Courtney B. Vance is heading back to the courtroom.
The “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “American Crime Story” alum has signed on to star in AMC’s upcoming legal thriller “61st Street,” the network announced on Thursday. He’ll play Franklin Roberts, a public defender in the twilight of his career serving the busiest courthouse in America who takes on the case of a lifetime in high school student Moses Johnson.
Set to run over two eight-episode seasons, “61st Street” centers on the case of a promising, black high school athlete who is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system when he is taken by the police as a supposed gang member and accused of the death of an officer during a drug bust gone wrong.
Peter Moffat, who wrote the BBC drama which inspired HBO’s “The Night Of,” is showrunner and executive producer. Michael B. Jordan and Alana Mayo of Outlier Society will also executive produce alongside Hilary Salmon of BBC Studios.
AMC has also announced four additional castings for the upcoming episodic anthology series “Soulmates.”
“Stranger Things” star Charlie Heaton, “Billions” star Malin Akerman, “Breaking Bad” alum Betsy Brandt and “Turn’s” JJ Feild have joined the cast of the six-part romantic series from “Black Mirror” alum Will Bridges and Brett Goldstein. They join previously announced cast members Sarah Snook, David Costabile and Sonya Cassidy among others.
“Soulmates” takes place fifteen years in the future, in a world where science has discovered a test that unequivocally tells you who your soulmate is. Each episode will feature a different cast and explore an entirely new story around discovering (or opting not to discover) the results of this new test and the impact of those results on a myriad of relationships.
Heaton and Akerman will star together in one of the episodes as members of a church which helps those whose soulmates have already passed on. Joe Anderson and Steven Mackintosh will also star in the same episode. Brandt will star in a later episode as Caitlin, a pushover who, after discovering her soulmate, starts to finally stand up for herself. Feild will play Nathan, who has a dark side and decides to share it when he meets his match Caitlin. Tom Goodman-Hill will co-star as her “dependable and dependably unromantic” boyfriend.