Rosemary’s Baby Is Gone

This is sad news, indeed. From Variety:

Miguel Ferrer, the character and voice actor who appeared in shows including “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “Crossing Jordan,” and films such as “RoboCop” and “Iron Man 3,” died on Thursday of throat cancer. He was 61.

Ferrer was the son of top 1950s singer Rosemary Clooney and actor José Ferrer, and first cousin to George Clooney. He appeared on “NCIS: Los Angeles” for seven seasons. …

Born in Santa Monica, Calif., he started out as a studio musician, touring with his mother and Bing Crosby, and recording with Keith Moon of The Who, before moving into television and film.

Among Ferrer’s other performance credits, Variety lists appearances in the TV shows Bionic Woman, Desperate Housewives, Twin Peaks, and the long-forgotten Shannon’s Deal. It might also have mentioned that he appeared on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Third Rock from the Sun, ER, Miami Vice, T.J. Hooker, and Magnum, P.I.

READ MORE: “R.I.P., Miguel Ferrer,” by Ken Levine; “Snapshots of a Friendship,” by Max Allan Collins.

The Grand Tour

• Albuquerque, New Mexico, journalist-cum-novelist Christine Barber has won the first Tony Hillerman Prize for her book, The Replacement Child. The announcement was made during the fifth annual Tony Hillerman Writers Conference: Focus on Mystery being held in Albuquerque. The Hillerman Prize is sponsored by both the conference and St. Martin’s Press, and is given to what judges consider the best unpublished novel by a first-time author. According to a press release, The Replacement Child “is set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and draws upon Barber’s experiences working for local newspapers and as a volunteer EMT/firefighter with Santa Fe County. Barber was an editor at the Santa Fe New Mexican for ten years and has also worked for the Albuquerque Journal and the Gallup Independent.” Her award-winning novel will be published by Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin’s Minotaur next fall.

The deadline for next year’s Hillerman Prize competition will be July 1, 2008. To find entry guidelines, click here or here.

• British author Frank Tallis’ “Lieberman Papers” historical mystery series--the third and latest installment of which is Fatal Lies, due out in early January from Century--is set to be adapted for television by the BBC in 2009. I enjoyed the initial two installments of Tallis’ series, Mortal Mischief (U.S. title: A Death in Vienna) and Vienna Blood, both of which starred Freud acolyte Dr. Max Liebermann and his friend and investigative cohort, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt. Set in Vienna, Austria, during the first decade of the 20th century, these books certainly have the narrative strengths and intriguing characters appropriate for a TV serial. By the way, one other thing I learned about Tallis’ series (from London’s Goldboro Books site) is that it’s planned to run six books long. So it will be entertaining us for some while to come.

• While we’re talking about turning novels into visual entertainments, I just learned from book critic Clayton Moore’s Bang! blog that Hollywood has been planning for some time to produce a film based on George C. Chesbro’s 1979 novel, An Affair of Sorcerers, the third installment of his series featuring circus performer-turned-criminologist Dr. Robert Frederickson, aka “Mongo the Magnificent.” Many younger readers have probably never heard of Mongo; yet as Moore recalled in a Bookslut piece a couple of years back, he may be “the shortest, baddest, ass-kicking crime fighter that ever stalked the hard-boiled streets.” Moore went on to explain:

Starting with mystery magazines, Chesbro created a unique witches’ brew of noir brutality, occult tension, detective science and bizarre villains. Playboy once described it as Raymond Chandler meets Stephen King but it was often more like James Bond on acid. Mongo had the skills, the international intrigue and the strange appeal of a man forced to make his way in a world of giants. Through fourteen novels, Mongo fought monsters, warlocks and scientists. He battled Iranian secret police. He infiltrated an isolated biosphere. He fought ninjas.

In 1996, Simon & Schuster quietly published Dream of a Falling Eagle, the last Mongo adventure to see mainstream print. Mongo disappeared.

Well, for the most part. But it turns out that Chesbro secured rights to all of his novels, and has since formed a small publishing company to keep them in print. That his determination will be rewarded with a film (reportedly due out in 2008) starring Peter Dinklage is quite extraordinary. I had the chance many years ago to visit Chesbro at his home outside of New York City. He struck me as a kind gentleman, very astute and with a real devotion to the crime-fiction field. I had no idea that he had the cojones to defy publishing disregard--and win in the end. Good for him.

• And did I mention before that the Jill Hennessy TV series Crossing Jordan, sadly cancelled by NBC earlier this year, is finally coming to DVD? Well, Jordan’s first season is, anyway, according to TV Shows on DVD. It’s due out in February 2008.

• When last we heard from California author Steve Hockensmith, he was worrying--perhaps more than was absolutely necessary--over the future of his Amlingmeyer brothers historical mystery series. Now, in a more optimistic vein, he muses at My Book, the Movie on the potential casting for a film based on his winning first novel, Holmes on the Range (2006). I won’t tell you who he’s picked for the roles; you’ll have to click over here to find out. But I will say that they actors are not hard to imagine playing “Old Red” and “Big Red.” Hollywood, take note.

• In Reference to Murder’s B.V. Lawson brings news that Karen Kissane, “a journalist for 28 years and law and justice editor of The [Melbourne] Age,” has won this year’s Davitt Award in the Best True Crime category for her book Silent Death: The Killing of Julie Ramage. Meanwhile, Kerry Greenwood’s novel Devil’s Food won the Readers’ Choice award. The Davitts--named in honor of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879), the first known Australian mystery novelist--are given out annually by the Australian division of Sisters in Crime. You can look here for more details.

• Finally, author Wallace Stroby continues adding to his selections of unjustly overlooked crime novels (a splendid spinoff from The Rap Sheet’s “one book project”). His last nominee is Martin Quinn (2003), by Anthony Lee. “The book’s New York atmosphere,” Stroby writes, “was so strong you could just about smell it, and as unlikable--and unredeemable--as most of the characters were, the writing put you right into their hearts and minds. It made me jealous.” Read more here.

A Star Is Born? ... Discovered? ... No, Installed

Jill Hennessy may have lost her weekly TV show, Crossing Jordan, which wasn’t renewed by NBC for the fall 2007 season. But over this last weekend, the fetching 38-year-old Alberta-born actress did receive a star on Toronto’s Canadian Walk of Fame.

That’s got to be some kind of compensation, right?

Crossed Out

American television strives to disappoint nowadays. NBC-TV this morning announced its 2007-2008 schedule, confirming that it was dropping three of the small number of series I bother to watch anymore. While both the original Law & Order series and its foremost spinoff, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, managed to survive for another year, despite rumors of their pending demise), the same isn’t also true of Aaron Sorkin’s uneven but far-better-written-than-normal Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; it won’t be returning in the fall. Neither will a couple of crime series I’ve enjoyed, Crossing Jordan and Raines.

Although only seven episodes of Raines were shot (a reduction from original expectations), the show managed to make a decent splash in a TV pool short on cop series that didn’t emphasize forensic science over character development. Jeff Goldblum grew on me as a wounded Los Angeles detective who feared he was going crazy, because his subconscious mind kept manifesting images of the people whose murders he endeavored to solve--images off whom he could bounce ideas, but who couldn’t supply him with any insights he didn’t have himself. (He didn’t actually see spirits, contrary to the critical shorthand that Raines was “Ghost Whisperer meets Dragnet.”) The pilot episode (still available for your viewing pleasure here) might have been the best, but the succeeding six all had their highlights, the sum offering up a protagonist whose psychological infirmities were integral to the story, but didn’t overwhelm the plot (unlike what’s happened to Tony Shalhoub’s Monk). This was Goldblum’s second short-lived shot at a continuing TV crime drama (following his appearance, with Ben Vereen, in Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, Stephen J. Cannell’s 1980 series), and may finally convince him that there’s no reason to bother with a medium that’s more interested in idiotic game shows than slow-developing dramatic series.

Still harder for me to accept than Raines’ demise is the cancellation, after a six-year run, of Crossing Jordan, the ever-dependable Boston-based medical examiner series. Although it originally focused around the lovely Canadian actress and Law & Order alumna Jill Hennessy (shown in the photo above), who played brainy and unstoppable Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, always butting heads with her bosses and the cops who wanted her to butt out of their cases, Jordan quickly evolved into more of an ensemble piece. Miguel Ferrer (the son of Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer and American singer Rosemary Clooney) portrayed Cavanaugh’s tightly wound, alcoholic boss, Dr. Garrett Macy; while Ravi Kapoor took the role of Mahesh “Bug” Vijayaraghavensatyanaryanamurthy, a perpetually shy but warm-hearted Indian entomologist, who was friend and often reluctant co-conspirator to the more free-spirited, wisecracking British criminologist Nigel Townsend (played by Steve Valentine). For a time, Ken Howard (who I remember best, if most obscurely, from a 1974-1975 CBS period crime drama called The Manhunter) appeared as Jordan’s retired-cop father, but he hasn’t been seen much lately. And more recently, ex-Sliders star Jerry O’Connell has been a regular Boston police detective and less regular boyfriend of Jordan’s on the show, with Kathryn Hahn playing grief counselor Lily Lebowski.

Hennessy was something of a revelation as Dr. Cavanaugh, a woman more overtly sexual, psychologically troubled, and dynamic than Claire Kincaid, the publicly restrained assistant district attorney the actress had portrayed for three years on L&O. This show wasn’t perfect. It depended for far too long on a continuing story thread about Jordan’s murdered mother (and did we ever actually hear a resolution to that case, by the way?). A few crossover eps with the far cheesier NBC series Las Vegas were less than credible, and even less than necessary. Still, there was more welcome attention paid to the development of Jordan’s cast than there has been to the stars of, say, the CSI franchise shows or the original Law & Order. I tuned in every week, confident that I would be entertained by a wonderfully flawed cast with whom I had built up a relationship over the years. I wasn’t asked to care simply about the forensic wizardry element of the program, which would’ve gotten old (and explains why I can only watch the CSI series every now and then).

While it’s sad to see Crossing Jordan and Raines (and Studio 60, for that matter) tossed atop the discard pile, it’s equally regrettable to me that they should’ve died at the hands of NBC. There was a time when the network formerly known as the National Broadcasting Company served up most of my evening’s entertainment. It gave me many of the crime dramas I remember most fondly (Columbo, The Rockford Files, Ironside, McMillan & Wife, City of Angels, Hec Ramsey, Crime Story), as well as Cheers, The Addams Family, The Bob Newhart Show, I’ll Fly Away, Friends, Get Smart, L.A. Law, Mad About You, and Aaron Sorkin’s extraordinary The West Wing. That NBC has now become synonymous in my mind with such simple-minded fare as Deal or No Deal and The Office is tremendously disheartening; and that any series should be canceled to make way for NBC’s fall revival of that dopey Lindsey Wagner series, The Bionic Woman, just adds insult to injury.

No wonder I’ve resorted to watching DVDs of older TV shows at night. NBC, as well as the other U.S. networks, seem determined to drive anything remotely intelligent or challenging from the airwaves, and to kill off what remains by moving the shows around so frequently that they can’t possibly hold audiences. It’s funny: When I was a kid, I was a TV addict. Now, I barely turn on the set, and it is not just because I have other things to do.

Stormy “Crossing”

Although there’s been more publicity surrounding tonight’s return of 24, the Kiefer Sutherland series on FOX, I want to draw your attention instead to the sixth-season U.S. premiere of Crossing Jordan, at 10 p.m. Eastern/Pacific and 9 p.m. Central.

The NBC-TV promo for this evening’s episode is headlined, “Jordan Seeks to Prove Her Innocence,” and it offers this episode briefing:

A fugitive on the run, Jordan (Jill Hennessy) travels to the nation’s capital in pursuit of the news story that her ex-beau Pollack (guest star Charles Mesure) had been working on to find out what really happened the night he was murdered. Meanwhile, Lu (Leslie Bibb) brings in the prickly and abrasive Dr. Kate Switzer (guest star Brooke Smith), an independent medical examiner, to prove that Jordan is guilty. Macy (Miguel Ferrer) travels to Washington to find Jordan, and the rest of the team works on collecting the evidence needed to clear her name.

I’m not going to argue that Crossing Jordan is the best mystery series ever to hit the American airwaves--it’s not. But at a time when crime and detective series are in short supply, and those that do exist all seem to have CSI or Law & Order in their titles, Crossing Jordan deserves props for being different. And it deserves a look.

READ MORE: “So When’s This Jack Bauer Movie Gonna Get Moving?” by Scott Weinberg (Cinematical).

Something Worth Watching Again

TV Squad brings news today that Crossing Jordan, a crime drama about the Boston Medical Examiner’s Office that I’ve enjoyed ever since its debut in 2001, is returning to NBC-TV come January 21. Previously due for a move to Friday night, it’s being installed instead in its old spot on Sundays at 10 p.m. Frankly, I could be captivated just watching this program’s star, Jill Hennessy, make coffee in the morning or take out the trash, so I’m happy to see her back on the small screen bringing down murderers and causing consternation among the Beantown constabulary. Beyond the debut of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, this hasn’t been a great year for American television, so reliables such as Crossing Jordan are welcome.

And though I fear it might not live up to its hype, I’m also looking forward to watching Raines, the new NBC series in which Jeff Goldblum plays an eccentric Los Angeles police detective who “solves murders in a very unusual way--he turns the victims into his partners,” according to NBC publicity. “These visions are figments of Raines’ imagination, and he knows it, but when he can’t make the dead disappear, he works with them to find the killer. Through his discussions, along with the evidence, Raines’ image of the victim changes until he has a clear picture of what really happened. Only when the case is closed do the visions end. Other detectives question Raines’ sanity, and occasionally so does he. However, as long as his unique methods are helping catch criminals, Raines imagines he’ll be just fine.” It sounds like a combination of Medium and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). But I like Goldblum, and suspect that he can pull off the roll of a cop with ghosts in his noggin. An added bonus: the series will also feature Linda Park, one of my favorite actors from Star Trek: Enterprise. Thus far, Raines doesn’t seem to have a timeslot, but that ought to be announced soon.