BBC One to adapt “Restless” bestseller into spy thriller

PanARMENIAN.Net - In association with The Sundance Channel, Endor Productions will bring the adaptation of William Boyd’s espionage thriller/love story, Restless, to BBC One later this year, Deadline said.

Cast has now been set with Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery, Michael Gambon and Charlotte Rampling starring.

Downton Abbey‘s Dockery plays a young woman in 1979 who learns that her mother (Rampling) has been living a double life and is really a former spy for the British Secret Service. In flashbacks to 1939 Paris, Atwell plays Rampling’s younger self who’s recruited into the service by and falls in love with Sewell’s spymaster. After a crucial mission collapses, she must go into hiding, but 30 years later wants to resurface and enlists her daughter to track down her former lover, now played by Gambon.

Boyd wrote the screeplay based on his 2006 best-seller. Theater director Edward Hall is helming the 3-hour drama that’s produced by State Of Play‘s Hilary Bevan Jones and Paul Frift.

Executive producers are Boyd, Matthew Read for the BBC and Christian Vesper for Sundance. Shooting begins this summer in South Africa and the UK. Restless is the first commission to go into production for Endor since Red Arrow Entertainment acquired a majority stake in the company last March. Red Arrow’s SevenOne International will handle international sales.