The team behind Channel 4s acclaimed Shackletonand Longitude dramas is developing a multimillion pound two-part drama for the channel based on the life of Romantic poet Lord Byron, writes Penny Hughes
The team behind Channel 4s acclaimed Shackletonand Longitude dramas is developing a multimillion pound two-part drama for the channel based on the life of Romantic poet Lord Byron, writes Penny Hughes.

The films will focus on Byron's life in England, his notorious womanising and his relationships with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, Caroline Lamb - who famously dubbed him 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' - and his short-lived marriage to Annabella Milbanke.

Details of who will play the bisexual poet, who once boasted of having slept with 200 women on consecutive nights, have not yet been revealed. The series from Firstsight Films will go into production next year for transmission in 2004. It will be produced by Selwyn Roberts, executive produced by Francesca Barra and directed by Charles Sturridge, who is also writing the piece.

C4 International (C4I) will hold the rights to Byron and is in the process of securing additional co-financing.

Sturridge told Broadcast: 'This third project for C4 is part of our continuing collaboration with the channel to create original event television that will have a major impact on the broadcast market both here and overseas.'

Firstsight's last C4 project, Shackleton, which told the story of the Irish-born explorer and his Endurance expedition to Antartica, was C4's most expensive drama commission to date at £10m. Currently up for seven Emmy awards, it was co-financed by US cable channel A&E and C4I. A £6m award-winning adaptation of Dava Sobel's Longitudeaired in 1999.

Firstsight, formed by Sturridge, Barra and Roberts last year, also has a film adaptation of JM Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel Disgracein production with Longitudeexecutive producer Pippa Cross and Granada Films.

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