Sky Orders Gemma Arterton Comedy & Raft Of Factual, Updates On ‘Town Called Malice’ — Edinburgh

Comcast-owned Sky has revealed multiple commissions, including a Gemma Arterton comedy based on Nick Hornby novel Funny Girl.

The new Gemma Arterton comedy series is about a young woman from Blackpool finding her comic voice in the male dominated world of the 1960s sitcom. Clare-Hope Ashitey (Riviera), Arsher Ali (Informer) and Alexa Davies (White House Farm) will also star with more cast to be confirmed.

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Potboiler and Rebel Park Productions are producing, in association with Sky Studios. Executive producers are Nick Hornby, Gemma Arterton, Morwenna Banks, Andrea Calderwood, Gail Egan, Jessica Parker and Jessica Malik. The series is being written by Morwenna Banks and will be directed by Oliver Parker. NBCUniversal Global Distribution will handle international sales of the series on behalf of Sky Studios.

The series was commissioned by Zai Bennett, Managing Director of Content at Sky, Jon Mountague, Director of Comedy at Sky Studios and Tilusha Ghelani, Commissioning Editor for Comedy at Sky Studios.

Meanwhile, Sky revealed further details today about the project we revealed earlier this year, A Town Called Malice.

The crime thriller and family saga set on the Costa Del Sol in the early 1980s is set to begin later this year and run into 2022 in London and Spain. The series is a co-production between Vertigo Films, Sky Studios and Rogue State, and is created by Nick Love (Bulletproof), who is also the lead writer on the series. A Town Called Malice follows the Lords, a crime family of petty thieves from South London who have fallen to the bottom of the criminal food chain and aren’t happy about it. Casting is underway.

Gabriel Silver, Director of Commissioning, Drama, Sky Studios, said of the series: “If Dallas and Pulp Fiction created a love child to the strains of Duran Duran, it would be A Town Called Malice — an intoxicating cocktail of ‘80s romance, avarice and violence, served up with pineapple chunks and an umbrella… Brought to life so brilliantly by Nick Love’s scripts, audiences will be taken back to the vivid world of the Costa Del Sol in its pomp, with a glorious take on the soundtrack of the era. The series is a fantastic addition to our growing line-up of home-grown, British drama on Sky in 2022.”

NBCUniversal Global Distribution will handle international sales of the series on behalf of Sky Studios. It is due to TX on Sky Max and NOW in late 2022.

Sky Factual Orders

In keeping with this week’s focus on factual at Edinburgh, Sky also unveiled four new titles for Sky Documentaries and a series each for Sky Crime, Sky Nature and Sky HISTORY.

The newly commissioned titles for Sky Documentaries include The Devil’s Advocate, which unravels the epic, stranger-than-fiction tale of Giovanni di Stefano, who rose to become a notorious criminal lawyer without any legal qualifications. Red Elvis will chronicle the forgotten story of Dean Reed – an American who defected to the East at the height of the Cold War to achieve superstar status in the Soviet Bloc. The Billion Dollar Scoundrel (w/t) investigates the story of Allen Stanford, who conned his way into billions of dollars and used his fortune to lure the English cricket team to a ‘winner takes all’ one-off game against the West Indies. Hijacked: Flight 73 tells the story of one of the most shocking hijackings of all time, when Palestinian terrorists stormed Pan Am Flight 73.

True-crime series, The Angel of Vengeance (w/t) tackle the story of Crystal Hunnisett, who to some is guilty of two gruesome murders and to others is a victim of abuse and should be acquitted. On Sky History, The Royal Bastards: The Rise of The Tudors (w/t) charts the true story of one of England’s most powerful and little-known women, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Meanwhile, Sky Nature is introducing Chasing the Rains, a four-part series that will shine a light on life in the animal kingdom of Northern Kenya.

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