Conville & Walsh

Best-selling author and blogger, Judith O’Reilly, whose WIFE IN THE NORTH is currently riding at No 3 in The Sunday Times paperback non-fiction list, has just agreed terms with Clerkenwell Films for them to produce a television drama series based upon her account of moving to Northumberland from London. The deal was agreed with Murray Ferguson and John Hannah at Clerkenwell Films on behalf of Ellie Wood there, who previously headed the BBC’s drama serials department, where she made BLEAK HOUSE, SORTED, THE LINE OF BEAUTY, THE FAMILY MAN and HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT. At Clerkenwell Films, Ellie has just finished shooting Joanna Briscoe’s novel, SLEEP WITH ME, with a script by Andrew Davies.

In another television drama deal, Greg Brenman at Tiger Aspect has bought THE ODIN MISSION, the first of a planned eight novels known as the Tanner series which will span the Second World War, and which feature Sergeant Jack Tanner, a tenacious young Army soldier with a healthy disrespect for authority allied to a competence lacked, when Tanner arrives in Norway in 1940, by many of comrades. With the novels to be published annually by Bantam, Tiger Aspect plan to develop the project as a long-running series aimed jointly at the audience for SHARPE and MURPHY’S WAR.