New TV drama commission for Birkbeck lecturer
Daragh Carville, whose past screen hits include Being Human, celebrates ITV commission for police drama.
Birkbeck creative writing lecturer Daragh Carville has had a new six-part drama series commissioned by ITV.
The Bay is set in the Lancashire coastal town of Morecambe and will be made by the production company behind TV hits such as Trauma and Bancroft, Tall Story Pictures.
Daragh’s previous work for TV has included BBC student drama 6 Degrees, Sky One’s The Smoke and the supernatural BBC3 series Being Human – which starred Russell Tovey and Aidan Turner. He also wrote the films Cherrybomb, featuring Rupert Grint and James Nesbitt, and Middletown as well as having a rich history of theatrical and radio productions.
The series focuses on Detective Sergeant Lisa Armstrong, a family liaison officer assigned to support a family during a missing person investigation. As the story unfolds, she discovers she has a personal connection with the frightened family which could compromise both her and the investigation as the plot gets ever more complex.
Daragh, from the Department of English and Humanities, said: “I'm absolutely thrilled to be bringing The Bay to life at ITV. This project has been a labour of love, since I started work on it with my co-creator Richard Clark. Love not least for an often neglected corner of England, a place we both know well, Morecambe Bay. It's a place of great beauty as well as hardship. A place full of brilliant, resilient people. The Bay is dedicated to them.”
Casting for the series, which will begin filming around Morecambe in the summer, has yet to be announced.
ITV’s head of drama Polly Hill said: “It’s always a challenge to find a fresh take on crime, but Daragh Carville has written a very real crime story about family and community, which is distinctive, compelling and beautifully crafted.”
Executive producer for the series, Catherine Oldfield, said: “Daragh has written a fantastic contemporary crime story with a flawed but entirely relatable heroine at its heart. We are delighted to be bringing Daragh’s writing to the screen for ITV.”