Colin Morgan to star in eerie new BBC mystery The Living and the Dead

(Image credit: BBC)

Humans star Colin Morgan will play the lead role in an eerie new six-part BBC mystery series The Living And The Dead, created by Ashley Pharaoh, the man behind Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes.

Colin said: “The Living And The Dead is one of those scripts that you read and are instantly compelled and engaged by. It's intelligent, chilling and engrossing, it's going to be very special and I can't wait to start working on it with the wonderful creative team.”

In The Living and the Dead Colin will play Nathan Appleby, while Charlotte Spencer (Glue, Line of Duty) will play his wife, Charlotte, in a drama set in late 19th Century Somerset.

The BBC says the series is about a brilliant young couple who inherit a farm and are determined to start a new life together. But their presence in this isolated corner of England starts to unleash strange, unsettling and dangerous supernatural phenomena that will threaten their marriage.

It's a a drama steeped in the eeriness of the rural world at the moment when the industrial revolution came crashing in to disrupt all the old certainties.

Charlotte said: “It's always been a dream of mine to appear in a period drama and they don't come better than this - fantastic, original scripts and, in Charlotte Appleby, a superb character who's strong, passionate and gutsy. Couple this with an incredible director, crew and cast, I can't wait to get started!”

Ashley added: “I am completely thrilled that Colin and Charlotte are joining us on our adventure. The characters they play - Nathan and Charlotte Appleby - dominate the series and I couldn’t be more excited to see what they do with them.”

Filming has begun in the West Country and The Living and the Dead will most likely screen in 2016.

 

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.