BBC anoints Cardinal as latest foreign drama
Details
Editor
| 11 February 2017
Less than a fortnight after looking to sunny Spain for its latest international noir drama, the BBC has turned to the colds of Canada for crime chiller thriller Cardinal.
The 6 x 60’ series is the BBC’s first Canadian drama and will air later in 2017. It follows Detective John Cardinal and colleague as they join forces to hunt down a killer in a small Northern Ontario town.
Adapted from author Giles Blunt’s award-winning Forty Words for Sorrow, the first of the John Cardinal Mysteries book series, Cardinal is written for television by Audrey Nealon and Russ Cochrane. The series was acquired by BBC Four from former ITV acquisition target Entertainment One (eOne).
“I’m delighted to expand BBC Four’s hugely popular international drama range with our first Canadian drama series,” remarked BBC Four controller Cassian Harrison.
“Further to the recently announced Spanish drama I Know Who You Are and returning hits such as Follow The Money, Inspector Montalbano and Spiral, BBC Four remains the home of high quality, high stakes international drama on British television in 2017.”
Cardinal is produced by Sienna Films and eOne in association with Bell Media’s CTV, with the financial participation of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, the Canada Media Fund and the Cogeco Program Development Fund, and with the assistance of the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit. Super Écran commissioned the series for French-language Canadian broadcast.
eOne distributes the series worldwide and its TV division’s president Stuart Baxter added: “We’re thrilled to have secured the BBC as the UK home for Cardinal. BBC Four’s programming is ambitious and compelling which makes a perfect fit for this dark and haunting, edge-of-your-seat serialised crime drama.”