THE BBC has announced four new dramas from the creators of EastEnders and Happy Valley.
The news was revealed at the Edinburgh TV Festival by Lindsay Salt, Director of BBC Drama.
Happy Valley fans will be delighted to learn the show's creator Sally Wainwright has written a new drama called Hot Flush.
Hot Flush centres on the lives of five women of a certain age who come together to create a makeshift, butt-of-the-joke punk-rock band in order to enter a talent contest.
But when they rehearse together they suddenly discover that they have a lot more to say than they ever imagined, and this is the way to say it.
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The six-part drama follows the women as they deal with demanding jobs, grown-up children who still eat up their energy, dependent
parents, husbands who’ve let them down and the menopause.
The second drama to be announced is The Jetty, which will star former Doctor Who actress Jenna Coleman.
It has been created by former EastEnders and Harlots writer Cat Jones and sees a fire tears through a holiday home in a scenic
Lancashire lake town.
Rookie Detective Ember Manning (Jenna) must work out how it connects to a podcast journalist investigating a missing persons cold case and an illicit ‘love’ triangle between a man in his twenties and two underage girls.
But as Ember gets close to the truth, it threatens to destroy her life – forcing her to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about her past, present and the town she’s always called home.
Another drama confirmed at the festival was Virdee, a new detective series based on AA Dhand’s best-selling crime novels and starring Sacha Dhawan.
The series introduces Detective Harry Virdee (Sacha Dhawan), a Bradford cop disowned by his Sikh family for marrying Saima, who is Muslim.
Harry struggles with the abandonment, constantly attempting to reunite with his family. With his personal life in chaos, he must
hunt down a killer targeting the Asian community.
When the murderer kidnaps a local MP’s daughter in Bradford and holds the entire city to ransom, Harry realises that he is going to need the help of his brother-in-law Riaz, a drugs kingpin who runs the largest cartel in the county.
Pulled together in an alliance that could ruin them both, Harry must make a choice: save himself and his family or save his city. He
will not be able to do both.
The final drama to be announced is an as yet untitled mystery thriller from Nicôle Lecky.
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Nicôle has written her second drama for the BBC following the success of the BAFTA-winning Mood.
In this new six-part untitled series for BBC One and BBC iPlayer, viewers meet Lorna, a self-made and successful black businesswoman from South London who has worked hard to be where she is – and best friend Juliet, a white woman born into the privileged gated community they both call home.
Daughters Grace and Allegra are BFFs and life is to die for. A safe
haven for the super-rich and their little darlings, Primrose Estate is a place where bad things never happen ….
Until, that is, Grace and Allegra are implicated in a shocking scandal at their exclusive private school and Juliet and Lorna are forced to take sides, pushing their friendship to the extreme.
As toxic secrets and lies ripple through the heart of the idyllic town – and a teenager goes missing - cracks within the community threaten to reveal the elitist ugliness and betrayal beneath. Because it turns
out that people are not who they say they are…especially the one per cent.
Release dates for all four dramas will be announced in due course.
