Sarah Parish has been cast in ITV’s forthcoming crime series Bancroft about a “brilliant copper” with “with dark secrets in her past.”
Produced by Phil Collinson, who alongside Russell T Davies led the successful revival of BBC One’s Doctor Who, the four-part thriller will also star Faye Marsay and Linus Roache.
The series is the first commission from the ITV’s drama label, Tall Story Pictures, founded by drama producers Francis Hopkinson and Catherine Oldfield. Hopkinson will executive produce the series alongside series creator and writer Kate Brooke.
Parish will play respected police officer DCI Elizabeth Bancroft, a woman with dark secrets in her past.
Ruthless and courageous, Bancroft is a brilliant copper. She has given her life to the police force. Consequently, she’s trusted and adored by her colleagues and promotion to Detective Chief Superintendent looks assured.
Bancroft is running an operation to bring down the pernicious and vicious Kamara gang. She adopts dubious methods, but the most violent brother, Athif, rules the local town with an iron fist, so it’s hard not to applaud her actions.
Marsay (Game of Thrones, Black Mirror, Love Nina) takes on the role of DS Katherine Stevens, an ambitious fast-tracked recruit.
When Katherine is assigned to a particular cold case, she unwittingly disturbs the ghosts of the past and what she unearths shakes Bancroft to her core.
Roache (Vikings, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) makes his return to British television as Tim Frazer who was widowed when his wife, Laura, was brutally murdered in their home 27 years previously, an unsolved crime Elizabeth seems to know more about than she’s letting on.
This knowledge won’t stay buried and it seems Elizabeth Bancroft will be forced to confront her demons…
Filmed on location in and around Bolton and the North West, the series will also feature Amara Karan (The Night Of, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man), Adrian Edmondson (War and Peace, Prey), Art Malik (Cold Feet, Indian Summers, Homeland), Kenneth Cranham (War and Peace, Rome), Adam Long (Happy Valley, Home Fires), Lee Boardman (The Five, Da Vinci’s Demons) and Steve Evets (One of Us, Looking for Eric).
