Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon and Olivia Colman have joined the ensemble cast of Army of Shadows, a new six-part drama series for Channel 4. The cast announcement follows earlier confirmations for Paddy Considine, America Ferrera, Alex Hassell and Kit Harington, solidifying the line-up for Ronan Bennett's adaptation of the 1969 Jean-Pierre Melville film.
Set in an occupied Great Britain, the series follows a former soldier known only as Berry as he constructs a secret resistance network against a state with unlimited reach. The narrative centres on an unlikely group of ordinary people, including a student, a radiographer and a journalist, who coalesce around Berry to fight a ruthless minister and an American intelligence operative named Jessie. The story, developed with the support of the Melville family and the Kessel estate, explores the personal cost of resistance in a society where the surface appears normal but the underlying reality has shifted. Army of Shadows is a tense thriller that questions what individuals would do if their country were occupied, drawing on the seminal work of Joseph Kessel.
The production is a co-production between STUDIOCANAL and Two Cities Television, with all six episodes directed by Lisa Gunning. Gwawr Lloyd, Interim Head of Drama for Channel 4, commissioned the series alongside drama commissioning editors Gemma Boswell and Rebecca Holdsworth. Executive producers for STUDIOCANAL include Paul Gilbert, M-K Kennedy, Ron Halpern and Joe Naftalin, while Stephen Wright, Michael Jackson and Ronan Bennett serve as executive producers for Two Cities Television. The project marks Bennett's latest major commission for the channel, following his previous work on The Day of the Jackal and MobLand. Royalties from Kessel's works are bequeathed to the Irish Red Cross, adding a charitable dimension to the production's literary origins.