ITV orders second season of Bancroft
David Farnor | On 21, Feb 2018
ITV has ordered a second season of Bancroft, starring Sarah Parish.
The ruthless DCI will return for a new four-parter, created and written by Kate Brooke (Mr Selfridge, Ice Cream Girls, The Making of a Lady). The series, which first aired last year, was one of ITV’s best performing dramas of 2017, with a series average of 6.7 million and a 25.1% share of the available audience.
“After years of impressing in W1A, Sarah Parish sinks her teeth into the part of the potentially dodgy veteran copper,” we wrote in our review of the show, “nicely contrasting the sincere, youthful enthusiasm of Faye Marsay’s Kate Stevens. As their paths continue to cross, there’s real meat in their shared battle and support to make headway in a male-dominated profession.”
With Parish again in the lead role, the new series focuses on Bancroft’s continuing success following her promotion to Detective Chief Superintendent. She’s popular with her colleagues, and her crime figures are down. However, her success comes at a price, as she’s lonely and estranged from her son, Joe, and under pressure as a result of her dangerous pact with crime boss Daanish Kamara.
When Joe is inadvertently dragged into the middle of a double murder case, Bancroft determines to do anything to protect her son and finds herself up against a chilling new antagonist.
Bancroft II will be executive produced by Brooke alongside Catherine Oldfield, Creative Director and Executive Producer of Tall Story Pictures (Trauma, Tutankhamun, Home Fires).
Oldfield says: “That the audience took to Elizabeth Bancroft in all her terrible, distorted glory in such numbers is fantastic. Kate has loads of brilliant twists and turns in store for this new series and I can’t wait to see what Sarah and the cast do with them.’
Brooke comments: “In Bancroft I wanted to explore a contentious anti-heroine, a woman we love and loathe in equal measure. I’m thrilled to be continuing her story. In this new series the repercussions of her past actions will come back to bite her in ways she could never have expected.”
Filmed on location in and around Bolton and the North West of England, Bancroft will go into production later this year. Further details of casting and key production appointments will be announced closer to filming.