ITV has ordered a drama about the life of Sherlock Holmes-author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a DNA-based crime thriller as its latest high-profile scripted series.
The shows were unveiled by ITV director of television, channels and online Peter Fincham at a Broadcaster Press Guild lunch earlier today.
Arthur and George is a three-part series written by Silent Witness and Waking the Dead scribe Ed Whitmore and based on the eponymous Julian Barnes novel. The show, which will star Martin Clunes, is to be produced by Doc Martin-producer Buffalo Pictures.
Separately Line Of Duty-producer World Productions has been commissioned to make Code of a Killer, a two-parter which tells the story of the first major UK case that was solved using DNA profiling.
Written by Michael Crompton, Code of a Killer will be directed by Broadchurch’s James Strong. David Threlfall stars as DCS David Barker, following his recent outing for ITV as Tommy Cooper in Not Like That, Like This.
Fincham pointed to the recent success of ITV dramas including the Tommy Cooper biopic, The Widower and Prey and said that the genre had become a lynchpin for the channel.
“We live in a golden generation of drama – and it is critical [to the channel],” he said. “Nobody saw that coming in the mid-part of last decade.”
He added that ITV had found particular success in scheduling its drama to air on Monday evenings.
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