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Brisbane-based writer, producer, and director Clare Sladden will benefit from the guidance of renowned US showrunner Bradford Winters in developing a new drama series after being selected for the final component of a Screen Queensland writers’ initiative.

Delivered in conjunction with Winters, the week-long Bradford Winters Series Lab comprised five participants, who were invited to pitch their concepts to Netflix, Stan, or Sbs executives for feedback.

Sladden will now assemble a five-day writers’ room to apply feedback from the pitch experience to create a pilot script for her series Pathological, as well as a bible to present to the market.

Pathological, follows the story of Claudia, a ruthless, sociopathic lawyer who, after the removal of a brain tumor, acquires a new sense of empathy and must navigate a dangerous corporate conspiracy to protect a teenage runaway from a contract kill Claudia orchestrated previously.

Sladden, whose recent credits include the upcoming Stan Original series Eden,...

In the wake of Sunday night's season two finale, Epix as renewed its Berlin Station TV show for a third season. Check out what executive producer Brad Winters had to say about Berlin Station, season three, earlier this week. The Berlin Station TV series cast includes Richard Armitage, Rhys Ifans, Leland Orser, Michelle Forbes, Richard Jenkins, Mina Tander, Ashley Judd, and Keke Palmer. The Epix spy drama follows Daniel Miller (Armitage). As part of an investigation into a whistleblower, Miller goes the CIA’s Berlin station, to investigate the Thomas Shaw leaks. Read More…...

Exclusive: Just days after Berlin Station had its Season 2 finale, Epix today is giving the Olen Steinhauer-created spy series a third season. Season 3 of Berlin Station looks set to start streaming on Epix in late 2018 or early 2019, I hear. However, it is not yet set in stone who is returning from the Richard Armitage, Michelle Forbes, Leland Orser, Ashley Judd, Richard Jenkins and Rhys Ifans starring series or if Ep Brad Winters will be back as showrunner. With the…...

Warning: Berlin Station Season Two Finale Spoilers. Last night, the Berlin Station TV show's season two finale ran on Epix. The cable network has not yet announced whether Berlin Station is cancelled or renewed for season three. Now, executive producer Brad Winters is discussing what measure of closure was provided in the second season and where the spy drama could go in a potential third season. The Berlin Station TV series cast includes Richard Armitage, Rhys Ifans, Leland Orser, Michelle Forbes, Richard Jenkins, Mina Tander, Ashley Judd, and Keke Palmer. The Epix drama follows Daniel Miller (Armitage). As part of an investigation into a whistleblower, Miller heads off to the CIA’s Berlin station on a secret mission to discover the source of the Thomas Shaw leaks. There, he uncovers that they lead all the way back...

Spy drama licensed to Italy, Nordics and Spain.

Paramount Worldwide Television has announced a trio of international licensing deals for Berlin Station.  

The spy drama will be available in Italy on TIMvision (the Tim on-demand television platform), in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland on HBO Nordic and in Spain on HBO España.

The show, which stars Richard Armitage, Richard Jenkins and Rhys Ifans, will also participate in the upcoming Paris-based TV event Series Mania (April 12-23).

Last week it was announced that Ashley Judd and Keke Palmer had joined the cast for series 2, which begins production in Berlin on March 31.

Berlin Station is a contemporary spy drama that takes a look at the activity of a CIA office on a global stage in the midst of an investigation into a now-infamous whistleblower.

The series airs on Epix in the U.S. and is also available in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, the Middle...

In this exclusive clip from Episode 3 of “Berlin Station,” what seems like a typical night out in Berlin, complete with some spy-to-spy male bonding at a drag bar, quickly turns into an orchestrated double cross. While Daniel (Richard Armitage) is distracted by a lap-dancing drag queen, Hector (Rhys Ifans) swipes his phone and plants it with a bug.

With a not so subtle bit of foreshadowing, the clip opens with a singer in drag belting out (in German), “Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies — I’m sick and tired of lies from you.”

Read More: ‘Berlin Station’ Review: Spy Drama Needs Less Talk, More Richard Jenkins Gettin’ Busy

As the episode plays out, this betrayal thwarts Daniel’s efforts to hunt infamous CIA whistleblower Thomas Shaw, while the Berlin station’s surveillance of Aleksandre Iosava (Merab Ninidze) turns up bad behavior by one of Valerie’s (Michelle Forbes) agents. We...

With the debuts of USA Network’s Falling Water on October 13 and Epix’s Berlin Station on October 16, the battle to be a cable contender just became more interesting. As I say in my video review above, both series — Gale Anne Hurd and Blake Masters’ on the home of Mr. Robot, and the Olen Steinhauer-created and Bradford Winters-showrun spy thriller, respectively — succeed admirably in planting flags for their channels, though with very different approaches. If you are…...

My knee is feeling much better. Thanks for asking.

More than a year ago, I shared my resolution to sample more new books. How’s that working out?

Two comics I bought last week show why trying new stuff is great.

Well, I mean, if trying a new series by two talents who have proven themselves over and over again can be called “new” stuff. Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang are at the top of their game in Paper Girls. The story of a group of four girls who deliver the morning newspaper in suburban Ohio, these two men manage to capture a lot of what it feels like to be pre-pubescent and female.

Of course, it’s much much more than that, with dreams and fights and scary creepy guys wrapped in mysterious robes. The creative team has a lot to play with, even if they limit themselves...

Fresh off his toothy stint on Hannibal, Richard Armitage is pulling into Berlin Station, Epix’ upcoming 10-part contemporary spy drama, TVLine has learned.

Additionally, Michelle Forbes (The Killing, True Blood) has joined the ensemble.

RelatedHannibal Finale Post Mortem: Bryan Fuller on Will/Lecter Love, Bedelia’s Last Supper, That Siouxsie Sioux Jam

Armitage will play the starring role of Daniel Meyer, the cerebral, newly-anointed CIA case officer who goes from being an analyst at Langley to an undercover agent in Berlin tasked with finding an informant. Forbes, meanwhile, will portray Valerie Edwards, the no-nonsense administrator who serves as a Berlin Station Section Head.

Richard Armitage ("Hannibal," "The Hobbit") and Michelle Forbes ("The Killing," "True Blood") have joined the cast of the ten-part spy drama "Berlin Station" at Epix. Richard Jenkins and Rhys Ifans also star.

Armitage plays a cerebral CIA analyst who has become a case officer who has just arrived at the agency's foreign station in Berlin. He's on a secret mission to find who leaked information to a now-famous whistleblower.

As he learns to contend with the rough-and-tumble world of the field agent, he uncovers the threads of a conspiracy. Forbes plays a no-nonsense administrator who serves as a Berlin Station Section Head.

Richard Jenkins plays Steven Frost, a veteran of the Cold War and Berlin station chief, while Ifans plays a darkly charming case offer who mentors the analyst.

Michael Roskam will direct the first two episodes. Spy novelist Olen Steinhauer penned the premiere and will write and executive produce...

Southland, “Chaos”

Written by Zack Whedon

Directed by Christopher Chulack

Aired April 10th, 2013 on TNT

Forget Hannibal. Forget American Horror Story. Forget “The Rains of Castamere.” You want harrowing? You want soul-crushing blackness with a side of trauma? You want pure, unforgiving narrative nihilism? Try on the penultimate episode of sadly-departed cop drama Southland. Whereas the typical episode hones in on a few plotlines between seven or eight characters, “Chaos” revolves mostly around a single, nightmare-inducing act: the kidnapping of two of our principal characters by a pair of deranged meth-heads. On paper, it sounds like your average “Very Special Episode” of… really, any cop show ever. The “team member(s) get nabbed and have to be rescued by the rest of the team” setup is well-worn territory. “Chaos”, however, is a different beast entirely. Based loosely on a real incident, “Chaos” earns its title honestly, unfolding seemingly without rhyme or reason,...

Writers for Breaking Bad and House of Cards were among those singled out for the 2014 Writers Guild Awards, which will be held on Feb. 1 in Los Angeles and New York.

The nominees are:

Drama Series:

Breaking Bad, Written by Sam Catlin, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Gennifer Hutchison, George Mastras, Thomas Schnauz, Moira Walley-Beckett; AMC

The Good Wife, Written by Meredith Averill, Leonard Dick, Keith Eisner, Jacqueline Hoyt, Ted Humphrey, Michelle King, Robert King, Erica Shelton Kodish, Matthew Montoya, J.C. Nolan, Luke Schelhaas, Nichelle Tramble Spellman, Craig Turk, Julie Wolfe; CBS

Homeland, Written by Henry Bromell, William E. Bromell, Alexander Cary,...

The Americans Season 1, Episode 10 ‘Only You’

Directed by Adam Arkin

Written by Bradford Winters

Airs Wednesday nights at 10pm Et on FX

In a surprising move, The Americans shows us its hand halfway through ‘Only You’, an episode focused solely around the FBI’s hunt for Chris Amador’s murderer. In a scene near the episode’s midpoint Phillip and Elizabeth – now living in separate quarters – go to meet Granny, who tells them that it’s time to move Gregory out of the country. He’ll be rewarded she tells them, but she wonders if he’ll be able to adjust to life in the Soviet Union. Elizabeth thinks so – Phillip isn’t so convinced, which leads Granny to subtly suggest that if Gregory should decide not to go, there’s always another option to tie up the loose end.

From that moment on, ‘Only You’ makes it clear that Gregory will die.

Boss Season 2, Episode 6: “Backflash”

Written by Bradford Winters

Directed by Mario Van Peebles

Airs Fridays at 9pm (Et) on Starz

“Backflash” – an uncharacteristically tricksy title for Boss – answers almost every question one might have about Kane’s past: his involvement with Mayor Rutledge at the beginning of his career as Mayor, the occurrences at Lennox Gardens two decades ago that still haunt him, the true identity of Ian Todd, and – more a surprise than an answer to any implied question – that Kane and/or Meredith have been keeping Rutledge in a drug-induced subdued state for years.

In laying out those cards, the air of mystery surrounding many of the plotlines and characters during the first half of this season is cleared – good timing, as it was beginning to seem as if implication and mystery were Boss’s main currency in the absence of substance. We now get to speculate...

Boss, Season 2, Episode 1: “Louder than Words”

Written by Dee Johnson

Directed by Jim McKay

Boss, Season 2, Episode 2: “Through and Through”

Written by Bradford Winters

Directed by Jean de Segonzac

Airs Fridays at 9pm (Et) on Starz

Boss is back on our screens with a confident, clear renewal of its grand themes and dense plotting, and, as with Season One, we watch to see how the kingdom will come down. The opening scene of the second season voices the story’s central conflict and complication explicitly and in certain terms: Kane’s health will continue to rapidly decline, his judgement will begin to falter, and his behaviour will become steadily more irrational. As Dr. Ella Harris (brought back into the fold by Kane) insists, Kane’s best days are behind him, and no amount of hard-earned self-belief, sense of purpose, or self-awareness will provide immunity. Another core complication: Kane...

HBO has announced the development of Americatown, a new drama series project from writer Bradford Winters and producers Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.

Americatown is "set 25-40 years into the future when the precipitous decline of the U.S. leads to a mass exodus of its citizens," says The Hollywood Reporter. The show focuses on newly arrived American immigrants in a large foreign city.

"By presenting Americans as immigrants in the near future, as both underdog and hero in the drama of global dislocation, we substitute a mirror for the rancor that informs much of the partisan debates on immigration," Winters said of the series.

The show focuses both on immigration and on potential financial meltdown, which is quite topical given current circumstances.

Says Winters of the irony: "What is happening right now is such a terrible disaster for so many people and, in some ways,...

What if the current financial crisis in the U.S. becomes so severe that Americans start to flee the country?

Welcome to "Americatown," a Chinatown-like enclave of U.S. immigrants in cities around the world.

HBO is developing the futuristic drama series project, which hails from writer Bradford Winters and producers Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.

Set 25-40 years into the future when the precipitous decline of the U.S. leads to a mass exodus of its citizens, "Americatown" takes place in a cluster of newly arrived American immigrants in a big foreign city.

"By presenting Americans as immigrants in the near future, as both underdog and hero in the drama of global dislocation, we substitute a mirror for the rancor that informs much of the partisan debates on immigration," Winters said.

The deal at HBO caps a decade-long development process for Winters, who at different...