Toni Collette to star in Netflix adaptation of Karin Slaughter novel

We last saw Australian actress Toni Collette in the excellent Unbelievable, and now she’s set to head back to the streaming giant for a new crime series.

Deadline reports that Netflix is set to adapt top-selling Karin Slaughter’s Pieces Of Her for the small screen.

The story is set in a sleepy Georgia town where a random act of violence sets off an unexpected chain of events for 30-year-old Andy Oliver and her mother Laura (Collette). Desperate for answers, Andy embarks on a dangerous journey across America, drawing her towards the dark, hidden heart of her family.

Lovely, empathetic, modest – at first glance, Collette’s Laura Oliver seems to be the perfect Southern woman, devoted to her work as a speech pathologist and to her disaffected daughter, Andy. But when the ghosts of Laura’s past put her life in jeopardy, we discover there is more to Laura than meets the eye.

More news as we get it.

READ MORE: OUR REVIEW OF UNBELIEVABLE

 

S4C names transmission date for 35 Diwrnod: Parti Plu

Filming has finished and post-production work is well underway in the latest series S4C’s Welsh-language crime drama 35 Diwrnod (35 Days).

Furthermore, the channel has confirmed its transmission date.

Last year S4C changed 35 Diwrnod to 35 Awr with all the action happening over 35 hours in a country hotel. The writer Fflur Dafydd was nominated for a Bafta Cymru for her work on the series and now she’s back as writer for the fifth series 35 Diwrnod: Parti Plu (35 Days: Hen Party).

Beth (Gwenllian Higginson) and her husband to be Dylan (Geraint Todd) are going to have a wedding that promises to be second to none. With 35 days until the big day, everything is in place: the designer dress, vintage bunting, a sushi buffet and guests to die for.

On the guestlist is the old gang from school – the best friends all together again for the first time in five years. A lot has happened in that time – so how do they now come to terms with this and rekindle that relationship?

Fflur Dafydd said: “The story opens with a group of women (and one man) in a wedding dress fitting, 35 days before the wedding. At the heart of the story is the fact that this group have known each other since they were young but there are tensions in their friendship following something traumatic that happened five years ago.”

“Also, we become aware that one of the friends is absent, but we don’t know what has happened to her. Is she still alive? Where is she? There is an element of mystery from the very beginning surrounding this wedding and there is a tension there which we don’t quite understand but becomes more obvious during the series.”

 “There will be a body, like every other series of 35. At the beginning of the first episode, we see a veil in the water, and a girl lying face down. We know from the outset that there has been a murder and we work back from there – as we do with every other series of 35. But despite the whodunnit element – I think with this particular series that the characters and their secrets become far more compelling.”

35 Diwrnod: Parti Plu: Sunday 26th April, 9pm, S4C

READ MORE: OUR REVIEW OF 35 AWR

LISTEN TO MORE: OUR PODCAST WITH FFLUR DAFYDD

 

ITV commissions adaptation of Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie novels

Val McDermid’s series of cold case investigations, Karen Pirie (w/t) has been commissioned by ITV from the producers of Line of Duty and Bodyguard, World Productions.

Adapted by Emer Kenny Karen Pirie is based on the novel, The Distant Echo, the first in a series of best-selling novels about the young Scottish female detective set in the beautiful Scottish university town of St. Andrew’s.

Karen is a refreshingly normal and charmingly unfashionable young woman – slick, maverick cop she is not – but her quick mouth and ingenuity make her an impressive investigator. Following her promotion to Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit, Karen is tasked with reopening the investigation into a murder that has been the subject of a provocative true-crime podcast. When teenage barmaid Rosie Duff was stabbed to death in 1995, suspicion fell on the three drunken students who discovered her body. But despite police suspicion, the boys were never charged.

Nearly 25 years on, DS Karen Pirie is determined to uncover what happened that fateful night. Do the men know more than they previously revealed? When Karen uncovers flaws in the initial investigation, she finds herself in conflict with the very officers who led the original hunt for the killer.

There’s no news on casting yet, so when we get more news, you’ll get it too…