“The Grapes of Wrath,” the Tony Award-winning...

“The Grapes of Wrath,” the Tony Award-winning production of John Steinbeck’s landmark novel about Okies migrating to California, is being taped for PBS’ “American Playhouse.” Repeating their Broadway roles are Gary Sinise, Terry Kinney and Lois Smith. “Grapes” will air next year.

Production has begun on a two-hour “Columbo” mystery for ABC. In this go-around, the raincoat-clad Columbo (new Emmy winner Peter Falk) matches wits with a Geraldo Rivera-type talk show host (George Hamilton) who murders his rival (Peter Haskell) to protect his career from a blackmail scheme. The movie, entitled “Smokescreen,” will air later this season.

Peter Strauss and Robert Urich team up for CBS’ “83 Hours to Dawn,” airing Nov. 11. The drama, based on a true story, is about a young woman who was kidnapped and buried alive by a sociopath. Samantha Mathis, who played Christian Slater’s love interest in “Pump Up the Volume,” co-stars.

Oscar-winning Austrian actor Maximilian Schell has joined “Wiseguy” for the CBS drama’s first arc, a six-hour story filming on location in Miami. Schell, who received the best actor Oscar for 1961’s “Judgment at Nuremberg,” plays a Cuban-American crime kingpin who has sold out his own people for personal gain. “Wiseguy” is set to return to the CBS lineup later this season.

NBC Sports announcer Ahmad Rashad will be co-host of NBC’s new weekly Saturday morning show “NBA Inside Stuff,” premiering Oct. 27. The half-hour series will feature top players in the National Basketball Assn. The show will run 36 weeks, through next July.

“L.A. Law” will be introducing a new attorney this season. British actress Amanda Donohoe, the sexy vampire in Ken Russell’s 1988 tongue-in-cheek horror film, “Lair of the White Worm,” will join the cast in the fourth episode of the Emmy Award-winning series. She’ll play an ace lawyer who initially outwits the attorneys at McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney, Kuzak and Becker. Another new cast member will be added at a later date.