He's from Private Practice, she's from Boss, and together Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson make a very pretty crime-solving duo, as evidenced in the photo above, which shows the two stars of Murder in the First, a new scripted drama TNT just greenlit to series. TNT announced this week that they're moving forward with the project, which will star Diggs and Robertson as homicide detectives Terry English and Hildy Mulligan respectively.
TNT has ordered 10 episodes of Murder in the First, which comes from Steven Bochco and Eric Lodal, and is expected to begin airing next summer (2014). Rather than focusing on a different case each episode, as many murder investigation shows tend to do, Murder in the First will have homicide detectives Terry English and Hildy Mulligan working on one particular case all season, and it involves Harry Potter's Tom Felton. Or rather, the young, celebrated CEO of a tech firm, "Silicon Valley wunderkind" Erich Blunt, who's played by Felton. Blunt is connected to the case through some kind of relationship with the drug addict who was murdered. This is an issue for Blunt as he's about to take his company public, and he's being sued by a software developer who claims Blunt stole his code for a revolutionary new hologram system.
Felton played up the villainous Draco Malfoy role in the Harry Potter films rather well, so it's not hard to imagine that he's guilty of any and all of the infractions mentioned in the description, but we could also suggest that it may be all too obvious that he's the villain of this season. At the very least, I expect him to be a suspect. Either way, Felton's one more reason to look forward to this series, as are Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson. Diggs' recent steady gig was on the Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice, but many of us will always associate him best for his role as Benny in the original production of Rent… and a bit for playing the dreamy Winston Shakespeare in How Stella Got Her Groove Back. And since we're back in the 90s here, now seems like the right time to acknowledge Robertson for playing Claire for a few seasons in Beverly Hills, 90210. She pursued Brandon, then dated David, then Steve. You'd think that'd be a record for romantic entanglements with lead characters on 90210, but I think Kelly Taylor holds that one.
In addition to Robertson, Diggs and Felton, Murder in the First also stars Mimi Kirkland, who plays Robertson's character's daughter. Raphael Sbarge (Once Upon a Time) plays philosopher-cop David Molk. Ian Anthony Dale plays the squad supervisor Lt. Jim Koto. And guest-star Anne-Marie Johnson plays Diggs' characters' terminally ill wife. While there's no official premiere date set, as we mentioned, TNT's looking to get Murder in the First on the air next summer.
