13. The City & The City - China Mieville

David Morrissey - Comic Con 2013
David Morrissey (Kevin Winter/Getty Images, SD)

David Morrissey will play Inspector Tyador Borlú in the BBC Two adaptation of China Miéville's mind-bending novel The City And The City.
The body of a foreign student is discovered in the streets of the down at heel city of Besźel. Cases like this are run of the mill for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad - until his investigations uncover evidence that the dead girl had come from another city called Ul Qoma. But the relationship between the two cities defies comprehension and will challenge everything Borlú holds dear.

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Tony Grisoni (The Young Pope, Southcliffe, The Red Riding Trilogy) adapts this four-part thriller from one of Britain’s foremost fantasy writers in a production made by Mammoth Screen.

Morrissey (The Missing, The Walking Dead) heads a cast which includes Lara Pulver (Sherlock, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams) as Borlú’s wife Katrynia; Mandeep Dhillon (Some Girls) as Constable Corwi of the Besźel Policzai; Maria Schrader (Deutschland 83) as Senior Detective Dhatt of the Ul Qoma Militsya; Ron Cook (Mr Selfridge) as Borlú’s superior Commissar Gadlem; Danny Webb (Humans) as hard-right nationalist politician Major Syedr; and Christian Camargo (Penny Dreadful) as Doctor Bowden, an American academic.


14. The Little Drummer Girl - John Le Carre

Florence Pugh
Florence Pugh (Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images, SD)

Following the BBC’s hugely successful series The Night Manager, another John le Carré adaptation is in the works starring Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgård.

The Little Drummer Girl is set in 1970s Greece, and follows aspiring actress Charlie (Pugh) as she strikes up a friendship with a stranger while on holiday. That stranger turns out to be an Israeli intelligence officer named Becker (Skarsgård), who entangles her in a complex and high-stakes plot when she realises his intentions are far from romantic.

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The BBC, along with US broadcast partner AMC and producers The Ink Factory, will begin production on the six-part adaptation of Little Drummer Girl in early 2018.

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