Trailer: Len Deighton's SS-GB (Updated With Widescreen Version)

The BBC has finally put out a trailer for their adaptation of Len Deighton's alternate history spy novel SS-GB (first reported on in November 2014). Set in an alternate 1941 in which Germany successfully invaded Britain, the story follows a police detective (Sam Riley) in Nazi-occupied London as his routine murder investigation leads him into a conspiracy of espionage, atomic secrets, and the fate of the world. Kate Bosworth co-stars. Regular James Bond scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade penned the 5-part miniseries, which premieres this month in the U.K. While The Weinstein Company partnered with the Beeb for U.S. distribution, no American network or premiere date has yet been announced. TWC and BBC last partnered on War and Peace, which aired domestically on Lifetime.

Tradecraft: Purvis and Wade Working on Refn's Spy Movie?

Deadline reports that frequent James Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who have had a hand in every 007 script since 1999) are teaming with Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) on a movie set in Asia "with both thriller and action elements." Last summer it was reported that Refn hoped to make a Tokyo-set spy movie called The Avenging Silence, which would be thematically linked with his previous films Drive, Only God Forgives and Valhalla Rising, featuring a similarly stoic and violent male protagonist to those films. Could this be the Asian-set project Purvis and Wade are boarding? Their spy cred (which in addition to 007 includes Johnny English and the forthcoming Len Deighton miniseries SS-GB) would make them ideal candidates, especially given that they have previously collaborated with Refn on a new Barbarella script he is attached to direct. And if it is indeed The Avenging Silence they've come aboard, their involvement would seem to indicate that Refn is going for a more mainstream feel again with this one (like Drive, which was written by Our Kind of Traitor scribe Hossein Amini), as opposed to the almost oppressively esoteric Only God Forgives (which I liked, but I seem to be in the minority), which the director penned himself.

Tradecraft: Purvis and Wade Adapt Deighton for BBC

Variety reports that James Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (Skyfall, Casino Royale, The World Is Not Enough) have signed on to write a 5-episode miniseries for BBC One based on Ipcress File author Len Deighton's novel SS-GB. As much as I love Deighton, I have to confess I've never read that one because his alternate history novels never interested me as much as his Cold War spy thrillers. So I'll rely on the trade's plot summary. "It is set in an imaginary Britain controlled by the Nazis, if Germany had occupied the country. It centers on a police detective caught between the Nazis and the British resistance." But the alternate history setting doesn't mean that it's not a spy story! Speaking to The Guardian, Purvis and Wade called SS-GB "a brilliant tale of espionage that dares to think the unthinkable." I'll certainly have to read the book before this miniseries airs in 2015! I can't help but be a tad disappointed that this isn't news on the new television adaptation of Deighton's masterful Bernard Samson cycle that was first reported on last year, but on which there have been no updates ever since, but I guess I should just be glad that any Deighton is coming to television. And this sounds like fertile ground for a series, for sure! Besides their contributions to the last five Bond movies, Purvis and Wade's other genre credits include Johhny English and The Italian Job remake (on which they ended up uncredited).