BBC onboard Fever adaptation

Elisabeth Moss stars in The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale star Elisabeth Moss has teamed with cable network BBC America and Annapurna Television to develop a Mary Beth Keane novel for TV.

Fever, adapted from the novel of the same name, will star and be exec produced by Moss. It will tell the story of Typhoid Mary, the first known healthy carrier of typhoid, who spread the disease across New York in the early 20th century.

Moss, who also stars in BBC hit Top of the Lake, acquired the TV rights to Keane’s novel and signed up Phil Morrison (Enlightened, Junebug) as director and exec producer.

Robin Veith (The Expanse, True Blood) is set to write the adaptation and will also exec produce alongside Moss, Morrison and Annapurna’s Sue Naegle and Megan Ellison.

Annapurna TV, the television arm of US movie firm Annapurna Pictures, was launched by Ellison and former HBO president of entertainment Naegle last year.

Moss described Typhoid Mary as “a woman whose true tale has never been told. She was an immigrant in turn of the century New York, a time of huge change and progress in America.

“She was incredibly unique, stubborn, ambitious and in fierce denial of any wrongdoing until her death, where she lived out her days imprisoned on an island just off the Bronx in New York. She is incredibly complicated, something I seem to enjoy playing.”

The show will join BBC America’s list of original dramas that includes Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and upcoming series Killing Eve.

Annapurna, meanwhile, is currently in pre-production on limited series Today Will Be Different, which has Julia Roberts attached to star; animated series Amberville for Amazon; and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Western anthology written and directed by the Coen Brothers.