The Stage

Corrie star joins forces with Winstone for ITV1 drama

Published Tuesday 11 January 2005 at 13:15 by Liz Thomas

Former Coronation Street actress Suranne Jones is to star with Ray Winstone in a new ITV1 drama Vincent, about a team of private investigators.

The Granada production is her first since she left the soap at the end of last year after winning the accolade for Best Actress at both the National Television Awards and British Soap Awards. The show also stars ex-EastEnder Joe Absolom and Ian Puleston-Davies, who co-wrote Dirty Filthy Love and has most recently starred in BBC3 drama Conviction.

Winstone, whose recent TV credits include Granada’s Tough Love and Henry VIII, plays Vincent Gallagher, a private investigator, with the others making up his investigation team. Each show will have a self-contained storyline.

The series is produced by John Rushton and directed by Peter Lydon and Roger Gartland, the same team that made the widely acclaimed ITV1 drama series Island at War.

• BBC Radio 4 has recommissioned Clare in the Community, the series adapted from Harry Venning’s cartoon in The Guardian, which starred Sally Phillips and Nina Conti. The Corporation told Venning, who also pens The Stage’s popular cartoon Hamlet and is the newspaper’s TV critic, that the show had got off to a fantastically good start.