Bullet Points: Broadcast Beat Edition

• Season 3 of Van der Valk, the British-made crime drama starring Marc Warren as Nicolas Freeling’s fictional Amsterdam cop, Piet Van der Valk, is set to premiere as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece series on Sunday, September 3. As The Killing Times explains, three new 90-minute episodes will find Commissaris Van der Valk facing “a new set of murders to solve, and as with seasons one and two all sorts of unusual angles and strange characters come into play. In the first episode, a European freerunning champion is gunned down by a sniper as he’s about to head to Paris for a competition. The maverick detective and his team uncover a link between the freerunners in the Netherlands and drug trafficking but there’s something more involved … The second case is pertinent if you’ve been following news stories about the British Museum and crimes taking place therein. An employee in an Amsterdam museum is murdered, which links to a case about the return of artefacts to their countries of origin that Van der Valk worked on early in his career. Finally, episode three of season three involves the death of someone taking part in a ritual to … um … summon a demon. Yes. You read that right.” Also starring in Van der Valk are Maimie McCoy as Inspecteur Lucienne Hassell and Darrell D'Silva as police forensic pathologist Hendrik Davie.

• While we’re on the subject of small-screen mysteries, let me tell you that Season 2 of Professor T, the UK adaptation of a popular Belgian program of the same name, will also debut as part of Masterpiece on September 3 (one hour earlier than Van der Valk, at 8 p.m. ET/PT). Ben Miller, formerly of Death in Paradise, stars as Professor Jasper Tempest, “a genius University of Cambridge criminologist with obsessive–compulsive personality disorder,” to quote from Wikipedia. Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph gives us the scoop on what to expect from this season: “Across six episodes, the Professor and the team untangle a series of knotty crimes ranging from an unexplained fire in a student block to the mystery of an entire family found dead in their home. From the blossoming affair between the two young detectives, Lisa and Dan, to the start of an exciting new liaison for Police chief DCI Christina Brand, nothing is quite what it seems. Meanwhile, Professor T is dominated and perplexed by the women in his life. As he attempts to improve his relationships with everyone from his mother to the love of his life Christina, he takes the monumental step of seeing a therapist. His sessions with Dr. Helena are painful for the Professor and his mother as they delve deep into his past and chip away at the secrets of his childhood.”

• And I’ve never listened to the BBC Radio 4 comedy-mystery series Mrs. Sidhu Investigates, but I may just have to tune in for the Acorn-TV adaptation of that series, which presents the first of four episodes on Monday, September 18. According to a press release, this show features English comedian Meera Syal (The Kumars at No. 42, The Split, The Devil’s Hour), who also voiced Mrs. Sidhu on the radio airwaves, as “a high-end caterer with a taste for crime. Recently widowed, she juggles her new catering business with encouraging her wayward son Tez (Gurjeet Singh, Ackley Bridge) to find his passion, all while serving up justice to those who believe they are above the law. Her forays into sleuthing see her form unofficial partnership with long-suffering divorcee DCI Burton [Craig Parkinson, familiar from Line of Duty and Grace] who reluctantly accepts that together they’re an unbeatable crime-fighting duo, much to the bemusement of his partner, DS Mint (Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Industry).”

• Another interesting note, this one from a recent post of B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

Paramount+ released the first teaser trailer for Taylor Sheridan’s Lawmen: Bass Reeves, which stars David Oyelowo as the titular character. Reeves (Oyelowo), a former slave, was known as the greatest frontier hero in American history, working in the post-Reconstruction era as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory and capturing over 3,000 of the most dangerous criminals without ever being wounded. Future iterations will follow other iconic lawmen and outlaws who have had an impact on history.

Wikipedia offers more of Reeves’s story here.

• Please excuse the tardiness of my mentioning this news, but the recent brutal summer heat here in Seattle seemed to steal away all of my energy. Anyway, I want to note that author Sara Paretsky has been chosen to receive the 2023 David Thompson Special Service Award, a commendation recognizing “extraordinary efforts to develop and promote the crime fiction field.” She will be given that prize during the coming Bouchercon in San Diego (August 30-September 3). Thompson was a “beloved” Houston, Texas, bookseller who passed away in 2010. Previous winners of the award include Les and Leslie Blatt, Janet Rudolph, and The Rap Sheet’s own Ali Karim.

• Paretsky talks about that new award, as well as her overdue return to Bouchercon, in this 11.5-minute YouTube video.

Telly Tidbits

• Here’s a spot of good news: British TV broadcaster ITV’s new Van der Valk, a three-episode reboot of the same-named 1972-1992 British crime drama, is scheduled to premiere in the United States on September 13 as part of PBS’s Sunday Masterpiece series. (The show already ran in the UK last spring.) This series reset is based on characters created by London-born novelist Nicolas Freeling. It stars Marc Warren (Beecham House, Hustle) as street-savvy Amsterdam police detective Simon “Piet” Van der Valk, with the magnetic Maimie McCoy (DCI Banks, Endeavour) playing Van der Valk’s partner, Lucienne Hassell. Mystery Fanfare features a fine trailer for the series.

• Van der Valk will be followed on this fall’s Masterpiece schedule by two other inviting British dramas: Flesh and Blood (October 4), a four-part yarn packed with “resentment, envy, emotional turmoil, potential nemeses and suspicions,” and starring both Imelda Staunton and Francesca Annis; and the Hugh Laurie political thriller Roadkill (November 1).

• Coincidentially, Chris Murray, who scripted those three new, 90-minute Van der Valks, is also behind an eight-part Acorn TV crime series called Cannes Confidential. Deadline describes it as “a romantic procedural that blends comedy, mystery and crime detection with a heart-warming love story—all against the backdrop of [France’s] Côte d'Azur,” and touts it as “the first English-language procedural drama to be produced and set on the Côte d'Azur since the 1970s action-adventure comedy The Persuaders!, starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis.” Cannes Confidential should debut in 2021.

• I mentioned in my last news round-up that Anthony Horowitz’s terrific 2017 whodunit, Magpie Murders, is being turned into a six-part series, scripted by the author himself. As Deadline notes, that venture is an Eleventh Hour Films production for Masterpiece in the States and BritBox in the UK. Now comes word, via In Reference to Murder, that Magpie Murders is part of a larger BritBox collection of soon-forthcoming series worth anticipating:

The new additions include an adaptation of the 1938 novel, The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake (the nom de plume of poet Cecil Day-Lewis, father of Daniel Day-Lewis). The story follows a grieving mother who infiltrates the life of the man she believes killed her son and stars Jared Harris, Cush Jumbo, Billy Howle, and Nathaniel Parker.

Also on the BritBox slate is Crime, the first TV adaptation by Trainspotting writer Irvine Welsh, which is based on his own book. The six-part series will star Mission: Impossible 2 actor Dougray Scott as Detective Inspector Ray Lennox, who is investigating the disappearance of a schoolgirl while battling cocaine addiction and a mental breakdown.

• Finally, I noticed earlier today that the 1973 NBC-TV pilot film Savage, starring Martin Landau, can be watched in full on YouTube—at least for the time being. As Lee Goldberg explains in his book Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1989, Landau played Paul Savage, “an investigative reporter with his own television show that examines the political world. Landau’s then-wife Barbara Bain played his producer. In the pilot, they investigate a scandal involving a [U.S.] Supreme Court nominee. This was the last TV movie Steven Spielberg directed before going into motion pictures.” Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link penned the script; Gil Mellé provided the score.

Just Trying to Keep Up

• Variety brings word that “PBS Masterpiece has boarded the remake of classic European detective series Van der Valk and will co-produce and air the show in the U.S. Masterpiece’s Rebecca Eaton will exec produce the project. It is the latest in a healthy line of U.K.-originated drama that Masterpiece has boarded since becoming the U.S. home for British-made hits such as Downton Abbey.” Production of this new Amsterdam-set series is said to be underway, with no firm release date as yet. The original Van der Valk, starring Barry Foster and based on a succession of novels by Nicholas Freeling, was broadcast (on and off) between 1972 and 1992. (Hat tip to Lee Goldberg.)

• Meanwhile, Mystery Fanfare reports that Lara Prescott’s debut novel, The Secrets We Kept, along with Adrian McKinty’s acclaimed The Chain are slated for Hollywood film adaptation.

• And Mystery Tribune says Swedish writer Camilla Läckberg (The Girl in the Woods) “has turned her attention into creating a new TV series titled Hammarvik, which can be characterized as a Nordic version of Desperate Housewives with a serial killer on the loose.”

• Not long after the posting of my latest CrimeReads piece, “Detecting During Disasters”—about mystery and detective novels set amid real-life catastrophes, including San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake and city-destroying fire—I received a note from Randal S. Brandt, a librarian with the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. He told me of an article he’d written for a 2006 edition of the Bancroft’s newsletter, about novels featuring that trembler—everything from Sara Dean’s Travers: A Story of the San Francisco Earthquake (1908) and Shaken Down (1925), by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry, to Mignon G. Eberhart’s Casa Madrone (1980) and Dianne Day’s Fire and Fog (1996). Titled “The Big Shake,” Brandt’s feature is accessible in this PDF; simply scroll down to page 10.

• I’d never heard mystery-maker Ngaio Marsh speak—until now.

• Houston-born novelist Attica Locke has won the 2019 Texas Writer Award. Sponsored by the Texas Book Festival, this prize is given out annually to authors who have “significantly contributed to the state’s literary landscape.” Locke is, of course, known for penning such books as Bluebird, Bluebird (2017) and its new sequel, Heaven, My Home. She will be presented with her award during an October 26 ceremony in Texas’ state capitol in Austin. (Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

• I’ll be sorry to miss this presentation. “If you’re going to Bouchercon [in Dallas, October 31-November 3],” writes B.V. Lawson in In Reference to Murder, “you won’t want to miss The Ghost Town Mortuary, a radio play by Anthony Boucher, performed by members of Mystery Writers of America NorCal, Friday, November 1, 11 a.m., at the Landmark Ballroom in the Hyatt Regency. Authors scheduled to participate include Laurie R. King, David Corbett, Kelli Stanley, Reece Hirsch, Randal S. Brandt, Dale Berry, Gigi Pandian, James L’Etoile, and Terry Shames.”

• Looking for a Christmas present for yours truly? This set of 20 Rockford Files trading cards would be a fun choice.

• England’s Daily Telegraph newspaper carries a story—reproduced by Chris Sullivan in his blog—about how actor Laurence Fox, late of Inspector Lewis and currently appearing in Victoria, has found solace in his music, after a divorce and the death of his best friend.

• Comfort TV blogger David Hofstede continues his series of posts about two-part television episodes—good and definitely not so good—with write-ups that mention several crime dramas, such as The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Fugitive, and Charlie’s Angels.

• It’s always good to be reminded of ABC-TV’s classic gumshoe series, Peter Gunn, and its “jazz chanteuse,” played by Lola Albright.

• Finally, if you could use some financial assistance to attend next year’s Left Coast Crime convention in San Diego, California (March 12-15), you may be in luck. The LCC National Committee has drummed up funds for five scholarships to the event, plus expense money. More information and application procedures are available here.