'Lock, Stock' director will helm pilot

Director Guy Ritchie will make his first venture into American television with a crime-drama pilot at ABC.

The "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" helmer is set to direct "Suspects," a procedural that looks at all the possible perpetrators of a crime before revealing which person actually did it. Ritchie will also serve as an executive producer of the project, the showbiz trade papers report.

Ed Zuckerman, a veteran of "Law & Order" and "JAG," is writing the pilot and will also serve as an executive producer, along with Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly ("Kidnapped"). Sony Pictures TV is producing along with Timberman and Beverly's company, 25C.

Ritchie, who's married to music icon Madonna, has only one other TV project on his resume: an adaptation of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" that aired on the UK's Channel 4 in 2000. His other credits include a savagely reviewed 2002 remake of "Swept Away" (which starred his wife) and the 2005 film "Revolver."

Elsewhere on the pilot front, FOX has ordered a drama called "The Apostles" from writer-executive producer Chuck Pratt ("Melrose Place," "Desperate Housewives"). The show follows a group of cops whose professional and personal lives overlap.