According to Deadline, BBC has just cast Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey, Anatomy of a Scandal) to lead Steven Knight’s (Peaky Blinders, SAS: Rogue Heroes) latest drama series, This Town. Other such talents including Nicholas Pinnock (For Life, Marcella) and David Dawson (My Policeman, The Last Kingdom) have already signed on for the six-part miniseries, which is currently being filmed in Birmingham, England.
As written by Deadline, the show follows the lives of an extended family, as well as four other young people who become immersed in the mellifluous world of ska and two-tone music, which famously rose to popularity in Coventry and Birmingham during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, bringing together countless black, white, and Asian youths. Not too long ago, the working title for the series was called Two Tone; it is currently unknown what prompted Knight to change the show’s name to This Town.
Knight is most famously known for creating the hit BBC crime/ thriller series, Peaky Blinders, which also takes place in Birmingham and follows a crime gang struggling to keep their heads above water in post World War I England. Like with Peaky Blinders, Knight will also create, write, and executive produce This Town; he is accompanied by Karen Wilson (Utopia, The Tunnel), Martin Haines (SAS: Rogue Heroes, Roman Mysteries), Katie McAleese (The Living and the Dead, In the Flesh), Jo McClellan (The Last Panthers, Everything I Know About Love), Laura Conaway (The Rachel Maddow Show, On Assignment with Richard Engel), Matthew James Wilkinson (Yesterday, Days of the Bagnold Summer), and Nick Angel (Tightwads, Easy Ways to Live Well).
Paul Whittingon (The Crown, The Moorside) is currently slated to serve as director with Charlotte Surtees (Two Weeks to Live, Code 404 as producer and Banijay Rights distributing internationally.
So far, BBC has yet to confirm a release date for This Town. Image Credit: Raymond Flotat