Acclaimed screenwriter Jack Thorne is returning to Channel 4 with four-part drama The Accident.
Thorne, who has also written another of this autumn’s most anticipated series in his adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy for BBC One, has said that The Accident marks the concluding part of his trilogy of shows for the broadcaster.
Loosely linked through their exploration of blame, each series has asked difficult questions about contemporary Britain, beginning with the deeply unsettling National Treasure (starring Robbie Coltrane) and then continuing with adoption drama Kiri, starring Sarah Lancashire.
The writer has now teamed up with Lancashire again for The Accident, which explores the effects of a catastrophic gas explosion on a small Welsh community.
Here’s everything you need to know before its debut.
What is The Accident all about?
The series is set in a fictional Welsh town where a new construction project offers a promise of regeneration and new jobs for a struggling community.
That promise of hope soon turns to tragedy when a gas explosion on the site kills a group of children, leaving the town’s inhabitants grieving and searching for someone to blame.
The Channel 4 synopsis adds: “If National Treasure was about shame and Kiri was about blame, [The Accident] will be about justice, as a forgotten town searches for truth in the aftermath of a tragedy.”
Thorne has revealed that the Grenfell Tower fire caused him to shift his focus while working on the project.
“I had an idea in my head and then Grenfell happened and the idea changed,” he told the BBC, adding: “It felt like TV could tell a story, which was not looking at Grenfell directly, but by looking at another story around that, maybe we could do a bit of light shining.”
Who is in the cast?
Sarah Lancashire, plays Polly Bevan, the wife of a local councillor, whose daughter is severely injured in the disaster, while Mark Lewis Jones (who previously worked with Thorne on National Treasure) stars as her husband Iwan, who threw his support behind the construction project.
Their relationship is pushed to the limit when their daughter Leona, played by Jade Croot, is left with a lifelong disability in the accident.
Danish actress Sidse Babett Knudsen, who is best known for playing a fictional Danish prime minister in Borgen, stars as Harriet Paulsen, an executive for the company in charge of the regeneration project who becomes the focus of much of the community’s anger in the fallout from the accident.
Gavin & Stacey’s Adrian Scarborough (who has also recently popped up in Austen adaptation Sanditon and Killing Eve) plays a lawyer representing the families affected by the accident. An outsider in the close-knit community, a question mark hangs over his motivation and agenda - and whether he can be trusted.
The Thick of It’s Joanna Scanlan and Keeping Faith’s Eiry Thomas play Polly’s close friends, whose daughters die in the accident.
When is The Accident on TV?
The series begins on October 24 at 9pm on Channel 4, with the next three episodes airing on subsequent Thursdays.
Viewers can catch up on episodes on All4.
