‘Fool Me Once‘ Producer Quay Street Lands Next Project For BBC
Fool Me Once producer Quay Street Productions has landed a BBC thriller series starring Eve Myles and Gabrielle Creevy. The Guest comes from Matthew Barry, who was also behind Quay Street’s Russell Davies-produced Men Up drama for the Beeb. The Guest centers on the toxic and beguiling relationship between a successful business owner, Fran, and her employee, Ria. Ria has never had the time or opportunity to think about what she might actually want from the world. So, when she starts cleaning for Fran, she’s intoxicated by this confident and self-assured woman who encourages her to take control of her life, but soon a manipulative cat-and-mouse game emerges. Myles leads BBC hit drama Keeping Faith, while Gabrielle Creevy will soon star in Sky’s high-profile Mozart series Amadeus as the musical genius’s wife. The Guest also stars Sion Daniel Young (Lost Boys & Fairies, Slow Horses), Emun Elliott (Sexy Beast, The Gold, Guilt), Bethan Mary- James (Death Valley, Sisters, Friday Night Dinner) Julian Lewis Jones(Dope Girls, House Of The Dragon & The Wheel Of Time), Joseph Ollman (Queenie, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Spent), Clive Russell (Game of Thrones, One Piece, The Witcher) and Catherine Ayers (Missing You, The Way). It’s been a good week for Nicola Shindler’s Quay Street, which discovered Thursday that Netflix’s Harlan Coben adaptation Fool Me Once was the streamer’s most-watched show during the first half of 2024. “Matt’s scripts are not only full of tension and twists but deeply relatable characters and his trademark wit and humour,” said Shindler and Quay Street’s Davina Earl of The Guest.
Go Button, Super Channel & Autentic Sign Novel Factual Pact
Here’s a new deal in the international factual space. Canada’s Go Button Media is to make six series over the next three years for Super Channel, with Germany’s Autentic handling international distribution. Go Button co-founder and exec producer Daniel Oron said that despite positioning as a “boutique production company during a decline in the worldwide industry,” Go Button had “been able to evolve a strategic approach” to combat the challenges through cost efficiencies and called Canadian net Super Channel “an entirely compatible business partner.” The deal kicks off with Secrets of Ancient Structures, a six-part examination of some of the most remarkable achievements by long-gone civilizations.
UK’s Creative Diversity Network Ties With ScreenSkills
The UK’s Creative Diversity Network (CDN), which monitors industry diversity via Diamond, has formed a strategic partnership with training body ScreenSkills. The partnership will see the pair collaborate on areas such as how the data gathered by CDN’s Diamond diversity monitoring and reporting tool can be used to help inform the training and development programs that ScreenSkills oversees. They will also deliver cross-industry initiatives and ScreenSkills will provide HR and finance support to allow the five-person CDN team to focus on delivery of their day-to-day work. “We see a lot of synergies with ScreenSkills’ role and operations, particularly in areas such as training where both teams can draw on each other’s expertise and talents,” said CDN CEO Miranda Wayland. The news comes after the publication of the CDN’s seventh Diamond report, which showed marginal diversity gains.
BAFTA Adds Children’s Awards To Main Ceremonies
BAFTA has introduce a trio of new children’s TV categories to its main awards after dropping the separate ceremony for kids content. Next year’s BAFTA TV gongs will see a children’s scripted, children’s non-scripted and children’s craft team award introduced following the decision. The awards body has also added a Children and Family Film Award to the movie gongs and a Family Award to the games ceremony. The move comes after BAFTA said a drop in submissions had caused it to cease putting on the children’s awards as a standalone. “Film, games and television hold a magical, unique and vital place in our culture, and the children’s stories made for our screens are so often developed with immense skill, warmth and creativity,” said BAFTA Chair Sara Putt. The inclusion of five new categories across our internationally renowned awards in Film, Games and TV will enable us to bring the very best of the screen arts to even wider audiences.”