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Initiative aimed at experienced professionals sends one participant to attend a showrunner programme in La.

London and La-based media consultancy MediaXchange has revealed details of the 2018 edition of its diversity scheme to support UK Bame (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) television workers.

Open to scriptwriters, creative and executive producers, writer-directors and broadcaster and production company executives, entrants must have substantial credits or experience at a management level.

A judging panel will select one participant who will be given the chance to attend MediaXchange’s week-long Showrunner TV Drama Exchange programme in Los Angeles, which will take place in spring 2018.

There, the participant will be able to network with Us showrunners and executives, gaining insight into how Us TV shows are developed, run and maintained.

Last year’s prize was won by Pier Wilkie [pictured], whose credits at the BBC include Don’t Take My Baby, The Song Of Lunch, Criminal Justice and Shakespeare Retold: A Midsummer Night’s Dream...

The Imitation Game star has been nominated for his leading role in BBC drama Sherlock.Scroll down for full list of nominations

Benedict Cumberbatch has been nominated for the third time as leading actor in his BBC role of Sherlock. This marks his sixth nomination for this category in his career.

Cumberbatch received a Best Actor Oscar nomination earlier this year for his role as Alan Turing in Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game.

The nominations, announced on Wednesday by actors Freddie Fox and Amanda Abbington, place Cumberbatch in a category alongside three others.

Toby Jones (Harry Potter, Captain America, The Hunger Games) is recognized for his role in Marvellous. The show received two other nominations including Single Drama and Supporting Actress for Gemma Jones.

James Nesbitt (The Hobbit) also received a leading actor nomination for The Missing, in addition to Jason Watkins (The Golden Compass) for his role in The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries.

For...

★★★☆☆ Completing the BFI's accumulative DVD collection of ghost story adaptations, which over the years became a staple of the BBC's Christmas and New Year programming, come two contemporary made chillers from renowned British writer M. R. James. Both A View From A Hill (2005), directed by Luke Watson and starring Mark Letheren, and follow-up Number 13 (2006), directed by Pier Wilkie with Greg Wise taking the lead, are clear examples of the Auntie Beeb trying to revive the tradition they started in the late 1960s - though unfortunately, without quite the same degree of sinister success.

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Hammer Blu-rays The Devil Rides Out (1968, dir. Terence Fisher)

Hammer applies its trademark Gothic veneer with considerably greater care than usual in this, the second and best of the company's three stabs at the satanic stylings of author Dennis Wheatley. Christopher Lee comes over to the light for a rare foray as central hero the Duc de Richleau, teaming up with friend Rex van Rijn (Leon Greene) to prevent the evil Satanist Mocata (Charles Gray) from enmeshing the son of his old friend (Patrick Mower) into a devil-worshipping cult.

The Devil Rides Out is perhaps best remembered for what Lee argues in his commentary to be Hammer's most enduring image, that of our heroes fighting a series of spectral and psychological nemeses from within the protective confines of a ritual circle. And yet the most chilling scene contains no special effects, but is instead a simple conversation between the wife...

International TV industry event Input is coming to Sydney between 7 to 11 May. The Australian Director’s Guild has partnered with Input for an early offering for Melbourne members of the guild on Monday 26 March.

The announcement:

Input

The television industry’s most free thinking event, is coming to Australia for the very first time in May 2012. Over five days in Sydney, from 7th – 11th May, delegates will watch television’s latest programs across every genre, ask questions of the year’s most interesting producers, and network with hundreds of international commissioning editors, acquisitions executives and producer colleagues.

The Adg, in partnership with Input, is offering Melbourne members an exclusive early taste of the Input experience on Monday March 26. Three fascinating and provocative television programs will be screened and Greg Waters, ABC Drama Development Manager, and Joseph Maxwell, Commissioning Editor, Sbs Documentaries, will be guest speakers and the program makers will...

The stars of the 1995 Oscar-winning film Sense and Sensibility will appear in a one-off drama about a failed love affair

Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson are to star in a new BBC one-off drama based on a narrative poem about a reunion of ex-lovers.

The drama, which uses Christopher Reid's 2009 poem The Song of Lunch in full, will be shown on BBC2 on 7 October to mark National Poetry Day.

The new film tells the story of an unnamed book editor played by Rickman who, 15 years after their break-up, is meeting his former lover, played by Thompson, at a Soho restaurant they used to frequent.

Thompson's character, also unnamed, is now living a glamorous life in Paris, married to a famous writer, while Rickman's character has failed in his writing career, detests his publishing job, and regrets the end of their love affair.

The BBC2 controller, Janice Hadlow, called the...

This sounds like a first: the BBC will soon announce plans to dramatise a poem. They have also landed some stellar actors in the shape of Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman. The narrative poem being dramatised for television is Christopher Reid's The Song of Lunch, which tells the story of a book editor (failed writer, getting old, hates his job) meeting an old flame (successful writer, radiant, known internationally) for a nostalgic lunch in Soho. Of course it quickly goes from bittersweet to boozy and bitter. Commissioned to mark National Poetry Day on 7 October, BBC2 controller Janice Hadlow says she hopes it will inspire people to get writing themselves.

On paper, it sounds terrific; Niall MacCormick (Wallander and Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley) will direct, while Pier Wilkie (Criminal Justice) will produce. Reid, of course, won this year's Costa Book award for his incredibly moving collection A Scattering,...