The BBC axes The Crimson Field

(Image credit: BBC/Todd Antony)

The Crimson Field's writer Sarah Phelps says the wartime period drama has been axed by the BBC.

Phelps broke the news on Twitter: "Found out today that #TheCrimsonField won't be recommissioned by @BBCOne Gutted doesn't even touch the sides of how I feel."

Set in the battlefields of France during the First World War, the BBC1 drama starred Hermione Norris, Suranne Jones, Oona Chaplin and Kerry Fox as nurses tending to the injured.

The BBC said in a statement: "The Crimson Field was our landmark drama series that launched the start of the BBC's World War One coverage. We are very proud of The Crimson Field and are hugely grateful to all those who worked so hard on it.

"However in order to create space for new shows and to keep increasing the variety of BBC One drama it will not be returning for a second series. Coming up this autumn on BBC One further WW1 drama content includes The Passing Bells and War Poems."

Phelps has adapted JK Rowling's novel The Casual Vacancy for the BBC.

 

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.