Drama

During last week’s Television Critics Association Press Tour, former Doctor Who star David Tennant was on hand to get the promotional wheels started for his new upcoming spy drama, a BBC/BBC America co-production called The Spies of Warsaw. Based on the Alan Furst novel of the same name, Tennant will be starring opposite a stellar ensemble cast that includes Torchwood’s Burn Gorman, The Hour’s Anton Lesser and White Heat’s Richard Lintern.

Tennant took the time to appear on G4’s Attack of the Show, where he was most adorable, used his real accent and talked a bit about both his latest project and his time on Doctor Who. Oh, and there’s also dancing. It’s definitely worth a watch. Click through and take a look for yourself!

Sir Kenneth Branagh is back on Masterpiece Mystery next month in the highly anticipated third series of Wallander. Based on the character created by best-selling novelist Henning Mankell , the soul-searching Swedish cop Kurt Wallander returns for three new feature-length cases, starting Sunday, September 9.

Branagh, who has been nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance in this role, will be once again joined by Sarah Smart (Wuthering Heights) as detective Anne-Britt Hoglund and Jeany Spark (Tess of d’Ubervilles) as Wallander’s daughter Linda. Prime Suspect’s Ingeborga DapkÅ«naitÄ— is also slated to guest star.

In the new episodes, Wallander’s hard-won and fragile new hope is put to the test when the most brutal of crimes – and his own demons – are unearthed. Click through for a look at three just-released previews – one for each of the new Wallander episodes. The new mysteries are titled An Event in Autumn, The Dogs of Riga and Before the Frost.

They look pretty good! Click through to get your first taste of Wallander Series 3 for yourself.

CBS held a preview screening and cast Q&A with the stars and writers of their new modern Sherlock Holmes adaptation Elementary at this year’s San Diego Comic Con. Several thousand of us all got to watch the pilot together and then listen to folks behind the scenes talk about their new project.

Given that I have previously expressed more than a few varied and detailed issues with the fact that this CBS Holmes adaptation exists at all, you may be surprised by what I’m about to say here. Which is, basically, that Elementary – or the pilot at least – is not nearly as bad as I expected. In fact, it’s quite enjoyable.

The pilot isn’t perfect, and it seems apparent that this show will never hit anywhere close to the same level of quality as the BBC Sherlock that’s currently all the rage on both sides of the pond. That said, it’s very watchable, thanks in large part to the great cast. It’s enjoyable enough even that I’m going to give it a couple of episodes to see how it goes instead of just immediately writing it off. (Trust me, I’m as surprised as any of you about this fact.)

Why? Click through for a more detailed read on my early thoughts on Elementary, as well as a few tidbits about the show’s direction that were let out of the bag during their Comic Con panel.

Entourage star Jeremy Piven – perhaps best known for his exhortation that we all just “Hug it out” – will be given the chance to show off his more serious side in upcoming period drama Mr. Selfridge. Piven will play the titular character, Harry Gordon Selfridge, the visionary American entrepreneur who transformed Oxford Street in London with the splashy department store that still bears his name.

Created by the Emmy Award-winning Andrew Davies (who also did Pride and Prejudice and Bleak House), the ten-part series will focus on the life of the “pioneering and reckless” shipping magnate who turned the act of shopping into an pleasurable and social activity for Edwardian-era women. The series will also deal with some of the same sorts of class issues as Downton Abbey, as well as highlight hidden moments in the history of women in fashion and domestic affairs.

Mr. Selfridge is currently filming in the UK and is slated to air in 2013, but exact dates for US and UK transmission have yet to be determined. (If you'd like an early look at Piven in some fairly fancy period dress, you can find a few filming shots here.)

The announcement that Mr. Selfridge will join the Masterpiece family brought with it some more great news: that the multi-series production co-production deal between Masterpiece and UK network ITV also includes further episodes of Endeavour, Inspector Lewis, Miss Marple and Agatha Christie’s Poirot. So we can now officially look forward to new installments of all four of those popular programs in the coming year as well.

The new series of Inspector Lewis wraps up tonight on Masterpiece Mystery. Yes, somehow we’ve already reached the end of new Lewises for the year (How? It feels like we just started!), and the wait for new episodes begins once again tomorrow. Not to worry though, there’s plenty of great British fare still to come in the next few months, including a new series of Wallander, hit drama Call the Midwife, the second series of Upstairs Downstairs and, of course, the return of a little show called Downton Abbey.

But, that’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves. In tonight’s Lewis finale, called The Indelible Stain, Lewis and Hathaway must investigate when a controversial American academic is found strangled after giving a guest lecture at Oxford and the possible motives include politics, ambition and vengeance.

Click through for a quick sneak peek at a scene from tonight’s episode and let us know what you think!

New details about the highly anticipated third series of Downton Abbey have started to emerge following the show’s panel at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour. Stars Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Brendan Coyle, Joanne Froggatt and cast newcomer Shirley MacLaine were all on hand to discuss the new episodes, drop a few hints about upcoming storylines and just be generally amazing. Then today, to keep the Downton mania flowing, we also got a first look at the official Series 3 promo art.

Click through for all the latest Downton dish, and a bigger version of that picture you see up top. As some plot of these plot-specific items could be consider spoilery, even if they are all plastered on every major entertainment outlet there is this morning, I’m still dumping them all under a cut in their own clearly labeled area and wishing all of you trying to avoid them good luck and Godspeed on that particular journey.

The new series of Inspector Lewis continues tonight on Masterpiece at 9pm. In tonight’s installment, Fearful Symmetry, Lewis and Hathaway investigate the murder of a suburban babysitter who seems to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time – and may have been leading a secret life.

Click through for a full synopsis of tonight’s episode, as well as a sneak peek clip. Enjoy!

BBC America is set to debut its first original scripted series this summer, a period crime drama called Copper.

Set in 1860s New York, Copper stars Tom Westen-Jones (MI-5) as Detective Kevin Cororan, who works in the city’s notorious Five Points neighborhood and tries to maintain his moral compass despite the turbulent times the city finds itself in. (Think Gangs of New York, it would seem.) Westen-Jones will be joined by a strong supporting cast comprised of Kevin Ryan (Tripping Tommy), Franka Potente (Run Lola Run), Kyle Schmid (Blood Ties), and Anastasia Griffith (Royal Pains).

Sound interesting? Click through for a bit more background on the series and a look at the extended trailer. Then leave your thoughts in the comments.

Downton Abbey star Michelle Dockery is set to join Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Charlotte Rampling and Hayley Atwlell in the BBC’s upcoming two-part adaptation of William Boyd’s best-selling novel Restless.

Dockery will play Ruth, a young girl who discovers that her mother Sally is really a spy named Eva, who was recruited by the British Secret Service at the start of World War II and has been living a double life on the run ever since. Rambling and Atwell will both play Eva, thirty years apart. Sewell and Gambon will also pull double character duty, both playing Lucas Romer, Eva’s former handler and lover. It all sounds quite complicated – but very interesting too!

Acclaimed theater director Ed Hall has signed on to run things behind the scenes, and Boyd – whose Any Human Heart aired on Masterpiece last year – will be adapting his own novel for the small screen.

"To have the chance to film a novel like Restless over three hours is the sort of opportunity that only a television adaptation can provide,” Boyd said.

"It represents the most enticing and alluring of possibilities - not only to tell an enthralling story of wartime espionage, love and betrayal but also to lift the lid on one of the last secrets of the Second World War."

Restless is due to screen on BBC One in late 2012. No hard date has been established for when we might see this drama here in the States, but the Hollywood Reporter says the project will broadcast in the US “later this year” as well.

Exciting news - the BBC has released the first trailer for Wallander Series 3!

Kenneth Branagh returns to his BAFTA-winning role as Inspector Kurt Wallander in three new feature-length episodes, based on Henning Mankell’s best-selling novels. In the newest set of mysteries – entitled An Event in Autumn, The Dogs of Riga and Before the Frost – the somber detective’s hard-won and fragile new hope will be put to the test when he encounters the most brutal of crimes that force him to confront his own demons. (Poor Wallander; he’s got enough personal demons to start a Halloween shop.)

Click through for a first look at the new series, set to a wonderfully haunting rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence. (BBC One just seriously puts out the best trailers sometimes, I swear.)