Murder Before Evensong mystery in paid development via The Lighthouse
Reverend Richard Coles’ novel Murder Before Evensong is in line to be adapted by US streamer Acorn TV.
Sky Studios-backed The Lighthouse optioned the murder mystery over the summer, with DCI Banks and Midsomer Murders writer Nick Hicks-Beach attached to adapt and Acorn quickly putting the project into paid development, Broadcast can reveal.
The show is being eyed as a returnable series, to sit alongside Acorn’s library of UK crime dramas including Agatha Christie’s The Witness for the Prosecution and Agatha Raisin and Queens of Mystery.
Coles’ novel, which became a Sunday Times bestseller following its June publication, is centred around Canon Daniel Clement who lives at a rectory alongside his opinionated and fearless widowed mother Audrey, and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda.
When Daniel announces a plan to install a lavatory in church, the parish is suddenly and unexpectedly divided: as lines are drawn, long-buried secrets come dangerously close to destroying the apparent calm of the village. The village is plunged into further shock when a parishioner is found dead at the back of the church, stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs.
Coles has carved out a career as a TV and radio personality, co-hosting BBC Radio 4 show Saturday Live and fronting Channel 4’s single doc about bereavement Good Grief? in August. He is also the only vicar in Britain to have had a number one hit single and appeared on Strictly Come Dancing.
He will serve as exec producer on the series alongside Hicks-Beach and Lighthouse co-founder Radford Neville.
Hicks-Beach is an experienced UK screenwriter with ITV crime stalwarts Lewis, DCI Banks, and Midsomer Murders under his belt. He also wrote Kudos’ Law & Order: UK, also for ITV, which was adapted from the US procedural heavyweight. He previously worked with Neville on DCI Banks.
Hick-Beach said: “Canon Clement and his mother are brilliantly realised, and Richard has created a world around them filled with rich, funny, human characters. I’m looking forward to exploring the underside of this quintessentially English setting, and the dark secrets that lie beneath.”
Murder Before Evensong is the latest addition to The Lighthouse’s slate, following the high-profile feature centred on Prince Andrew’s infamous Newsnight interview by Emily Maitlis, which is adapted from Newsnight producer Sam McAlister’s book Scoops. The single will be co-produced with Voltage TV.
The indie has recently completed two series of Peter Moffat’s acclaimed 61st Street for AMC.
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