expect to be expanding our team in the coming weeks/months, with new hires to allow for greater (or any!) coverage of reality TV, feature films (related to TV properties) and of course the ever important awards season. PS. To the publicist who sent a cake to our office this morning (but asked not to be named), thanks!
Updated: Syfy UK has closed a deal with NBCUniversal International Television Distribution to acquire the exclusive first run UK broadcast rights to Syfy’s upcoming multi-platform series Defiance. TVWise reported last June that Syfy UK was considering adding the series to lineup in 2013 given the “multi-platform appeal” of the series. The show’s first season is set to premiere on Syfy UK on Tuesday April 16th, just 24 hours behind the US premiere.
UKTV has closed a deal with Entertainment One (eOne) to acquire the exclusive first run UK broadcast rights to factual series Perfect Storms: Disasters That Changed The World for its Yesterday channel. The acquisition of the series comes after the re-branded Yesterday channel posted strong ratings last year and saw a significant rise in audience share for 2012 at 1.04%, up from 0.87%. The six episode series is set to premiere on Yesterday later this year.
Over the past two months TVWise broke the news that BBC One’s upcoming serial The Escape Artist would be directed by Brian Welsh (Mayday) and that it would star David Tennant (Doctor Who), Toby Kebbell (Black Mirror), Ashley Jensen (Ugly Betty) and Sophie Okonedo (Sinbad). BBC One has now officialy confirmed our scoops and revealed that production on the three-part drama, which was created by Spooks scribe David Wolstencroft, has started in London. BBC One’s press release follows below…