COMING SOON

DAVID MORRISSEY AND LUKE TREADAWAY star in a tense wartime saga

COMPELLING PERIOD DRAMA The Singapore Grip is set to bring mystery and intrigue to our screens when the six-part series airs on ITV later this year.

Based on JG Farrell’s acclaimed 1978 novel of the same name, it’s set in Singapore during World War Two amid the turbulence of the Japanese invasion.

It centres on the interaction between two British families, the Blacketts and the Webbs, and sees David Morrissey as hard-nosed rubber merchant Walter Blackett, who is desperate to safeguard the future of his long-established and powerful firm as his business partner, Mr Webb (Charles Dance), is suffering from ill health.

Walter is keen for Mr Webb’s naive, idealistic son Matthew (Luke Treadaway) to marry his pampered daughter, Joan (Georgia Blizzard), but Matthew’s eye is caught by an enigmatic Chinese refugee called Vera Chiang (Elizabeth Tan)…

Elsewhere in the cast, Little Voice’s Jane Horrocks co-stars as Walter’s wife, Sylvia, and Luke Newberry is his son Monty, while

Colm Meaney plays Army veteran Major Brendan Archer.

‘It’s a panoramic account of the disastrous loss of Singapore to the Japanese invaders in 1942,’ reveals Oscar-winning screenwriter

Sir Christopher Hampton, who has adapted the novel.

‘And it’s the private story of the machinations – commercial and amorous – of the Blackett family, and their struggle to preserve and expand their business with the unfolding of the cataclysmic events to which they remain totally oblivious until it’s too late.’