The Stage

Murphy outlines ambitious production slate for Sky One

Published Wednesday 26 August 2009 at 17:18 by Matthew Hemley

Sky One has commissioned a new drama series called The 12 Days of Christmas, which will feature a dozen silent films from a variety of writers, including Neil Gaiman and Jez Butterworth.

The satellite broadcaster has announced Bill Nighy as one of the actors taking part in the series, with Richard Eyre signed up to direct as part of the project.

Hilary Bevan Jones, who was behind the BBC show State of Play, is producing the series, which was commissioned by Elaine Pyke, Sky One head of drama.

Meanwhile, Sky One is also planning to broadcast its third Terry Pratchett drama, with an adaptation of Going Postal, starring Richard Coyle, Charles Dance and David Suchet.

Going Postal will broadcast over Easter next year.

In addition, Sky One has also announced that Andrew Lincoln is to star in its adaptation of Chris Ryan’s Strike Back, alongside Richard Armitage.

Strike Back is being produced by Andy Harries, who was behind the film The Queen.

The dramas have been announced by Stuart Murphy, new director of programmes at Sky One, Two and Three, who said he wanted “people to take Sky One more seriously”.

Outlining his plans for Sky One, he said: “I want our British shows to feel as ambitious editorially, and as risky and confident, as those great ones we run from the States. In a world of Sky+ and Sky HD, the issue for our viewers is not for us to create a generalist channel where viewers quite like everything, but instead have a channel where people absolutely love certain shows and will crawl over broken glass to get them.”

He added: “The only way I can see us doing that is by commissioning fewer shows and doing that at higher cost, with much bigger names on and off our screen.”

As part of this, Murphy said he was looking for “warm, witty comedy drama”, along the lines of The Darling Buds of May.

In entertainment, he revealed he had enlisted Davina McCall to host Just Dance, a nationwide search to find the most accomplished dancers in the UK.

Following on from Hairspray – The School Musical last year, Sky One has commissioned Grease – The School Musical, which will see pupils from a school given eight weeks to put on a West End production of the show.

Meanwhile in comedy, Murphy said, along with drama, he wanted the genre to be at “the heart of Sky One going forward”.

“We’ve currently got 13 scripts in development, something which Lucy Lumsden, former head of comedy commissioning at the BBC, will take a view on when she arrives at Sky One [as head of comedy] in October,” he said.