Aoife Hinds (Normal People) and Billy Howle (The Perfect Couple) are to head up The Ministry of Time, a new time travel drama headed to BBC One.
Based on Kaliane Bradley’s bestselling debut novel of the same name and hailing from production outfit A24, the series has begun filming in and around London.
The Ministry of Time is a newly established government department gathering ‘expats’ from across history in an experiment to test the viability of time-travel.
Sophy (Hinds) achieves a hard-fought promotion in the civil service, only to learn that her role is to help a time traveller acclimatise to the modern world as part of a top-secret Ministry programme.
Commander Graham Gore (Howle) is a Victorian polar explorer and one of several ‘expats’ from history who are now part of the Ministry’s extraordinary experiment.
The professional friendship between Sophy and Graham develops into an intense forbidden romance that reveals the transporting power of love across centuries, just as the sinister nature of the Ministry’s true intentions increasingly puts them in danger.
Author Kaliane Bradley said: “This is very exciting and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes together.
“If I could travel back in time six years to tell past me what was going to happen with that polar explorer she’d just started writing about, I think she would have done some very Victorian swooning.”
Lindsay Salt, Director of BBC Drama, added: “The Ministry of Time is a truly distinctive, genre-defying series with a beautiful central relationship and we are thrilled to have Aoife and Billy leading the cast.
“Kaliane Bradley has created two complex, compelling characters at the heart of this brilliant story, which has been beautifully adapted by Alice Birch. We can’t wait for BBC viewers to join us on this epic adventure.”