ITV is to adapt Peter James’ award winning novels into two feature length instalments.
John Simm will star in the title role of tenacious detective Roy Grace.
Acclaimed screenwriter and Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis, has adapted James’ first two books of the Roy Grace series, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead, into two separate two-hour screenplays.
They introduce Brighton based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a hard-working police officer who has given his life to the job.
A synopsis from ITV reads: “The drama opens with Grace’s career at rock bottom. He’s fixated by the disappearance of his beloved wife, Sandy, which haunts his thoughts. He’s in the last chance saloon running enquiries into long forgotten cold cases with little prospect of success.
“Following another reprimand for his unorthodox police methods, Grace is walking a career tightrope and risks being moved from the job he loves most.
“With so much at stake, his colleague Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson knows he has more to give and asks him for help with a case. When a stag night prank appears to go wrong and the groom goes missing, Branson calls upon Grace to unravel events that led to the mysterious disappearance three days before his wedding to his beautiful fiancé.
“A successful property developer with everything to live for, there is no trace of the missing groom. Is this a case of stag night shenanigans gone badly awry? Or is this something more sinister?
“With nothing but instinct, a lingering suspicion and his obsessive nature, Grace doggedly pursues the groom’s disappearance and becomes uneasily close to the bride to be….”
Grace will film in Brighton in 2020.
Peter James said: “John Simm, who actually looks like the Roy Grace of my imagination, is inspired casting!
“With John in the lead, the brilliant scripting by Russell Lewis, and our wonderful production team, I’m confident that fans of my novels and of TV crime dramas in general will be in for a treat.”
Russell Lewis added: ““I’m thrilled and honoured to be involved in bringing Peter James’ brilliantly gripping series of Roy Grace novels to ITV.
“Each story is a fantastic, hair-raising, twisting, switch-back of a roller-coaster ride that grips the reader from first to last, and the opportunity to translate that best-selling magic to television is like all one’s Christmases and birthdays come at once.
“As his millions of fans and admirers are well aware, Peter’s meticulous research and eye for detail is the stuff of legend. His long established, close relationship with the police, taken together with a knowledge of Brighton and the South Coast that is the sole preserve of the born and bred lends his stories an unimpeachable veracity of place and procedure.
“That John Simm will be breathing flesh to the bones of Roy Grace really is the cherry on a dark, and troublingly encrimsoned cake…”
