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Italy’s expanding Effe TV has inked a flurry of deals for high-end international dramas from players such as Entertainment One, BBC Studios, Endemol Shine and ITV Studios Global Entertainment, from which it picked up the BBC’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel “The War of the Worlds.”

All six acquired dramas are based on literary properties. The deals signal the ambition of Effe TV, a subsidiary of Italian publisher and bookseller Feltrinelli Group, “to bring top international products to Italian TV audiences,” said Riccardo Chiattelli, director of the company’s Laf channel. The channel airs on Sky Italia, the Italian unit of Comcast-owned paybox Sky.

Besides the BBC’s three-part “War of the Worlds,” which toplines Rafe Spall (“The Big Short”) and Eleanor Tomlinson (“Poldark”) and is being produced by ITV-owned Mammoth Screen, Laf has also picked up three seasons of crime drama “Cardinal,” an...

Louisa Mellor Jul 11, 2017

MyAnna Buring plays Di Helen Weeks in new four-part BBC crime drama In The Dark…

This review contains spoilers.

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Welcome to rainy Polesford. Come for the manhunt, stay for the undisclosed past trauma and complicated interpersonal relationships. Well, you certainly don’t holiday in murder-town for the weather.

Polesford, Derbyshire, has been flooded for weeks—a boon to the killer of a teenage girl; a curse to the police on their trail. Floodwater doesn’t only wreck skirting boards and livelihoods, it also plays havoc with forensic evidence, you see. That’s by-the-by for the Polesford police though, as they’ve already charged local man Stephen Bates.

Bates is innocent. At least, Detective Inspector Helen Weeks, back in her hometown to help out an old friend who happens to be married to him, thinks so. Weeks...

Louisa Mellor Nov 22, 2016

Tony Robinson’s revisionist Robin Hood children’s comedy series, out now on limited edition DVD, was a hoot…

In the mid-eighties, my teenage sister amused herself by teaching me to say “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. Not being a six-year-old well-versed in the rhetorical techniques of social emancipation, I didn’t get it. (I’d seen a flea circus; why mightn’t fish find a use for bikes?) My feminist awakening was obviously going to have to wait.

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But not long, it turned out. One copy of Babette Cole’s Princess Smartypants picked from the Year Three reading table later and I was feeling pretty woke.

BBC One has revealed a slate of new drama projects in the works or set to air in the UK later this Fall alongside new episodes of returning favorites like "Doctor Who," "Luther" and "Sherlock".

First up there's the epic event series "Troy – Fall Of A City," a multi-part drama which will be set against the backdrop of the war between Greece and Troy and focuses on the collapse of one family. This explores the origins of the saga and offers a Trojan point of view to events.

Next comes an adaptation of Jk Rowling's secretly-penned post-'Harry Potter' series of detective novels "The Cormoran Strike Mysteries". The contemporary series will focus on a war veteran turned private detective.

A new telemovie adaptation of E.R. Braithwaite's 1959 novel "To Sir With Love" is on the way which will be set in the East End following WW2 and follows...

Danny John-Jules has voiced his approval of a potential Maid Marian and Her Merry Men reunion.

Creator Sir Tony Robinson recently said that he might return to the classic BBC children's comedy "one day".

Red Dwarf actor John-Jules - who played merry man Barrington in the show - said he would definitely like to be involved if the project came to fruition.

"Man, I'd be there like greased cheetah s**t," he told Digital Spy. "I'd be there in a minute.

"To me, it's still probably the - or at least one of the - best children's shows ever made. And the fact it won the Prix Jeunesse award? I think the BBC hadn't won that for 10 years or something.

"The first series won a Royal Television Society award, a Bafta and a Prix Jeunesse. It was like, 'My god, this is the first series and we've won all these,...

Sir Tony Robinson has said that he is "proud" of his classic children's TV series Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, which marks its 25th anniversary this year.

The Blackadder actor created and starred in the BBC comedy, which ran for four series from 1989 to 1994.

"That was the first series that I had artistic control over," he told Digital Spy. "It was just me and my friend David Bell, who was the director, and we made all the decisions.

"You just wouldn't be able to make a series in that way for British television now, there would be too many commissioning editors leaning over your back."

He continued: "We were given a remarkably good budget and were totally allowed to see our vision through. I'm really glad that I was able to do that, and I'm still very proud of it."

When asked if there was any chance of a reunion,...

For those who prefer their British entertainment imports to be more Prime Suspect and less Downton Abbey, two new specials on Encore should be to their liking. Based on the popular mystery series by Mark Billingham, Thorne: Sleepyhead and Thorne: Scaredy Cat offer a pair of chilling whodunits where the blood from the crime scenes runs as thick as the Londoner accents. David Morrissey plays Tom Thorne, a mercurial detective whose unconventional methods get results but also often put him at odds with his colleagues. In Sleepyhead — which premieres tonight at 9 — Thorne tracks a killer of young women [...]...

It's good to be David Morrissey -- not only did the British thesp recently land the iconic role of The Governor in Season 3 of "The Walking Dead," he also stars as the titular detective in Encore's tense crime thriller miniseries, "Thorne," which debuts Tuesday, June 12, at 9 p.m. Et. Part Two airs the following night, Wed., June 13 at 9 p.m. Et.

The two-part miniseries is adapted from Mark Billingham’s bestselling novel, "Sleepyhead," and boasts an array of familiar TV faces, including "Grey's Anatomy" star Sandra Oh (with a plummy British accent, no less), Natascha McElhone of "Californication" and "The Wire" alum Aidan Gillen (most recently seen as the conniving Littlefinger on "Game of Thrones".)

According to Encore, Part One (titled "Sleepyhead") follows Thorne as he finds himself dragged back into the nightmares of his past while looking for a mysterious serial killer after a series of unusual attacks on young women.

It's good to be David Morrissey -- not only did the British thesp recently land the iconic role of The Governor in Season 3 of "The Walking Dead," he also stars as the titular detective in Encore's tense crime thriller miniseries, "Thorne," which debuts Tuesday, June 12, at 9 p.m. Et. Part Two airs the following night, Wed., June 13 at 9 p.m. Et.

The two-part miniseries is adapted from Mark Billingham's bestselling novel, "Sleepyhead," and boasts an array of familiar TV faces, including "Grey's Anatomy" star Sandra Oh (with a plummy British accent, no less), Natascha McElhone of "Californication" and "The Wire" alum Aidan Gillen (most recently seen as the conniving Littlefinger on "Game of Thrones".)

According to Encore, Part One (titled "Sleepyhead") follows Thorne as he finds himself dragged back into the nightmares of his past while looking for a mysterious serial killer after a series of unusual attacks on young women.

Fans of the villainous Governor from AMC’s The Walking Dead might wanna get their cable companies to hook them up with Encore if they don’t already have it. David Morrissey, who plays this “ultimate villain” on America’s most beloved zombie program, will soon star in a “two-part crime drama event” on that cable network, which is press-release speak for “a couple of TV movies.”

Of course, this is premium cable, which means we’re far from the silly made-for-tv days of Quinn Martin and his ilk. And though the Starz/Encore family is still a relative newcomer to original programming, we here at the Complex have little reason to believe they won’t deliver on quality. The first season of Starz’ Boss alone put any doubts on that score to rest. And though these films were originally produced for the BBC, it is good to know that...