The Five wows Japan’s Wowow

Red Production Company’s The Five was made for the UK’s Sky1

A Japanese broadcaster has become the latest to acquire Harlan Coben’s thriller The Five from StudioCanal.

Premium pay TV broadcaster Wowow will air the 10-part series, which was produced for Sky1 in the UK, on its general entertainment channel Wowow Prime in February 2017.

The show was picked up recently by Italy’s TIMvision and Radio-Canada for French-speaking Canada, alongside France’s Canal+, Israel’s Yes DBS, the Netherlands’ NPO, New Zealand’s Sky, Australia’s SBS1 and Spain’s Telefonica.

The drama marks the first original story for television from best-selling novelist Coben.

It is produced by Manchester-based Red Production Company (Happy Valley), which is owned by StudioCanal, the production arm of Canal+ Group.

Coben recently launched US indie Final Twist Productions in partnership with Red’s Nicola Shindler. Sky recently commissioned eight-part crime series The Hour, an original story created by Coben and written by Danny Brocklehurst.