News

Today, BritBox announced its 2025 slate of premieres and returning series. The BritBox 2025 lineup includes Original commissions, celebrated co-productions, and highly anticipated acquisitions.

With new series from top UK writers such as Sally Wainwright (Riot Women), Sarah Williams (Outrageous), Rachel Bennette (Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero), Catherine Moulton (Code of Silence), Kelly Jones (A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story), Anna Symon (Joan), and Cat Jones (The Jetty), BritBox’s slate highlights the depth and power of British storytelling.

A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story

In 2025, BritBox will bring beloved characters back to the screen with new seasons of its iconic favorites such as Blue Lights, Vera, Father Brown, Death in Paradise, Beyond Paradise, Silent Witness and Sister Boniface Mysteries plus reimagined looks at treasured literary characters in Lynley and Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero.

From detectives, to Psni recruits, to crime-solving priests and nuns, BritBox audiences will have the...

Hit U.K. crime drama “The Jetty” is finally making its way across the pond. As the result of some unique dealmaking by BBC Studios, “The Jetty” will be shared by two platforms — BritBox and Hulu — as it launches in the U.S. on Dec. 13.

BBC Studios holds global distribution rights on ‘The Jetty,” which premiered on BBC One and streamed on BBC iPlayer in July. The four episode series, from showrunner Cat Jones, stars Jenna Coleman as Detective Ember Manning, whose investigation into an abused teenager sets her onto a cold case relating to another missing teen, Amy Knightly, who disappeared some decades earlier. It’s a case Ember soon realizes she has an intimate connection to.

“When you’re looking at a show that was the number one drama on the BBC in the UK this year, ‘The Jetty,’ to then see it on BritBox is not a surprise,...

Warning: contains finale spoilers for “The Jetty”.

The pulp-fiction twist that threatens to derail new BBC crime drama “The Jetty” in its final episode would have been avoided in an earlier version of the story, star Jenna Coleman has confirmed.

Speaking to Variety, Coleman discussed how the conclusion of the four-parter evolved from her early attachment to the project, when it was just one episode and a treatment (a detailed overview of the show).

In the finale, Coleman’s character DC Ember Manning learns that the killer of 15-year-old schoolgirl Amy Knightly (Bo Bragason) has been right under her nose throughout the reopened investigation. No, it wasn’t her dead husband, or her spirit medium mother, or boss with the menacing voice played by Ralph Inneson, it was…her. She did it. Specifically, Ember accidentally knocked Amy down while illegally drug-driving aged 17, and the Rohypnol she’d taken caused her...

Spoiler Alert: This story contains major spoilers for “The Jetty,” now streaming on iPlayer in the U.K.

In new BBC drama “The Jetty” Jenna Coleman plays Detective Ember Manning, whose investigation into an abused teenager sets her onto a cold case relating to another missing teen, Amy Knightly, who disappeared some decades earlier. It’s a case Ember soon realizes she has an intimate connection to.

Over four nail-biting episodes showrunner Cat Jones takes viewers on a bumpy ride through Ember’s past and present as an investigative podcaster and even Ember’s own family become wrapped up in the case. (The series is produced by BBC Studios-owned Firebird Pictures).

Coleman sat down with Variety after the show dropped to speak about Ember’s confession, Amy’s own culpability and whether we might ever see Detective Manning return to solve another mystery.

Let’s talk about that shocking ending,...

Warning: contains spoilers for The Jetty episode one.

Musician Tracey Thorn’s poignant, funny 2019 memoir Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia contains a simple line that speaks volumes. Remembering the mid-1970s discos she went to aged 13, Thorn describes dancing with and kissing older boys, and the code she used for the ones that gave her “wandering hands trouble”. It’s a fun, nostalgic chapter that’s written with a light touch and includes some of her old diary entries. One boy wore a tie and had his own car, wrote 13-year-old-her; another was a police officer. Adult-Thorn does that queasy maths most women eventually do when revisiting adolescent sexual experiences. She wonders if she even looked as old as 13 in those days, and breezily delivers the killer verdict: “I didn’t know I was still a child, and the boys didn’t care either way.”

New BBC crime series...

“The Jetty” is a new Brit-produced live-action, crime thriller TV series, created by Cat Jones and directed by Marialy Rivas, starring Jenna Coleman as ‘Detective Ember Manning’, airing July 15, 2024 on BBC iPlayer and BBC One:

“…when a fire tears through a property in a scenic Lancashire lake town, ‘Detective Ember Manning’ (Coleman) must work out how it connects to a podcast journalist investigating a missing persons cold case and an illicit relationship between a man in his twenties and two teen girls.

“But as Ember gets close to the truth, it threatens to destroy her life – forcing her to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about her past, present and the town she’s always called home…”

Cast also includes Tom Glynn-Carney, Ruby Stokes, Archie Renaux Laura Marcus, Bo Bragason , Amelia Bullmore, Matthew McNulty, Ralph Ineson, David Ajala, Nina Barker-Francis, Miya Ocego, Elliot Cowan, Shannon Watson, Arthur Hughes, Dominic Coleman and Ruaridh Mollica.

Jenna Coleman is Detective Ember Manning in the BBC’s newly released trailer for The Jetty.

The series, launching on BBC iPlayer and BBC One on July 15, sees the Doctor Who alum investigating a case that threatens to unravel threads of her past. After a fire tears through a property in a lakeside Lancashire town in England, Manning must work out how it connects to a podcast journalist investigating a missing persons cold case and an illicit relationship between a man in his twenties and two underage girls.

Created and written by Cat Jones and produced by Firebird Pictures for the BBC, the four-part mystery examines sexual morality, age of consent, grooming, identity and memory.

Alongside Coleman stars Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone, The Greatest Beer Run) as Ember’s sidekick Hitch, with Laura Marcus (Bad Education, The Great Escaper), Bo Bragason (The Radleys, Three Girls), Amelia Bullmore (Gentleman Jack,...

BBC recently released new first-look images for Jenna Coleman‘s four-part thriller series The Jetty. Written and created by Cat Jones, the upcoming series will attempt to examine sexual morality, age of consent, grooming, identity, and memory. While the series will be a crime thriller, it is also described as a coming-of-age story.

The Jetty follows the story of Detective Ember Manning as she tries to investigate an arson case in her scenic lake town. She soon discovers a connection between the case and a podcast journalist investigating a missing persons case, and she also comes across an illicit ‘love’ triangle between an adult man and two underage girls. As Embers digs deeper into the case, she discovers some deeply hidden secrets that could destroy her life and how she perceives her hometown.

The Jetty stars Coleman, Ralph Ineson, David Ajala, Nina Barker-Francis, Miya Ocego, Elliot Cowan, Shannon Watson, Arthur Hughes,...

Jenna Coleman had “avoided” playing a detective – until she was approached about playing rookie cop Ember Manning in a scenic lake town in Lancashire in North West England in BBC Studios’ The Jetty from creator and writer Cat Jones and Firebird Pictures.

“What appealed to me was that the character of Ember was completely there on page one,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Also, it’s a crime thriller, but it’s wrapped up in such a human, emotive, and poetic piece. It is crafted so it has all of the great things of a crime thriller – turning the page and having all of the beats. But it’s also such a feminine piece that really explores relationships and provokes. It has all sorts of blurred boundaries and is asking a lot of uncomfortable questions without fully answering them.”

The four-part series, a Firebird Pictures production for the BBC, is...

“Shadow and Bone” star Archie Renaux and “Lockwood & Co’s” Ruby Stokes are set to join Jenna Coleman in upcoming BBC thriller “The Jetty.”

In the four-part series, from writer Cat Jones and producers Firebird Pictures (a BBC Studios label), Coleman plays Ember Manning, a rookie detective who finds herself at the center of an unusual case when a vacation home in a peaceful lake-side town in Lancashire goes up in flames. At the same time, there’s a journalist investigating a cold missing person case for a podcast while a man in his twenties is carrying out an illicit relationship between not just one but two underage girls.

As Manning investigates the fire, she finds the threads are connected but the truth has the power to destroy her life, “forcing her to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about her past, present and the town she’s always called home,...

“Hot Flush,” the new show from BAFTA-winning “Happy Valley” creator Sally Wainwright, is one of several series greenlit by the BBC.

A six-part drama from ”Doctor Foster” producers Drama Republic, “Hot Flush” centers on the lives of five women of a certain age who come together to create a makeshift, butt-of-the-joke punk-rock band in order to enter a talent contest, but when they rehearse together they suddenly discover that they have a lot more to say than they ever imagined, and this is the way to say it.

The BBC has commissioned also “Virdee,” a six-part detective series based on A.A. Dhand’s bestselling crime novels and starring Sacha Dhawan (“Doctor Who”), from newly formed production company Magical Society, headed up by Paul Trijbits (“Jane Eyre”).

The Bradford-set series introduces Detective Harry Virdee (Dhawan), a Bradford cop disowned by his Sikh family for marrying Saima, who is Muslim. Virdee struggles with the abandonment,...

The BBC has greenlit its latest drama series from Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright along with projects created by and starring the likes of Jenna Coleman, Nicôle Lecky and Sacha Dhawan.

Set in Happy Valley home Hebden Bridge, Wainwright’s Hot Flush centers on the lives of five women of a certain age who come together to create a makeshift, butt-of-the-joke punk-rock band in order to enter a talent contest. When they rehearse together, they suddenly discover that they have a lot more to say than they ever imagined, and they have found the way to say it.

Wainwright had previously cryptically teased Hot Flush when she told the BBC’s Today program she had been learning the drums in preparation for her next project, and she described it as a “celebration of women of a certain age and all the life-stuff they suddenly find themselves negotiating/dealing with.”

Doctor...

Exclusive: Comcast-owned Sky is working on its first series with Shameless creator Paul Abbott — a crime drama titled Wolfe, which will feature Guerrilla and Rogue One actor Babou Ceesay as a brilliant but flawed forensic pathologist.

The six-part AbbottVision series, which will be officially announced on Monday as part of a slate of Sky originals, is written by a team led by Abbott and will co-star Amanda Abbington (Sherlock), Natalia Tena (Harry Potter), Naomi Yang (Poisonings), Adam Long (Vera), and Shaniqua Okwok (Small Axe).

Ceesay leads the crime-of-the-week series as Professor Wolfe Kinteh, the finest crime scene investigator in the north of England. He is a mercurial genius when it comes to piecing together evidence, but is prone to being a liability and has been kicked out of his family home by his wife, Val (Tena).

Wolfe is propped up by a team that includes child prodigy Maggy (Yang...

Cbbc's online and interactive drama Dixi is set to return for a 3rd series. Claudia Jessie, April Hughes, Kerry Boyne and Jordan Loughran (hot from the set of Disney’s live action series Evermoor) are all returning, along with two new cast members:

Chloe May Cuthill (represented by Debbie Allen Associates), has previously appeared in Eastenders and The Midnight Beast and has recently filmed the feature Reason To Leave. She will play Zoe in the new series.

And also joining the cast is Shaquille Ali-Yebuah. Shaquille (represented by Identity Agency Group) has previously appeared in features Legacy and Social Suicide as well as the Radio 4 sitcom What Does The K Stand For?

This new series' plot sees the arrival of a new online menace as the gang are thrown together with a rival set of students to put on a showcase. The anonymous troll is determined to stop the show...

Exclusive: Funding body greenlights shorts from women directors.

Creative England has greenlit six comedy shorts for its iShorts+ Funny Girls initiative, run in partnership with Big Talk and Baby Cow, as part of the BFI Net.Work.

The initiative aims to find “bold, entertaining and original stories” from new female screen comedy talent.

The six finalist films were selected from around 240 applicant teams nationwide, after they attended seminars by comedy writers such as The Inbetweeners’ Simon Bird and Man Up’s Tess Morris, among others. There were also sessions with development executives and comedy script editors.

Each of the finalists has now received £10,000 ($15,000) towards the budget of their films from Creative England, as well as additional financial contributions and mentoring, and will all go into production in the next three months.

Celine Haddad, senior film executive at Creative England, said: “We’re incredibly excited to give the six selected filmmakers a platform to showcase and further hone their...