The Stage

Davies adapts Briscoe’s Sleep With Me for ITV1

Published Tuesday 15 April 2008 at 13:05 by Matthew Hemley

Adrian Lester and Jodhi May are to star in an adaptation of Joanna Briscoe’s erotic thriller Sleep With Me for ITV1.

Made by Clerkenwell Films, the novel has been adapted into a two-hour drama by Andrew Davies, the man behind recent screen versions of Bleak House and Sense and Sensibility.

Lester, who has appeared in Hustle, and May, who has made a name for herself in television dramas such as Tipping the Velvet and The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, will be joined by Anamaria Marinca and Adam James in the drama, which focuses on a married couple whose lives are turned upside down by a seemingly harmless stranger.

Briscoe said: “I’m truly thrilled that this has been commissioned, and can’t wait to see some of the filming. I think this will be tense, dark and erotic drama, with a classy cast, and I can’t wait to see the finished film.”

ITV controller of drama commissions Sally Haynes described Davies as “the master of literary adaptation”.

She added: “He was the perfect choice to dramatise Joanna Briscoe’s brilliant, contemporary novel, which is very much about the sexual politics of men and women.”