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This week The Perfect Murder examines the case of Randy Scheffield, who was shot in his bed. December 2001 in Newbury Township, Ohio, and 53-year-old Scheffield is found unconscious in his bed by family members. However, it turned out he’d been shot in the back of the head and police started a homicide investigation. Scheffield ran a successful business in the shape of a landscape company and was married to Doretta Scheffield, who also acted as bookkeeper for the business. It was not until March 2015 that Doretta, her son David Rowels and his girlfriend Gina Battalgia were arrested and the...read more...

The Perfect Murder examines the brutal and bizarre killing of scientist Robert Schwartz, who was murdered in his own home. Loudoun County on Dec. 8, 2001, and Robert M. Schwartz was sitting down to dinner when he was stabbed to death with a sword. The well known scientist working in DNA sequencing was slashed and stabbed over 30 times with a X carved into his neck, leading to believe the murder might have some ritualistic angle. Indeed the person who plotted his death and his killer were obsessed with vampires, the occult and witchcraft but they were very close to...read more...

This week The Perfect Murder examines the tragic case of mistaken identity that led to murder. Geauga County in 2006 and 31-year-old Daniel E. Ott was asleep at home with his fiance when a man broke into hi house and bound him at gun point. Ott managed to get free but but was shot dead by the man. Ott’s fiance was unharmed and initially the case left detectives a bit baffled, he’d been planning to move the next day and didn’t seem to have any links to criminal activity. It turned out that serial criminal 60-year-old Joseph Rosebrook, who was...read more...

This week The Perfect Murder examines the apparent suicide of actress and director Adrienne Shelly that turned out to be murder. Shelly had various acting roles in independent movies like The Unbelievable Truth and Trust, before going on to win various post-humous awards for the film Waitress in 2007. She was married to Andy Ostroy and had a daughter with him, who was two at the time of her death. On November 1, 2006, Shelly was found hanging in the West Village apartment she used as an office. She was hanging over the bath with a bed sheet tied around...read more...

For many actors, Downton Abbey was their first big break in television.

But not everyone can be a Lord Grantham or a Carson. For many - whether they chose to leave or were written out - their fortunes changed after exiting the ITV drama.

So after the news that Dan Stevens has joined Beauty and the Beast, Digital Spy looks at the careers (so far!) of 9 actors who have bowed out of Highclere Castle...

1. Ed Speleers

After starring in series three, four and five of Downton, Ed Speleers left Jimmy Kent behind for another role in a big budget British TV drama.

We most recently saw him in the part of Edward Seymour in Wolf Hall, and he will also star in upcoming films Remainder and Howl. Most prominently, he's been cast alongside Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter in Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass.

2. Amy Nuttall...

Les Dennis isn't exactly in our day-to-day thoughts, truth be told, but the news yesterday (January 23) that the light entertainment legend would be joining Coronation Street still managed to put a massive smile on our face. Les on the cobbles! Amazing!

To celebrate Les's biggest gig in quite some time, we look back at the celebrity good egg's life and career in order, and come up with eight reasons why we absolutely love him...

He's a talent show king!

Way back before Britain's Got Talent, The X Factor et al, there was New Faces, a notoriously tough competition where a panel of judges - including a youthful Noel Edmonds - marked variety acts on their "star quality", usually without chucking water over each other or trying to get into the papers with a particularly daring dress, as all that palaver is a modern talent show invention.

After doing the rounds...

Exclusive: Zafar Hai and Tabrez Noorani have made a deal to option screen rights to Spy Princess: The Life Of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu. Who are these guys? Hai, a director who is managing partner of Haimark Films International, has twice won the Filmfare Award (India’s equivalent of the Oscar) and helmed The Perfect Murder for Merchant Ivory. Noorani, his nephew, is the prolific line producer of Slumdog Millionaire, the Kathryn Bigelow-directed Zero Dark Thirty, the Ang Lee-directed Life Of Pi, Misson: Impossible–Ghost Protocol and Alexander. His company is India Take One Productions. Spy Princess tells the remarkable story of a heroic woman, Noor Inayat Khan. Under the code name Madeleine, she was trained by Britain’s Special Operations Executive and became the first female wireless operator to be flown into occupied France during World War II. She infiltrated into the Paris area, where within...

Quite a few filmmakers have tried recreating yesterday's 'Bombay' in today's 'Mumbai' but with mixed results. In the recent times, Milan Luthria and Vipul Shah have tried doing that with Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai and Action Replayy. Now, when Sanjay Gupta is entering the same territory with Shootout At Wadala, he doesn't wish to take any chances. In order to lend an authentic view to his action drama, he is desperately searching for a director from the late 70s/early 80s who had made his only feature film almost quarter of a century ago. "His name is Zafar Hai who had directed this immensely engrossing dramatic thriller called The Perfect Murder (Naseeruddin Shah, Amjad Khan, Madhur Jaffrey, Annu Kapoor and Mohan Agashe)", informs a source close to Sanjay, "The film was set in (then) Bombay and the most notable aspect of the film was it's title sequence which...

Quite a few filmmakers have tried recreating yesterday's 'Bombay' in today's 'Mumbai' but with mixed results. In the recent times, Milan Luthria and Vipul Shah have tried doing that with Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai and Action Replayy. Now, when Sanjay Gupta is entering the same territory with Shootout At Wadala, he doesn't wish to take any chances. In order to lend an authentic view to his action drama, he is desperately searching for a director from the late 70s/early 80s who had made his only feature film almost quarter of a century ago. "His name is Zafar Hai who had directed this immensely engrossing dramatic thriller called The Perfect Murder (Naseeruddin Shah, Amjad Khan, Madhur Jaffrey, Annu Kapoor and Mohan Agashe)", informs a source close to Sanjay, "The film was set in (then) Bombay and the most notable aspect of the film was it's title sequence which...

Perennially popular crime writer best known for the Inspector Ghote series

The crime writer Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating, who has died aged 84, was more than happy to be known simply as Harry, although publishers always billed him as Hrf Keating. Over half a century, he published roughly 50 novels. More than two dozen of these featured his best-known hero, the unassuming Indian policeman Inspector Ganesh Ghote, who also appeared in short stories, and television and film adaptations of Keating's books. Timid, nervous and deferential, Ghote was neither a detective genius like Sherlock Holmes nor a streetwise tough-guy like Philip Marlowe. He was always underestimated by his enemies but his great strength was a combination of integrity, perseverance and an overwhelmingly benevolent interest in people.

Keating wrote several books before creating Ghote. His first novel, Death and the Visiting Firemen, was published in 1959. It was followed by more witty and slightly surreal novels,...

Next week, the film community will take a break from all of these high brow film festivals, to descend upon Austin Texas for the epic genre festival, Fantastic Fest. We’ve previewed several of the films that will be premiering at Fantastic Fest, and they just announced a few more films, from those lovely vikings up in Norway.

Criterion alum, Stellan Skarsgård (Insomnia, The Perfect Murder, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being) plays Ulrik in Hans Petter Moland’s comedy A Somewhat Gentle Man. You’ll also be able to catch Arild Fröhlich’s 2008 film, Fatso, as well as Thomas Cappelen Malling’s Norwegian Ninja. It’s nice to see some of the more comedic Scandinavian films being represented amongst so many darker genre films at the festival.

While there are going to be a number of Asian genre films represented at the festival, it’s clear that Fantastic Fest is a global event.