GET READY FOR SOME TOP TELLY
The stars are coming out to play for 2018 with top drama and comedy specials. MARION McMULLEN looks at the TV treats heading our way
RISING Hollywood star Olivia Cook plays Becky Sharpe in ITV’s lavish new adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s classic novel Vanity Fair. Filmed on location in Bucharest and London against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, the cast also includes Doctor Foster star Suranne Jones, Martin Clunes and Michael Palin as Thackeray himself.
Fresh from his Doctor Foster triumph, writer Mike Bartlett has crafted thriller Trauma for ITV. It stars John simm as the heartbroken father of a murdered 15-yearold boy who blames a doctor for his death. Martin Clunes will also star in ITV police drama Manhunt.
LINE OF DUTY’S Jed Mercurio is behind BBC’s Bodyguard. Keeley Hawes plays the Home Secretary and Richard Madden’s character has to protect her while disagreeing with her politics.
BBC’s Troy: Fall of a City, by David Farr, the writer of 2016’s TV hit thriller The night Manager, is a decadent eight-parter following the story of Paris and helen, whose passionate and forbidden affair plunges Greece and Troy into an empire-threatening war.
NICOLA Walker, Meera syal and annabel scholey play high-powered female divorce lawyers in femaleled BBC drama The split. over on ITV sheridan smith plays a cashstrapped office worker who finds herself drawn into the shady world of insider trading in Clean Break.
YOUNG SHELDON on E4 – starring Iain Armitage, left – is The Big Bang Theory comedy spin-off looking back on nine-year-old child prodigy Sheldon Cooper’s early life as he struggles to be understood by his family, classmates and neighbours. Jim Parsons, who plays adult Sheldon in Big Bang, is the narrator of the new series.
BBC drama Press is set in the world of the modern newspaper industry and stars Peaky Blinders’ Charlotte riley and Ben Chaplin as rivals who work on two different papers. David suchet also appears as a newspaper owner in the six-part series.
KATE BECKINSALE stars in ITV and Amazon Prime drama The Widow about a woman grieving for the man she loved and the life they’ve lost. She learns something shocking that sends her around the world to discover the truth about his death in a plane crash in the jungle.
russell T DaVIes’ three-part BBC drama a Very english scandal sees hugh Grant, below, as disgraced MP Jeremy Thorpe and Ben Whishaw as his ex-lover. It tells of the first British politician to stand trial for conspiracy and incitement to murder.
RETURNING favourites include Call The Midwife, Peter Kay’s Car Share and Poldark. The new Doctor Who with Jodie Whittaker (above) also begins on BBC1 in the autumn.