Guncrime drama Southcliffe for 2013

Award- winning writer Tony Grisoni of Red Riding and The Unloved is to pen a drama based in a fictional English market town called Southcliffe. However its far from quaint and peaceful as the action revolves around several shootings across 24 hours.

Grisoni says, “Southcliffe is a fictional market town inhabited by fictional characters, but with similarities to many actual people and places in Britain today. Invisible people, anonymous places. The inexplicable chain of events at the dark heart of this 4-part drama shatters Time and Space for Southcliffe’s inhabitants.

“Violence and sudden bereavement confronts them with emotions they are unequipped to understand. Rather than analyse or moralise about our characters’ actions, we share in them. Southcliffe is an anthem to ordinary people’s ability to reinvent themselves in the face of ultimate darkness.”

The four-part drama to air on Channel 4 no doubt will be compared to real life gun-murders in the UK and America however the angle of the drama the broadcaster hopes will make it different to any real-life shooting sprees. The drama will explore tragedy, grief, responsibility and redemption seen through the eyes of a journalist returning to the small town of his childhood, and those closest to the victims of the tragedy.

Head of Drama Piers Wenger adds, “Tony Grisoni’s unique ability to convey the darkness and subtleties of human behaviour is in full evidence in these four brilliant scripts and I’m delighted that Warp Films and Tony have found a world class director like Sean Durkin to bring them to life.”

Director Sean Durkin makes his British television drama debut with Southcliffe, produced by Warp Films and Sophie Gardiner for Channel 4. Southcliffe will be filmed in the UK and broadcast on Channel 4 in 2013.