“Hot Flush,” the new show from BAFTA-winning “Happy Valley” creator Sally Wainwright, is one of several series greenlit by the BBC.
A six-part drama from ”Doctor Foster” producers Drama Republic, “Hot Flush” centers 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.
The BBC has commissioned also “Virdee,” a six-part detective series based on A.A. Dhand’s bestselling crime novels and starring Sacha Dhawan (“Doctor Who”), from newly formed production company Magical Society, headed up by Paul Trijbits (“Jane Eyre”).
The Bradford-set series introduces Detective Harry Virdee (Dhawan), a Bradford cop disowned by his Sikh family for marrying Saima, who is Muslim. Virdee 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.
Following the success of the BAFTA-winning “Mood,” Nicole Lecky has written her second drama for the BBC. The six-part untitled series from Firebird Pictures follows 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. Their daughters 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.
Jenna Coleman (“The Serpent”) stars as rookie detective Ember Manning in four-part series “The Jetty,” a thriller from writer Cat Jones (“Harlots”) and producers Firebird Pictures. In the series, a fire tears through a holiday home in a scenic Lancashire lake town. Detective Manning must work out how it connects to a podcast journalist investigating a missing persons cold case and an illicit 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.
In addition, hit comedy thriller “Black Ops” has been recommissioned for a second six-part season.
The show is produced by BBC Studios Comedy Productions and Mondo Deluxe and created by BAFTA- winning actor and writer Gbemisola Ikumelo (“Famalam”), BAFTA-winning actor and producer Akemnji Ndifornyen (“Famalam”) and writing duo Joe Tucker and Lloyd Woolf (“Click and Collect”).
In the first season, Dom (Ikumelo) and Kay (Hammed Animashaun) joined the Met Police as police community support officers in the hope of cleaning up their community, but found themselves unwittingly thrust into the murky world of deep cover infiltration and a powerful criminal enterprise. The duo return for a new adventure in Season 2.