John Simm and Nikki Amuka-Bird are leading a mystery thriller series titled I, Jack Wright for Federation Stories and UKTV.
Gemma Jones (Bridget Jones) will also feature.
The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe scribe Chris Lang is penning I, Jack Wright, which Federation is producing and distributing via its UK arm. A number of deals have already been struck for Scandi public broadcasters YLE, DK, NRK and SRK. Deadline understands a deal with the BBC is close.
Shooting will begin this month on the series that stars double-BAFTA nominee Simm as Gray Wright. When the provisions of Jack’s final will and testament are made known, his third wife Sally (Amuka-Bird) and sons are shocked to discover they have been largely cut out of his enormous fortune. As DCI Morgan and DC Jones delve further into the case, they realize Jack’s cause of death was in fact murder. Their sights turn to the Wright family, where the mother of all feuds is beginning. More cast will be announced soon.
The show’s writer, Lang, was BAFTA-nominated for penning ITV’s hit drama The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe. Past credits include TV’s Unforgotten, Innocent and Dark Heart.
Producer Federation Stories opened in the UK in 2021 and is overseen by former eOne execs Polly Williams and Arielle Gottlieb. They are working on the likes of an adaptation of Jackie Collins’ Lovers & Gamblers and are producing Miss Austen in association with PBS Masterpiece, Bonnie Productions and the BBC.
“Chris Lang is a master of the thriller genre, and it’s been a delight to work with him on bringing this wholly original, juicy and vibrant piece to the screen,” said Williams. “I, Jack Wright is a whip-smart, bingeable, funny and relatable treat.”
The UKTV original was commissioned by Hilary Rosen. The pre-investment deal was brokered by Tarmo Kivikallio, head of acquisitions and commissioning for YLE. The series has been ordered for Alibi by Emma Ayech, channel director. Executive producers are Williams, Gottlieb, Lang and Tom Vaughan. Helen Perry will be executive producer for UKTV. The series will be directed by Vaughan (Doctor Foster, The Flight Attendant) and produced by Nickie Sault (The Outlaws, The Virtues).
ITV has renewed hit crime drama Unforgotten for a sixth season.
The series, created and written by screenwriter Chris Lang and produced by Mainstreet Pictures will star Sinéad Keenan and Sanjeev Bhaskar.
The first season premiered in 2015, with Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar as cold case detectives. Sseason five, which introduced Sinéad Keenan after the shocking conclusion in the previous series, aired on ITV earlier this year.
Season 6 will be filmed in the UK and the US. Meanwhile, Unforgotten Season 5 broke all records for viewing figures on ITV X and is the highest rated show on ITV this year with 8.4 million tuning in to episode one.
Mainstreet Pictures is an ITV Studios label, founded in 2013 by joint MDs and exec producers Laura Mackie and Sally Haynes. BBC Studios distributes the show worldwide.
“Told over four gripping instalments, it’s a brilliantly told, well-acted piece of drama, which deftly navigates the high tension and ridiculousness of the true-life tale. Whether you know what happens in the end or not, this drama will have you questioning how they ever thought they could get away with it.
– Mandeep Kaur-Lakhan (BFI)
“Chris Lang, creator of the great cold-case series “Unforgotten,” switched things up in this fact-based mini-series for the British network ITV: Eddie Marsan plays a man who fakes his own death for insurance purposes, hoping his case will go cold. Marsan is good as the scammer, but the undersung British actress Monica Dolan is great as his wife, who has to play the grieving widow to the police, the insurance company and their own sons while still dealing with her narcissistic husband, who moves into the empty flat next door.”
The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe has attracted rave reviews & has already become one of the top ten rated dramas of the last three years, with a whopping 9m viewers so far.
Praise for The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe
‘Chris Lang’s delicious rendition of this true life caper….Eddie Marsan and Monica Dolan were both superb, the script was clever, always with one eye on the ludicrousness of the situation.’ The Times
‘A delight….engrossing, thought-provoking and with a wicked dose of black humour. Chris Lang’s hilariously deadpan script….the marvellous Eddie Marsan is superb…un-missable drama.’ The Mail
‘Dolan and Marsan are both superb….laugh out loud.’ The Observer
‘Monica Dolan gave an acting masterclass… seriously compelling viewing. A very British crime story, superbly told.’ The Daily Telegraph
‘Chris Lang’s finely pitched retelling of the story. Performance of the week.’
The Daily Mirror
‘(Lang’s)… droll and disobliging reimagining of the couple will remain unforgettable.’ The Guardian
‘A treat, Eddie Marsan is on tremendous form…strikes just the right tragic-comic note.’ Daily Express
‘A brilliantly entertaining drama, full of comic moments in a fleet footed script.’ Mail on Sunday
‘ITV has really pulled off a winner, quirky, off beat, hard hitting and truly memorable…brilliant.’ Radio Times
‘A thoroughly captivating watch…stellar performances…a stroke of genius.’ Metro
‘The most glorious series of the year so far. I could not stop watching. It was delicious. It was comic yet tragic. It made you laugh, made you cry. It was unavoidably gripping.’ Mail Online
‘Dolan was magnificent.’ The i
‘A brilliantly acted dramatisation…Marson and Dolan are excellent.’ The People
April sees the screening of of The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, Chris Lang’s four-part drama tells the true story of Hartlepool couple John (Eddie Marsan) and Anne Darwin (Monica Dolan), who faked John’s death during a supposed canoe accident in 2002 before John was discovered to be alive, leading to their arrest and prison sentencing in 2008.
The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe explores John Darwin’s big scam and how it was carry out. It also show how Anne (played by Monica Dolan) became complicit in her husband’s bizarre deception to avoid bankruptcy, as she played the grieving widow and tried to convince the world, their friends, the police and insurance companies that John had gone missing while canoeing off the North East coast. Even their sons, Mark and Anthony, were none the wiser for five years, as their father secretly lived hidden in a bedsit next door to the home he shared with Anne.
The four-part drama, written by acclaimed screenwriter Chris Lang tells the true story of how Anne Darwin’s husband, a prison officer, came up with the hare-brained scheme to defraud insurance companies, unbeknownst to their two sons.The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, will be produced by Story Films, the company founded by three times BAFTA-winning director, David Nath (The Murder Detectives, My Name is Lizzie) and fellow award-winning director Peter Beard. Susie Liggat (Giri/Haji) also executive produces with Alison Sterling (The Windermere Children) producing.
The screenwriter of Unforgotten and Innocent, Chris Lang (The Hookup Plan, Dark Heart, A Mother’s Son), who is joined by BAFTA-winning director, Richard Laxton, (Honour, Mrs Wilson, Mum). The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe is based upon the unpublished manuscript written by journalist David Leigh. David was the first journalist to find and interview Anne in Panama.
The drama was commissioned for ITV by Head of Drama Polly Hill and produced in association with All3Media International.
Commented Polly Hill:
“This is an extraordinary story of deception within a very ordinary family. Chris has written brilliant scripts about the heart breaking cost of this elaborate lie. I am so pleased to be working with Richard Laxton again and with Dave Nath and Story Films first drama for ITV.”
The drama will focus on how Anne Darwin became complicit in her husband’s deception as she needed to convince the world, their family and friends, the police and insurance companies that he had gone missing in 2002 whilst canoeing off the coast of Seaton Carew in Cleveland where the couple owned two large houses with panoramic views of the sea.
Mortgaged to the hilt, Darwin had also run up debts of 64K on 13 credit cards and his excessive spending had seen their finances spiral out of control. Anne would have preferred her husband go bankrupt, but she eventually went along with his absurd scheme to fake his own death.
Unforgotten Season 4 was selected as among the best TV shows of 2021 as chosen by the Guardian, The Timnes, Empire, Paste, and Dead Good:
Guardian
“Over the years, Unforgotten has turned into one of the finest shows on British television. By the time it reached its fourth series, which attracted more viewers than ever before – thanks to its growing reputation as a sure bet – it was as lean as an elite athlete.”
Unforgotten, ITV
Chris Lang’s dark but consistently high-quality series (spoiler alert) saved its biggest, most shocking gut punch until last. Nicola Walker as DCI Cassie Stewart was unexpectedly killed off, leaving the audience reeling.
In the compelling modern crime series Unforgotten, DCI Cassie Stuart (an always-excellent and recently ubiquitous Nicola Walker) and DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) doggedly pursue cold case murders and disappearances. Viewers get to see both sides throughout each season’s case: the detective work and the personal lives of those connected to it—one of whom is ultimately the perpetrator. One of the interesting things about Unforgotten’s perspective is that it largely deals with people who are middle aged or even elderly. Though their lives have seemingly moved on from these past crimes (and current partners or children may have no idea about it), scratch the surface and you’ll find the pain and angst over these tragedies still simmering underneath. Unforgotten is less of a crime thriller and more a cerebral whodunnit, investigating the emotional lives of those defined by these old wounds. It can be very quiet, but once it has its hooks in you, you won’t be able to stop bingeing each of its three, six-episode seasons (with another on the way). —Allison Keene
Empire Magazine
The jewel in the crown of ITV drama, Chris Lang’s Unforgotten is also one of the low-key best series on television. The anti-Line Of Duty, it’s a series not reliant on gunplay or Reg-15 notices for high drama, relying instead on the meticulous, methodical unravelling of a single cold case, played out with forensic attention to detail. Nicola Walker’s DCI Cassie Stuart and Sanjeev Bhaskar’s DI Sunny Khan walked into a tangled web of lies and betrayal from former and serving police officers in this fourth (but not final!) series. Having returned from a leave of absence after the events of Series 3 and dealing with her father’s advancing dementia, Cassie’s own demons threatened to pull her down with every episode, before it all culminated in an emotional punch that still has us reeling. Beautifully written (Walker’s near-to-tears victim monologues having long been series high-points) and with a pair of thunderous performances from the series leads, this was an unforgettable instalment of an unmissable show
“Chris Lang’s popular ITV crimer returned this year for a fourth outing. Sanjeev Bhaskar and Nicola Walker’s double act saw them investigating the cold case of a headless corpse that had them snooping around one of their own, amongst others. As good as ever.”
Monica Dolan and Eddie Marsan take the roles of Anne and John Darwin in ITV’s The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, written by acclaimed screenwriter Chris Lang and produced by award winning producers, Story Films
Renowned actors, Monica Dolan and Eddie Marsan, will play Anne and John Darwin in the extraordinary and compelling ITV drama, The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe.
The real life story of how John Darwin, played by BIFA nominee Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan, Sherlock Holmes, Happy Go Lucky) faked his own death to claim life insurance and avoid bankruptcy is written by acclaimed screenwriter Chris Lang.
Commented Chris Lang:
“I am beyond delighted to be working with two of the finest actors of their generation. I have admired them both from afar for many years (not in a creepy way though) and cannot wait to see them bring Anne and John Darwin to life.”
The drama will focus on how Anne Darwin, played by BAFTA-winner Monica Dolan (Appropriate Adult, W1A, A Very English Scandal), became complicit in her husband’s deception as she started to convince the world, their family and friends, the police and insurance companies, that he had gone missing in 2002 whilst canoeing off the coast of Seaton Carew in Cleveland, where the couple owned two large houses with panoramic views of the sea.
The deception was to take its toll on Anne who lied to their sons, Mark and Anthony, for five years whilst her husband, in the early days of the fraud, secretly lived in a bedsit next door to the home he shared with Anne.
Devastated by the loss of their father, neither son had an inkling their parents were capable of such treachery. Anne and John Darwin eventually decided to leave Seaton Carew and move to Panama City to start a new life together before their secret was exposed by the discovery of an infamous photo of them posing in a Panama real estate office in July 2006.
At her trial Anne Darwin pleaded not guilty, arguing that she had been coerced into the plot by her husband, but the jury didn’t believe her. She and her husband were both jailed for more than 6 years.
The four-part drama commences filming in the North East this month and is produced by Story Films, the company founded by three times BAFTA-winner David Nath (The Murder Detectives, My Name is Lizzie) and fellow award-winning director Peter Beard. Susie Liggat (Giri/Haji) also executive produces, with Alison Sterling (The Windermere Children) producing.
They will be joined by the celebrated screenwriter of Unforgotten and Innocent Chris Lang (The Hookup Plan, Dark Heart, A Mother’s Son) who also executive produces the four part series. BAFTA winning director, Richard Laxton, (Honour, Mrs Wilson, Mum) directs each of the four episodes.
The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe is based upon the unpublished manuscript written by journalist David Leigh who was the first journalist to track down Anne as she was on the verge of setting up a new life in Panama.
Monica Dolan and Eddie Marsan will be joined in the cast by Mark Stanley (White House Farm) and Karl Pilkington (Sick of It, Derek).
Commented Eddie Marsan:
“I’m so thrilled to be working with Chris Lang, one of our greatest writers and to get the chance to work with Monica Dolan. The story of how and why John Darwin faked his own death to defraud insurance companies is fascinating, and if it weren’t fact, you’d think it unbelievable. I can’t pretend to understand what was going on in his head when he made those choices, but I’m going to do my absolute best to portray him, and I can’t wait to get started.”
Commented Monica Dolan:
“The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe tells the story of surely the most outrageous fraud of modern times – and my favourite kind of drama is when the outrageous comes from the prosaic. As breath-taking as their managing to pull this deception off in the first place, is how spectacularly the couple wrecked it for themselves as soon as they had got away with it.”
London based independent production company, Story Films, was created by David Nath and Peter Beard with the aim of producing creative, bold and thought-provoking programmes.
The drama has been commissioned for ITV by Head of Drama Polly Hill and will be produced in association with All3Media International.
All3Media International represents the show internationally.
Eddie Marsan is represented by Markham, Froggatt & Irwin and UTA. Monica Dolan is represented by Will Hollinshead at Independent Talent.
“ITV would like to thank Nicola Walker for playing the brilliant role of Cassie Stuart in four series of Unforgotten which has become one of the best loved and most critically acclaimed police dramas on TV. Nicola and writer Chris Lang decided that Cassie’s story would come to an end last night, but that Unforgotten would continue, in series 5, with a new case, and a new ‘Partner in Crime’ for DI Sunny Khan.
This fourth series has had a record breaking season posting its highest viewing figures. For episodes 1-5 the series has averaged 7.5 million viewers based on seven day consolidated data, which is up by 1.6m viewers and 26% on the last series. The audience for the launch episode stands at 9.5m viewers after 28 days, across all platforms and repeats, up from the overnight audience by a massive 4.4million viewers.”
When times are tough, we turn to detective fiction. Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story was published during the long depression of 1873-96. Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled ’tec sprang from the 1930s slump. In 2020, as the pandemic ravaged us all, detective fiction offered resolution and even a sense of justice being done.
As 2021 gets under way, television is proving the point. Death in Paradise, McDonald & Dodds and the mighty Unforgotten are hauling in ratings and critical plaudits, all offering detectives who are, for want of a better word, ordinary. Wildly different though they are, these are not shows in which the divorced alcoholic cop returns to a lonely TV dinner and stares blankly into space for hours on end. These are shows where comprehensibly irascible people track down killers and problems are solved. They are stories of a society that works.
“I think these shows have an innate sense of decency and optimism that underpins them all,” Unforgotten’s creator Chris Lang explains. “It’s compassion and a belief that people are essentially good. If I had to define the essential DNA of Unforgotten, it’s that good people can do bad things.”
For those who haven’t tried it, Unforgotten is a cold case show in which Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar are detectives who solve decades-old crimes, bringing justice to those long dead and punishing those who thought they’d escaped. Its guiding principle — and that of the real-life police units that inspired it — is remarkable: that a wrong committed is still wrong, even if it took place 30 years earlier. Families deserve comfort, killers deserve justice.
Lang, 59, whose long career writing TV drama began on The Bill after a brief career as an actor, was inspired by the 2012 arrest of the TV presenter Stuart Hall for child sex offences.
“I remember seeing him with his lawyer outside Preston crown court, suddenly changing his plea to guilty, and I was thinking about the adjustments taking place that very second with his wife, his son and daughter, his colleagues and of course the British public and our relationship with him,” he says. “That’s why in Unforgotten we see the antagonists at the outset, living normal lives, but having done something extraordinary underneath it.”
In the past eight years, he argues, we’ve seen polarisation in all aspects of life, whereas reality is nuanced, complicated and messy. His show, he says, is about how the more certain we become, the more dangerous things get. In season four, for instance — spoiler alert if you haven’t watched the first two episodes — Lang’s cops’ focus turns inwards after the decapitated corpse of a Millwall fan is discovered in a freezer after a house clearance. The suspects were police officers at the time, now living complicated but largely successful lives. Walker’s character, Cassie, is on their trail, although, forced back to work to retain her generous police pension, ambivalent about her career.
“I’m constantly confused by my conflicted relationship with the police,” Lang admits. “I’ve had many police officers as advisers, and I’ve always found them extremely delightful. I remember reading about the London Bridge attacks where an off-duty copper managed to fend off a terrorist and was seriously wounded. I was very moved by the privilege of having people like that looking out for us. Yet we also know the negative side of the police: the endemic racism, an inability to admit their mistakes, corruption, all sorts of problems. It’s both a love letter and a j’accuse to the police.”
This new uncertainty, I say, is curious in a writer whose deft plotting has made him one of the UK’s most successful TV exports. While we are gorging on Scandi noir or Call My Agent!, European viewers can’t get enough of Lang’s shows — his work is constantly remade; his 2012 drama A Mother’s Son is being filmed in Finland, the fourth country to adapt it.
“I like writing stories that provoke fundamental debate that transcends cultures,” he says. “The litmus test is: does it make my friends disagree? In A Mother’s Son, the question is: if you suspected your son had killed someone, would you hand them over to the police? I was going to a party with about 20 friends, threw the question out there and they all started arguing. I thought, ‘OK, yes, that’s a good pitch.’”
Unforgotten is Lang’s most successful show to date, although for many years he may have looked like the slowest starter of a surprisingly successful group. At school in Reigate he sat next to Keir Starmer in German O-level lessons and played drums in a band with Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook and Paul “Beautiful South” Heaton. He left Rada for rep at the Nottingham Playhouse, where he started writing sketches with a fellow trainee called Hugh Grant.
Chris Lang’s career highlights include ‘dreadful’ writing with Hugh Grant, right
Chris Lang’s career highlights include ‘dreadful’ writing with Hugh Grant, right
SHEILA BURNETT/ARENAPAL
“The first day I met him, I was struck by how unbelievably funny he was,” he recalls. “We had the odd line in Coriolanus, but we mainly brought furniture on. By chance we ended up writing a short sketch and putting a little show together for Nottingham Playhouse. It was about Robin Hood giving an interview; Hugh came on dressed as Robin in a very fetching Lincoln green doublet and hose, and the zinger line was, ‘When did you first realise you were merry?’” He permits himself a quiet grin. “Still gets a laugh. We did sketches for a few years, a bit Not the Nine O’Clock News-y. And we did a TV show that was dreadful . . . Then — for some reason — he decided being a global movie star was a better career move. But the Hugh Grant you see in Paddington, that’s his natural home.”
Lang wrote sketches for Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, got fired by Jonathan Ross and joined The Bill’s writing team “because they were looking for writers, and they might give me a job”. He gradually built his career, but was knocked off course by his first wife’s suicide 15 years ago.
“Suicide is such a brutal, brutal grief and loss to suffer.” He pauses. You don’t have to respond, I say. He shakes his head. “I don’t think I would have been as optimistic as I am now if it hadn’t happened, because there is nothing more guaranteed to allow you to see the good in humanity than when you suffer deep pain and tragedy yourself. I was just enveloped by love, care, compassion, as were my children. Coming out of this just extraordinarily awful thing, there was all this beauty and love. I don’t think I’d have had the faith in society that allowed me to write Unforgotten before.”
With Unforgotten, he feels he has fused all he has learnt about work and life, but, he stresses, that doesn’t give him answers. “I’m still trying to understand human nature and its complexity, increasingly so in a binary world. Unforgotten is political with a small ‘p’, and I would like to explore that more. As I’ve got older, I’ve become more politically aware. I’d like to articulate some of the wrong turns I think our country has taken.”
Who needs maverick detectives, with their vintage cars, flowing coats and unorthodox methods? The best sleuth on our screens right now is the decent, dedicated and quietly diligent DCI Cassie Stuart, who returns tomorrow in ITV crime drama Unforgotten.
Brilliantly played by Nicola Walker, Cassie might not be a mercurial rule-breaker with a drink problem (like Robbie Coltrane in Cracker), a torrid love-life (like Tom Burke in Strike) or a penchant for violence (like Idris Elba in Luther) but she gets the job done. She’s methodical, by-the-book and utterly believable as she brings killers to justice. She’s precisely the sort of reassuringly British, level-headed model of professionalism we need right now. Her defiance of genre tropes is, in itself, quietly subversive.
Indeed, Cassie was created as a conscious antidote to TV’s obsession with tortured heroes on the trail of ghoulish serial killers. “I’d written a lot of police procedurals,” explains Unforgotten creator Chris Lang, who started out writing for The Bill. “There was always pressure from broadcasters to find something unique and different about each copper. They wanted a quirk or eccentricity – “Give her a Bentley!’ – which I found slightly superficial. So I tried to strip all that away and see if I could get away with it.”
Not for Cassie the signature vehicle or garments of The Bridge’s Saga Norén (Sofia Helin), with her classic Porsche and military greatcoat. Even dear old Vera Stanhope (Brenda Blethyn) has her floppy hat and Land Rover. No, the Cassie character dresses down and drives an anonymous saloon car. That’s because she was inspired not by her fictional forebears but by her real-world equivalents.
Lang’s experience of police officers, who he’d used as advisers and research tools throughout his career, was a world away from the flawed geniuses of clichéd crime fiction. “They’re just ordinary people doing an extraordinary job,” he says. “Detectives tend to be just like you and I. Their job is the most unusual thing about them.”
Lang wrote the part with Walker in mind, having worked with her twice before. “The seeds were sown when she played a copper in [his 2012 miniseries] A Mother’s Son,” he recalls. “One scene in a mortuary blew me away. A young girl had been killed and Nicola was this extraordinary blend of tender and steely.”
That mix is what informs Walker’s portrayal of Cassie. As a widow and mother of two layabout student sons, she displays the patience of a saint at home – albeit one prone to the odd burst of sweary sarcasm. At work, though, she’s a woman on a mission.
There’s a scene in Monday’s episode when she bites her lip as her cantankerous father Martin (Peter Egan), who has early onset dementia, callously belittles her. Walker’s subtle reaction is a masterclass in simmering restraint. This contrasts starkly with a spiky argument with her ineffectual boss, then warm familiarity with her best friend DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar). It’s a nuanced, emotionally intelligent performance.
Each six-part series begins with the discovery of a long-hidden body. The duo doggedly uncover what happened, narrowing down their investigation to a seemingly unconnected guest cast of suspects. (The first three series are available on streaming services.)
Now comes the fourth chapter, which opens with the discovery of a headless, handless, deep-frozen corpse in a London scrapyard. Cassie and Sunny set about identifying him and unravelling his tragic story.