ITV has announced a new true crime drama about Peter Sutcliffe, the serial killer dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper.
Written by George Kay and produced by New Pictures - the award-winning company behind recent dramas Des and White Hill Farm - the six-part series will tell the tale of one of the most notorious serial killer cases in the world, charting the hunt for Sutcliffe between October 1975 and January 1981.
During this five-year period, a team of more than a thousand police officers undertook the biggest manhunt in British criminal history, which would change the way police in the UK worked forever.
ITV's new drama - which is based upon Michael Bilton's highly praised book, Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper - promises a true crime series following the 'desperate, cat and mouse hunt for Sutcliffe'.
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It will focus on the police investigation and the lives of the victims who fatally crossed his path.
With a working title of The Yorkshire Ripper, the show will feature New Pictures co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Willow Grylls (Des, White House Farm, The Missing) as Executive Producer.
Paul Whittington (White House Farm, Little Boy Blue, The Moorside, The Crown) will direct.
Polly Hill, ITV's Head of Drama, said: "I am delighted to be working with Willow and Paul again, after they made the brilliant White House Farm.
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"This promises to be a definitive look at this infamous case, and will be sensitively dramatised for ITV by this formidable team, who have a proven track record in bringing these true stories to screen."
Executive Producer Willow Grylls added: "George Kay's beautifully nuanced scripts shines a light on a case that defined the second half of the twentieth century and continues to cast a long shadow."
Billing itself as 'the first definitive account of a case that shook Britain', the drama has been 'meticulously researched', drawing on the most investigation archives including hundreds of case files, interview transcripts and police reports.
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Writer George Kay said: "In a story full with eye-watering statistics, one for me has always stood out: Peter Sutcliffe rendered 23 children motherless.
"That one fact in itself demands that any definitive drama about this case should encompass far more than just the story of a police investigation.
"We will focus not just on the police, therefore, but the victims, their families, those who were attacked but not believed, those who whose lives were permanently changed.
"This is not the story of a Ripper who hailed from Yorkshire, but the story of how Yorkshire was ripped apart."
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Casting details will be announced at a later date, while the programme's release date is also yet to be confirmed.
Watch this space...
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