Today's Entertainment

May 2 - 8, 2016 Page 3 ACROSS 1. Actress __ __ Harden of "Code Black" 8. Ward, for one 9. "The Blind __"; 2009 Sandra Bullock film 10. Role on "NCIS: New Orleans" (2) 14. "Whose __ Is It Any- way?" 15. Derek and Diddley 16. "The __ Adventures of Old Christine" 17. "__ of Echoes"; 1999 Kevin Bacon movie 18. Number of seasons for "The Honeymooners" 19. Sandra and Ruby 20. Beverage containers 24. 466 years ago 27. "You __ Live Twice"; James Bond film 28. Defunct airline 29. "A Nightmare on __ Street"; Johnny Depp movie 32. Ending for gang or prank 33. Neighbor of the Simpsons (2) 36. Like the first schools we attend: abbr. 37. "Mr. Holland's __"; 1995 Richard Dreyfuss film 38. "The Place __ __ Pines"; 2012 movie for Ryan Gosling DOWN 1. Villain 2. Modifies 3. "The __ Patrol" (1966- 68) 4. Deadly vipers 5. __ Grissom; "CSI" role 6. "A Bell for __"; 1945 Gene Tierney movie 7. Nation whose capital is Sana'a 8. Ill-will 11. Initials for actor Bean 12. "__ Ordinary Family" 13. Female farm animal 14. Psychedelic drug letters 20. Actor __ Campanella 21. False 22. Actress Sharon 23. Neighbor of Israel: abbr. 24. Big Rock Candy, for one: abbr. 25. Nerd 26. Soup-server's need 29. Red Muppet 30. "__ Femme Nikita" 31. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" setting: abbr. 34. "30 Rock" actress 35. Period Solution on page 2. By Jay Bobbin © Zap2it One created methods of escape. The other cre- ated Sherlock Holmes. And though it's not widely known, they formed a po- tent team. Michael Weston ("Six Feet Under") and Stephen Mangan ("Episodes") are "Houdini & Doyle" in a Fox mystery series premiering Monday, May 2. Inspired by the icons' true friendship, the show — executive-produced by David Shore, who also worked with Weston on one of Fox's longest-run- ning series, "House M.D." — traces how Harry Hou- dini and a pre-"Sir" Arthur Conan Doyle work with New Scotland Yard on early-20th-century cases of the paranormal, each man coming down on a different side of whether the supernatural is real. Rebecca Liddiard plays their police ally in deter- mining whether ghosts, vampires, etc. could be criminals. A Canadian-British co-production, "Houdini & Doyle" was picked up by Fox after the other coun- tries already had bought it. "It's a brave new world of TV-producing," Shore says. "Then we came here and sold it to Fox. I don't know if that had any effect on their predisposition. It was not a typical sale. There were other entities that were already inter- ested, but it was a very receptive room we went into, and they seemed very interested." Though the stars allow that Houdini and Doyle eventually had a fall- ing-out in real life, Man- gan reasons that during the period in which the show unfolds, "I feel like these guys needed each other. They were sort of these huge celebrities and isolated, sort of, in that. And they find each other as friends. But it's conten- tious. They don't agree on anything. And their whole approach to life is different. "(Houdini is) this brash American who just sort of busts into rooms and declares, 'Mission ac- complished,' and (Doyle) is this intellectual mind who meticulously goes about doing his business. They clash on a lot, but in the end, they need each other. They need each other's respect and they need each other's friendship, and they thrive in that challenge, which is constant ... two sort-of great minds going at figur- ing out a puzzle." Weston says he enjoys playing Houdini because "the way that he ap- proached (his escape-art- istry) actually was very self-empowering and let people feel like they could do that themselves. And I think as they watched this guy escape from this tank, it challenged everything that they thought was real. And it gave them the sense of liberation and real empowerment. To be able to connect with people in that way, to me, is what's so fascinating about this guy." Longtime Shore pro- duction associate David Hoselton co-created "Hou- dini & Doyle:" with David Titcher ("The Librarians"), and he likes following the title characters through their respective journeys that ultimately put each of them on the other's path. Hoselton describes Doyle as "the guy who created the ultimate ra- tionalist in the history of fiction and ultimately believed in fairies. This was a guy who left the Catholic Church because he didn't believe in Chris- tian dogma and then ulti- mately went to the church of spiritualism, and you can imagine what kind of journey he must have tak- en emotionally and phil- osophically to get there. That's something we want to address. "Houdini sort of had an almost opposite journey," Hoselton notes, "because in his early years, he was a psychic. He had a psy- chic show, and he would con people out of their money pretending to be a psychic. And he started to have qualms about that, so it's these two guys on the opposite end of the spectrum — but are they actually going to meet and are they going to actually end up crossing that spectrum. That's where we want to take them." Stephen Mangan stars in "Houdini & Doyle," premiering Monday on Fox. CoverStory Fox's 'Houdini & Doyle' makes icons a detective duo

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