ITV has commissioned a four-part drama based on the Hatton Garden raid – the most audacious jewellery and cash burglary ever seen in London.
Carried out by an elderly gang of career criminals across the Easter Bank Holiday weekend in April 2015, the raid created international headlines.
Timothy Spall OBE, Olivier award-winning actor Kenneth Cranham, Brian F. O’Byrne, David Hayman, Alex Norton, Ian Puleston-Davies, Geoff Bell and Nasser Memarzia will play the men responsible for the daring raid.
Written by Jeff Pope, ITV’s Head of Factual Drama, and Terry Winsor the drama tells the inside story of how the men pulled off the heist which was considered in a class of its own in terms of scale and ambition, and the extraordinary level of planning, preparation and organisation required to penetrate the vault of the Hatton Garden Safety Deposit Company.
Directed by Paul Whittington (Little Boy Blue, The Moorside, Cilla, Mrs Biggs), Hatton Garden sheds light on how the gang meticulously planned the raid, the tensions amongst the group, the loss of livelihoods suffered by the box holders and the complex police operation that captured the gang.
The drama has been commissioned for ITV by Head of Drama, Polly Hill, who said: “After the critical acclaim of Little Boy Blue, we are delighted to commission Jeff Pope’s new drama, Hatton Garden.
“Jeff is a master at bringing these true stories to screen and these dramas have always been and continue to be an important part of ITV drama.
“I think the audience will be fascinated by this story and Jeff’s compelling dramatisation of it.”
Pope commented: “This is one of the most high profile crimes of the last decade and we wanted to understand what had happened – and why it had happened.
“The research threw up some fascinating detail and blew away many of the misconceptions about this story.
“It was not about a bunch of ‘loveable old blokes’, many box holders lost everything in the raid and we will reflect this. But the planning was clever and the characters involved unique.”
Filming will commence in June in the inner London area.